Zentact Reduces Network “Shrinkage”

Thursday, 12.18.08

Zentact Reduces Network “Shrinkage”

For those who missed the classic Seinfeld episode (scene 1, scene 2) shrinkage is what happens when your man-bits get too cold. The funny thing is, the same thing can happen to your network. If the relationships with your contacts go cold — through falling out of touch or contacting them only when you need something — your network shrinks too.

Along comes Zentact to help warm things up.

In its current form, Zentact is a Firefox add-on that helps you keep-in-touch with all those people you have intended to build relationships with; but may have let slip. (You planned on building relationships with those hundreds of people you added to LinkedIn didn’t you? What percentage have you contacted in the last six months??) The add-on surfs along with you and notifies you when a page you are reading might be of interest to your contacts — based on their name or tags you have entered for the person. Zentact then lets you send them a link without leaving the page using email or Twitter. Hopefully the link you send brings some added value to your contact. But at the very least, it makes them feel good that you took the time to reach-out. And just like that, +1 in the relationship bank account.

Zentact was created by my brother & former MyBlogLog lead engineer John Sampson and Jared Brandt — of A Donkey & A Goat Winery fame. My buddy & MyBlogLog co-founder Eric Marcoullier and super-investor/internet rock star Howard Lindzon are some of their main advisers. And to top it off, the crew at Cloudspace — the Orlando-based agile development shop John & I founded in 1996 — have done most of the development to date.

Based on the early reviews in Mashable, VentureBeat, TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb it looks like they have a really big potential hit on their hands. Mashable even said, “Zentact Might Be the Best Social Networking Idea of the Year.”

Damn guys, I couldn’t be prouder or more excited for you!

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by Todd Sampson · Tags: Applications · Business

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johnsampson 1 year ago 1 point
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Thanks Todd! Great post, references aside - though network "shrinkage" is an interesting way to put it.

Touching on the "warm things up", Zentact is all about "keeping your connections warm". Sometime in the future you'll need (or just think) to reach out to someone in your network. If Zentact provides contextually relevant reasons (excuses?) to reach out to this person when its not necessary -- it will make reaching out when it is necessary easier and hopefully more successful (online or offline). Keeping in touch or staying in the know with your network - things not easily done by most - will keep your connections warm.

Expect to see much in the weeks ahead. We've received amazing feedback via our members thus far and are already implementing many suggestions.

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Isis 7 months ago 1 point
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Thanks for the post, I was just searching for something and saw this post, I am glad to have read this one, it's quite a new thing for me!

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Resume Templates 4 months ago 1 point
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That makes two of us. Very interesting add-on to maintain the channels of communications open between us and another individual. After all, you'll never know when you'll be learning something handy from them.

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