A Little Help from Your Friends

Any of these contacts who were also members of Spoke could then grant Furuya the ability to reach out to people in their networks, and so on up to more than four degrees of separation, providing him with relevant information about -- or introductions to --potential new clients. This year, Furuya wants to add 15-20 new clients to his roster, all with net worths of at least $2.5 million -- a tough circle to gain access to without personal introductions and referrals. With Spoke on his side, however, Furuya doesn't think it'll be a problem.

Next, he hopes to encourage his decision-making MetLife colleagues to start using the Web service as well -- and ultimately convince them to purchase the enterprise version of Spoke's software. While the Web version is free and allows users unlimited use of Spoke's email and contact data-mining tool for referrals, the enterprise version integrates directly with Outlook, Eudora, Siebel, or Salesforce interfaces; and employees can manage their workflow through one of those tools and track their networking progress and referrals against their project goals and sales targets. Besides searching for relationships, this high-test version of Spoke searches public records and Web-based data (such as news items, Web pages, and photos) to compile a dossier on the target contact. Spoke recently signed up the North American division of management consulting firm Cap Gemini Ernst & Young for the service after Spoke executives noticed a cluster of CGEY employees using the free Web version and then used their own networking software to wangle an introduction to a Cupertino, California-based CGEY vice president.

A Spoke rival called Interface Software casts an even wider net. Its InterAction service pulls extra information from databases such as VentureWire, Dunn & Bradstreet, and Hoover's for still more information about a potential contact. Then, if the software turns up a useful relationship with a potential customer in a search, it will also identify any interactions that anyone else at the company has had with that person's firm -- providing context for any sales conversations that take place. "The totality of a relationship goes beyond who knows who," says Rick Klau, vice president of vertical markets at Interface. "It involves what contact that person may previously have had with your company, what business they are currently seeking, and where they are in their own marketplace."

How does this play out in the real world? Consider the recent experience of Sturge Sobin, an attorney who runs the international trade litigation practice for boutique Washington, D.C., law firm Miller & Chevalier. One night, one of Sobin's researchers saw an item on the news about a consumer appliance company that was "being hurt by unfair import taxes, in a market of about $250-$300 million a year." Using InterAction's public records and proprietary database search, Sobin researched the company's history and decided that the company was a perfect target for Miller & Chevalier's expertise. The software also turned up the fact that one of M&C's partners had done work for the appliance company years ago, and in fact had a personal relationship with the CEO. "It's not a relationship I would have known about without InterAction," says Sobin. "I picked up the phone to the partner, asked if he'd introduce us and our services. We were retained to represent the company in a litigated trade case and the legal fees for us were, well, substantial."

Okay, but is any of this stuff starting to creep you out? If so, you're not alone. Even some serious contenders in the social-networking business take issue with the approaches of companies like Spoke and Interface, which critics say are invasive, or, perhaps worse, so open and democratic as to water down the value of any connections made through them. LinkedIn, co-founded last spring by ex-PayPal executive Reid Hoffman as an aid to hiring, features an extensive gatekeeping system. Users may not directly contact anyone who is not in their immediate circle of contacts, but must instead request a referral endorsement from the common colleague. That has made it attractive to more-senior professionals who are interested in networking with highly recommended individuals, but are equally concerned with protecting access to themselves and their own existing contacts. Another site, Ryze, has quickly become known as the social networking destination for freelancers and entrepreneurs.

The whole point of a personal network, according to these sites' creators, is that it's personal -- relationships are carefully nurtured over time. Releasing those relationships to the entire company or to the world at large can undermine the very trust upon which they're built. "Your network is yours, it's not the company's," says LinkedIn co-founder and marketing vice president Konstantin Guericke. "It's a dangerous thing for individuals to turn that information over to the company. The last thing you want is to put your Rolodex out there for people to walk through."