Caliber 推出面向职场人士的消息应用
过去多年，在 LinkedIn 的阴影下，多家创业公司试图提供新方式，尤其是基于移动端的方式，帮助企业员工相互通信，发掘企业市场的某些细分领域。今天，一款名为 Caliber 的新应用带来了一些不同之处：该应用并未试图与 LinkedIn 直接竞争，而是提供了一款互补的工具，一方面帮助用户与当前的 LinkedIn 联系人聊天，而另一方面则帮助用户扩大自己的职场关系网，同时屏蔽掉垃圾消息。
Caliber 推出于 去年夏季 ，最初是一款类似 Tinder 风格的应用，帮助人们建立职业联系。该公司首席执行官安德里斯·布兰科（Andres Blank）表示，最初这款应用的用户数已达到 2 万，但 Caliber 的团队随后意识到，用户真正想要的并不是这样的模式。用户不只需要联系感兴趣的人，还希望能向职业联系人发送消息。
不过，开发面向商业用途的消息应用也有着自身的困难。用户需要创建包含职业信息的帐号，在平台上搜索并查找适当的联系人。而最重要的是，这样的应用需要避免垃圾消息的泛滥。
我发现，专注于这一领域的许多其他应用都遭遇了垃圾消息的困扰。创业公司开发有趣的社交体验，帮助企业员工建立联系，但垃圾消息似乎很难得到控制。
如果你的建议和观点很有价值，或者说别人有求于你，例如你是一名颇有成就的风险投资家，那么你将会收到大量的好友请求。无论加入什么平台，你都会收到许多这类消息。对这样的用户来说，参与这种平台将变得困难，甚至导致他们不想参与这些平台。
关于 Caliber，有趣的一点在于，该公司的解决方案专注于解决上述问题。
这款应用的用户帐号基于 LinkedIn，因此可以了解用户之间的职业社交关系。如果两名用户已经是 LinkedIn 联系人，并且同时使用 Caliber，那么就可以在这一应用中互发消息。而如果其中只有一人使用 Caliber，那么 Caliber 用户可以通过该应用发送 LinkedIn 站内信给非 Caliber 用户。如果双方并没有在 LinkedIn 上建立联系，那么用户可以通过 Caliber 发送加好友请求。
此外，与大部分社交应用不同，当有消息到来时，这款应用并不会立即向用户发送推送通知。因此，你不必为回应烦人的推送通知而苦恼。在一星期末，Caliber 会将用户收到的请求汇总并进行排序，随后再呈现给用户。用户的 LinkedIn 联系人，以及 Caliber 中的热门人物会出现在这一汇总清单的前列。因此，用户可以更好地决定与谁建立好友关系，并知道为何要建立这样的关系。
与 LinkedIn、Facebook，以及大部分社交网络不同，所有未回应的请求将会在一周时间后消失。
这并不会阻止他人再次尝试加为好友。不过，这一举措能使加好友流程更加智能、更加简单。
与此同时，如果你需要扩大自己的职场关系网，那么可以通过 Caliber，基于人们的职业经历，例如职位、技能和公司，来查找其他用户。
目前，Caliber 应用仅支持联系人之间的消息发送，而未来，该团队还希望支持视频通话、文件共享，以及会议活动邀请等功能，并将支持的社交网络扩大至 Twitter 和 AngelList。最终，该公司希望通过企业级功能获得收入，例如与客户关系管理（CRM）系统的连接，帮助企业招聘者或人力资源经理获得数据，以更好地招到专业人才。
不过，Caliber 也存在一个潜在的问题。该应用基于 LinkedIn，而后者以往似乎不太愿意支持第三方应用生态系统。例如近期，LinkedIn 宣布 只向合作伙伴开放完整的应用程序接口（API）。Caliber 正在申请成为 LinkedIn 的合作伙伴，但目前尚未成功。不过布兰科仍对此充满希望。
“从短期来看，可以说，我们的服务和 LinkedIn 站内信之间有些许相似之处。不过从长期来看，我们将成为一款单纯的通信应用。”他表示，“LinkedIn 更多地关注用户的身份和简历。我认为，我们可以与他们互补，同时也为他们的平台做出贡献。”他指出，Caliber 可以帮助人们在 LinkedIn 上建立联系。
目前，Caliber 团队位于纽约，共有 5 名成员，正在完成种子轮融资。布兰科也是 一名天使投资人，曾成功创立并 出售 Pixable。除他之外，该公司的其他创始人还包括 TechStars 成员克里斯·卡尔梅恩（Chris Calmeyn）。他此前曾是 Piictu 的负责人，以及 Travelocity 的产品经理。
目前，这款新应用可以 通过 iOS 和安卓平台下载 。
Caliber Debuts A Messaging App Designed For Business Professionals
A number of startups in years past have tried to carve out their own niche in the business networking space under the looming shadow of LinkedIn by offering an alternative way to connect with industry colleagues, often on mobile. But today, a new app called Caliber is offering a slightly different take on the concept: instead of trying to compete with LinkedIn directly, its service offers a complementary tool that lets you chat with your LinkedIn contacts as well as grow your network without being overrun by request spam.
Caliber itself first launched last summer, but initially offered a Tinder-like app for making business connections. That app grew to 20,000 users, but the team realized that it wasn’t quite what people wanted. Users didn’t want to just connect with other interesting people, they wanted to be able to reach their business contacts and message them, explains company co-founder and CEO Andres Blank.
However, building a messaging app for business use presents its own sorts of challenges. Users have to create accounts that include their professional identities, they need to be able to search for and find the right people on the platform, and most importantly, the app needs to be careful to not encourage spam.
That latter problem is something I’ve seen a number of other attempts in this space gloss over – startups would create these interesting social experiences for connecting industry colleagues, but they would never address the issue of spam.
That is, when you’re someone whose advice or insight is valuable, or you’re someone who’s in demand – think, for example, a VC getting hundreds of pitches from entrepreneurs – you become overwhelmed by the number of requests to connect or incoming messages on any platform you join. For these sought-after users, the problem makes it difficult for you to participate, and it even discourages you from doing so.
What’s interesting about Caliber is that it has focused on developing a solution to this problem.
The app leverages LinkedIn to build out its user profiles and understand who’s connected to who. If two people are already LinkedIn connections and are both on Caliber, they can message each other in the app. If they’re connected on LinkedIn, but only one person uses the app, the app lets you send a LinkedIn InMail to the non-Caliber user. And if both users are not connected on LinkedIn, one user can send a request to connect with the other on Caliber instead.
But the app doesn’t barrage users with requests the minute they come in like most social apps do. There aren’t buzzy push notifications forcing to you to respond to each incoming invite. Rather, at the end of the week, Caliber presents a list of your requests and it ranks them for you, showing those first where you have mutual connections or the person is popular within the app. This allows you to make better decisions about who to connect to, and why.
Then, unlike on LinkedIn or Facebook or most other social networks, all the unanswered requests just disappear after a week’s time.
That doesn’t prevent those same users from trying again later, but it does make the process of growing your network – smartly – a lot easier.
Meanwhile, if you’re the one in need of expanding your network, you can use Caliber to seek out users based on their professional experience, including their roles, skills and companies.
Currently, the Caliber app only enables messaging between contacts, but in the future, the team wants to expand the app to support things like video calls, file sharing or appointment scheduling, as well as connecting to contacts on other networks, like Twitter or AngelList, for example . And eventually, it wants to generate revenue through business-level features, like support for connecting with CRM systems, or the ability to generate data that could help recruiters or hiring managers find in-demand professionals.
One potential problem Caliber could face, however, is that it’s being built on top of LinkedIn – a company which doesn’t have a good history with regard to supporting its ecosystem of third-party apps. For instance, it recently began limiting full API usage only to partners. Caliber is applying for partnership status, but hasn’t been granted this yet. However, Blank is hopeful.
“Right now in the short-term, you could say there are some similarities [between us and what LinkedIn] does with InMail, but in the long-term, we’re a pure communications app,” he says. “LinkedIn is much more about identity. It’s about your resumé…I think we’re complementary to them and we also give back to their platform,” Blank notes, adding that Caliber can help people establish a connection on LinkedIn, too.
The company is a team of five based in New York and is now closing a seed round. In addition to CEO Blank, an angel investor who previously founded and sold Pixable, the startup is co-founded by Chris Calmeyn, a TechStars alum and previously head of product at Piictu and a product manager at Travelocity.
The new app is available for both iOS and Android.
来源：techcrunch.cn
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