Adapt to Experience

Ryze for Newbies

By John S Veitch

About Ryze

Ryze is not in the beginning an easy site to use, yet Ryze is the model most of the newer social networks are trying to beat. Ryze has a funny contact rule that fools people. Most networks are very restrictive about who you can contact (especially on Ecademy). In contrast Ryze is very open, there are only two rules for free members. You can contact "friends" and "friends of friends"; and you can contact the people you share a network with. When you join you will only have ONE friend, and perhaps none at all. The friend rule is restrictive on beginners. In contrast the "common networks" rule is very liberating. BUT newbies don't understand it, they don't join any networks or perhaps only one or two, and they cut off what is really a free pass to the use of Ryze.

There are thousands of very active free members on Ryze. These people keep a few hundred "Ryze networks" active and interesting. Ryze is maintained by the fees paid by Gold Members. Growth has been slow, because Ryze chooses to grow within existing income. Recently a new headquarters was established in Panama. In spite of massive new competition, the future of Ryze is assured.

I do recommend Ryze and I do recommend becoming a Gold Member, but try a year as a free member first. There is a lot to learn.

Here is a record of the Ryze membership of 42 people in my hometown, Christchurch. It's very informative. There is a lot to learn and most people never get started.

Preparation Beforehand

You should have a personal photograph or image, in a gif or jpg file, say 150px by 180px that you can download.

Be prepared to enter some things you have to offer other people. Skills, knowledge or expertise. Then they ask "What do you want?" Be clear and plain about what you need from other people.

There is opportunity to list your company, and perhaps clubs or voluntary organizations you are involved with. Also your school or university.

There are three links to external sites, they are labeled: Personal Web site, Personal Blog, and Company Web Site. You need the full URL including the http:// protocol signature.

In addition you can include about a page of text. I suggest you write three paragraphs.
About your hometown, yourself and your family.
About your hobbies and interests. Particularly about your voluntary work in the community, or committee work in clubs.
Your business interest. Don't advertise here, just state what you do, why you are passionate about it and repeat the link to your business web site.

First Steps

Prepare your Ryze Homepage as suggested above. You can easily re-edit it later. You can use plain text, so long as you use no HTML at all. If you use any HTML, you must use HTML for the whole document. Style sheets are allowed.

Now go the personal preferences and set the privacy level to "low" and the Guestbook setting to "on" and "public".

Now to join the all important Networks. You are entitled to join up to 60 networks as a free member. You should probably do that but not today. Today click on the network tab, and use the search box to see if you can find networks that interest you. When a search fails Ryze will offer some random choices. Look at those too. There are close to 1000 networks, but maybe 500 of them are not currently active. For today join about 20 networks, even if you just try some of them "for fun". You can always change your selections later.

If you join a network that's very busy it will fill your inbox with mail. Don't panic, go to the "Networks Tab", click, choose edit networks. You have the option here to turn off the mail from some of the networks (Or all of them if you like.)

The biggest mistake people make is to only join networks of one type. Networks with "million" in the name are very popular, but they are usually very boring. Most of the business networks are dull, and those that allow advertising are the most dull. Literary networks and political networks are always interesting. Some of the specialist, community of practice networks, are very valuable, even if they are not busy.

Try to find some "sources of rich data" in Ryze networks. The activity tends to shift around. Networks can be busy for a while and then go quiet. Quiet is good, what we want is quality posts in preference to lots of posts. If you can't find quality posts in a network, posts that interest you, go somewhere else.

If you've joined Ryze you should also be a member of LinkedIn. You can find out about being a Newbie at LinkedIn here.

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