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In keeping with the theme of this month's VIP product reviews of social networks - Penny Crossland's comparison of the more general business services (LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, and Jigsaw) as well as Joanna Ptolomey's dive into BiomedExperts from Collexis - it was serendipitous that one of the sessions at the Software & Information Industry Association's NetGain conference in San Francisco this week included a look at social networks for legal pros.
In a session titled 'Social Media: From Strategy to Execution' moderated by Delta Think's Ann Michael, Serena Wellen, Director of Content at LexisNexis discussed LexisNexis Communities, a hosted environment for harnessing user contributions on key legal topics, at http://www.lexisnexis.com/community/portal/. The Communities site, which has 11,000 legal pros as members, is divided into 28 communities, each with a specific vertical focus from Bankruptcy & Law to International & Foreign Law to Tax Law.
For instance, content on the Emerging Law Issues community this week included posts by legal pros on the implications of the Gulf Oil spill; a podcast on the roles of various governmental agencies during a chemical accident investigation; news headlines; and Top Cases related to global climate change.
Wellen said the purpose of the community sites, which contain a combination of free and fee content in multiple media formats, is to reinforce brand preferences, engage customers directly and drive revenue. The hope is that the combination of credible, curated content on specific topic areas augmented by user-generated content from legal pros who are community members will make LexisNexis Communities a trusted destination for legal pros to share topic-specific information.
The appeal of a trusted, market-specific social network also informed the creation of Martindale Hubbell Connected, a social networking tool for legal professionals still in beta at http://www.martindale.com/connected. It's a closed network, meaning that members must be verified as legal professionals to join. Once in, members can connect to uncover new relationships and trusted referrals, form private groups around interest areas, and post questions. Wellen said that 'Connected has underlying intelligence in using directory content to create 45 million potential connections'.
Whether it's legal, biomedical, or in any of the other vertical markets where such networks are springing up- Tabrez Syed of Spiceworks brought the NetGain crowd up to date on his company's social network for IT pros - it's clear that vendors are recognizing that making their rich vertical data content available in a social network framework can be a compelling new way to engage their customers.
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