Take the professional recommendation tools from LinkedIn and the Q&A capabilities of Yahoo Answers, and you’ll get something like GigPark (or, LinkedIn Answers, but you see my point). This new site has just emerged from private beta, and it’s a tool for individuals to look to their friends to get personal recommendations on professional services, like photographers, personal trainers, caterers, etc. One helpful aspect of GigPark is the ability to ask for a recommendation from your friends, and wait for it to be answered by another member.
What makes this site so different is its focus on friends. You can find existing friends through your Gmail account, and thankfully you can also link GigPark to your Facebook account so that you can immediately begin to leverage your friends’ knowledge base for personal recommendations. I do, however, feel that GigPark is a little bit too closed off, in the sense that you can’t find other knowledgeable users within the GigPark community and request them for recommendations if need be.
While you can receive recommendations from friends of friends, this is still an overall limiting factor. I still like the concept of the site. It’s similar to what we’re seeing from sites like Delver, when allow you to tap directly into your larger social network for any search query.
GigPark is pretty specific, though, in that it’s meant to be used for professional services in the offline world. In fact, entering in a search request or a recommendation limits you to the pre-populated services that are already included in the site. Some location-based filters and organization options for the recommendations would be helpful add-ons for GigPark, especially as recommendations from your friends appear in a feed-like format on your account homepage.
User comment: By: PemaThanks for the thoughtful write-up Kristen! We developed the idea for GigPark after hiring a lot of service providers ourselves - good and bad ones. We always found the best service people via recommendations from our friends. So, this is the insight we've focused on. Calling around all of your friends to find a recommendation for a lawyer, personal trainer or a tattoo artist can take time. With GigPark, we're trying to make it easier to find great service with the help of your friends. Pema Co-founder, GigPark
User comment: By: Web RoundUp: Feb 21, 2008 : unitedBIT[...] Take the professional recommendation tools from LinkedIn and the Q&A capabilities of Yahoo Answers, and you'll get something like GigPark. This new site has just emerged from private beta, and it's a tool for individuals to look to their friends to get personal recommendations on professional services, like photographers, personal trainers, caterers, etc. One helpful aspect of GigPark is the ability to ask for a recommendation from your friends, and wait for it to be answered by another member. What makes this site so different is its focus on friends. You can find existing friends through your Gmail account, and thankfully you can also link GigPark to your Facebook account so that you can immediately begin to leverage your friends' knowledge base for personal recommendations. However, according to Kristen Nicole of Mashable!, GigPark is a little bit too closed off, in the sense that you can't find other knowledgeable users within the GigPark community and request them for recommendations if need be. Read more at Mashable! [...]
Visit here to subscribe to these comments[...] principle behind GigPark — which also has a Facebook application — is a simple one. You can post recommendations on the site, if you have a masseuse or a real-estate agent or a [...]