Kickstart Archive

Last night there were reports about Yahoo launching an exciting new tool for students and alumni. Named Kickstart the idea is basically a "connection" source for those looking for a job, hiring or just keeping in touch. With that said, I am bringing out the WTF ALERT.

Someone please help me understand the purpose for this site. It’s a direct competitor to LinkedIn. And it has less functionality which sometimes could be beneficial but not in this case. You create a resume and then "find" others that are associated with the school or companies you have been a part of. But that’s it. No groups. No invites, just search and friend.

Mike Arrington appears to really like the service and notes, "What I liked about the service when I saw a demo last week was the possibility to find a deep database of individuals that went to the same schools that I did." Mike – can’t you do this on LinkedIn?

Barry Schwartz at SearchEngineLand has a screen-by-screen walkthrough of the sign-in process. No idea why but heck I got a chuckle out of it :)

NY Nate wonders WTF he is supposed to do after signing in. And Charlie O’Donnell brings the house down with 5 reasons Kickstart won’t start.

Had Yahoo been smart, they would have approached say the Big Ten or the ACC and signed each school up. This way a base of users would have already been in the program. Instead searching on my MBA school provided me with 2 results and my undergrad provided me with zero. Compare that to LinkedIn where hundreds of connections could be made. Their top 10 speaks mainly to making connections and that’s a great idea but what good is it if no one is there?

Not to be completely negative on Kickstart – if they tied it into Yahoo user accounts and allowed for easy export, there could be some potential. But alone I just can’t picture this working. Is this Yahoo’s spaghetti marketing strategy?

At the bottom of the Kickstart page it says "This is Yahoo!" If this is Yahoo, I am scared for their survival. I am the biggest Yahoo supporter since day 1 but lately the company hasn’t shown any innovation and sadly Kickstart is more non-innovation cloning. C’mon Yang get it together pal!