SoIndustry

FAQ

• What is SoIndustry?
• How does SoIndustry work?
• What is the Dashboard?
• Why are you asking me, "What Are You Working On?"
• Are my Status Updates visible to the whole world?
• What are Replies?
• What should I put on my profile?
• What should I put for my work experience?
• What should I put in my education?
• What are Banners?
• What are the profile settings for?
• Can I view other people's profiles?
• What are Protected Profiles?
• How do I add someone as a contact on SoIndustry?
• What is a Subscriber (and Subscription)?
• What happens when I Block someone?
• What are Channels?
• What are Sources?
• What are Members and Notables?
• What are Protected Memberships?
• How do I change my Channel email notifications?
• How do I add/remove a Channel from my tabs?
• What are my account details used for?
• Can I delete my account?
• How do I stay safe on SoIndustry?
• What's your policy on privacy?
• What are the Terms of Service for using SoIndustry?
• How do I use SoIndustry from my mobile phone?
• Who built SoIndustry?
• My question isn't answered here. Where can I get more information?

Question:

What is SoIndustry?

Answer:

SoIndustry.com is broadcasting tool that helps you find and keep in touch with your industry. Create a clean and professionally presented profile, share status updates, subscribe & reply to the status updates of other people/professionals who interest you, and create or join Channels (updates, memberships, news from other websites - you choose) for your industry, profession or company.

Question:

How does SoIndustry work?

Answer:

Firstly, sign up. It only takes a few seconds. Then, post a status update from your Dashboard; we ask you, "What Are You Working On?", but feel free to post a status update about anything which would be of interest to you and the people you want to reach out to. Next, visit the All Statuses area to find out what other people are working on, and subscribe to the status updates of anyone of interest to you. Finally, join or create a Channel which interests you - visit the Channels tab to browse or search through existing Channels. Once you've joined a Channel, your Dashboard / Channels tab will start pulling in news, updates, and discussion from all the Channels you've joined.

Question:

What is the Dashboard?

Answer:

The Dashboard is the place where everything that is relevant to you, and your SoIndustry profile, is aggregated. The Dashboard is divided in to tabs so you can easily cut through to the the information that matters most to you. The 'Network' tab shows the latest status updates and replies from the people you've subscribed to across the entire SoIndustry network. The 'Channels' tab aggregates the activities from the Channels your have created and/or joined, and does so without cluttering up your Network tab.

Question:

Why are you asking me, "What Are You Working On?"

Answer:

We want you to be able to broadcast your professionally orientated status updates and to discuss relevant topics with other interesting people. If you have something to share about your current activities or projects, your industry, your profession, you should share this on SoIndustry - status updates are good to share, it's more than likely you'll be heard by other professionals.

Question:

Are my Status Updates visible to the whole world?

Answer:

By default (i.e. you haven't activated Protected Profile) your status updates and activities will be visible to any member of SoIndustry. This means you can easily share and broadcast your professsional activity, industry persona, opinion, and commentary. If you're lucky, your Status Updates may appear on the 'All Statuses' area found under the 'People' tab, potentially gathering a much greater response to whatever you said. You can hide your statuses from the public (although we at SoIndustry think you'll get more from the service if your share) by activating Protected Profile.

Question:

What are Replies?

Answer:

In SoIndustry, you can reply to other peoples status updates by clicking the 'Reply' button that shows when you hover over a status update. Once clicked, the Reply button presents you with the status update box that is pre-filled with @username (i.e. you're directing your status update to another person). The replies to a status update are counted on the right hand side of a status, and all replies can be viewed by clicking on this replies counter link.

Question:

What should I put on my profile?

Answer:

Your SoIndustry profile should be one you're happy to share with the rest of the Web; a representation of you and your current professional endeavors.

Provide your real name, your professional headline (a title that best describes what you do), your location, a link to another website or social network (maybe you have a company site or another social networking profile which may be of interest to the people on SoIndustry), a brief summary paragraph (or two), and expertise 'keywords'. A profile picture goes a long way, too - make sure you choose one which would work in most situations and shows you at your best. Make sure the information you provide is accurate.

Why take the time to fill out your profile? Well, it's just a starting point for everything else you'll do on SoIndustry; it'll be much easier for other people to discover you, your status updates, and your activities.

Question:

What should I put for my work experience?

Answer:

Provide the details of your past and current work experiences. This could include full-time positions, part-time positions, projects, and portfolio work. Make sure the information you provide is accurate.

Question:

What should I put for my education?

Answer:

Provide the details of your past and/or current education enrollment. This could include University, school, college details, as well as projects or specialist subjects. Make sure the information you provide is accurate.

Question:

What are Banners?

Answer:

Banners are a clean presented and professional way of presenting a project you've been involved in, the company you've founded, or the business you're helping to build. They can link to external websites, such as a corporate website or blog.

Your can create a banner for you profile by clicking on 'Edit Profile' link on your profile or from the 'Edit Profile' link in the 'You' tab drop-down menu, and then clicking on the 'Banner's tab. Once saved, banners are displayed on the left-hand side of your profile. You have a limit of two banners on your profile (we will have more news on this soon). Banners are randomly rotated per 'page view'.

You can create a banner for a Channel (if you are the admin of the Channel) by clicking on 'Edit Channel' link when in the Channel and then clicking on the 'Banner's tab. Once saved, banners are displayed on the left-hand side of the Channel timeline. You have a limit of two banners per Channel (we will have more news on this soon). Banners are randomly rotated per 'page view'.

Question:

What are the profile settings for?

Answer:

Time Zone indicates which time zone you want to have SoIndustry dates and times adjusted to. Protect Profile is explained in the What are Protected Profiles? section. The Replies checkbox allows you to specify whether or not you want to receive an email notifying you when someone replies to one of your status updates. The Subscribers checkbox allows you to specify whether or not you want to receive an email notifying you when someone subscribes to your updates (or, if you have a protected profile, when someone makes a subscription request).

Question:

Can I view other peoples Profiles?

Answer:

By default, you can view other people's profiles unless they have set their profile to a Protected Profile. If you want to view a Protected Profile, you must 'request a subscription' to the owner of the profile and they can approve you as a Subscriber, if they wish to do so:

Once you have been approved as a Subscriber by the recipient of the request, you can see all profile information and status updates which are usually accessible on a profile without Protected Profile.

Question:

What are Protected Profiles?

Answer:

Protected Profiles allow you to keep your status updates and activities protected from other people on SoIndustry, unless you first approve them as one of your Subscribers. If your profile is Protected and someone makes a subscription request to your profile, you will receive a notification allowing you to Accept or Deny them as a Subscriber. You can edit your Protected Profile and notification settings by clicking the 'Edit Profile' link on your profile or from the 'Edit Profile' option in the 'You' drop-down options.

If you choose to protect your profile, your status updates, replies, and activities within channels will not show up in public areas of SoIndustry, such as the All Statuses tab and the search results.

Question:

How do I add someone as a contact on SoIndustry?

Answer:

In SoIndustry, people 'subscribe' to one another's updates, rather than going through a 'Are you friends?' routine, as seen on other services. This works quite differently because, if someone subscribes to your profile and actitivities, you don't need to reciprocate and subscribe back. To 'subscribe' to someone, simply click on their profile, you'll see a 'Subscribe' link underneath their picture.

Question:

What is a Subscriber (and a Subscription)?

Answer:

A Subscriber is someone who has subscribed to another persons SoIndustry activities. If you have subscribed to someone, their activities will be displayed on the Dashboard under the 'Network' tab.

A Subscriber will only see 'Network-wide' activities, such as Status Updates, Replies. Their Dashboard will not receive activities from your Channels unless the Subscriber is a member of the Channel.

Question:

What happens when I Block someone?

Answer:

You can choose to 'block' subscribers (or requested subscribers, if you have a Protected Profile) from viewing your profile and activities. You will find this option next to each of your subscribers on your subscribers tab, or when viewing the subscribers profile.

A blocked subscriber will not see any of your activities and they will not be able to make another Subscription Request to your Profile.

You can 'un-block' subscribers from your 'Blocked' subscribers menu under your Subscribers tab.

Question:

What are Channels?

Answer:

SoIndustry gives you Channels, an easy way of creating a chat room to share with other people and a tool to pull in news from other websites to help you kick start your discussions (or to keep members of the Channel up-to-date on the latest news). You choose the sources (Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, your own updates, the RSS feed from your company site, etc, most sites have RSS feeds these days) and SoIndustry aggregates the information for you and presents it to you in a chronological, cleanly-presented manner. You can invite other people to join your Channel, and privacy options are available for determining who can access your Channel and whether or not they can post updates in the timeline.

Question:

What are Sources?

Answer:

Start a Channel and you can choose the sources of information that SoIndustry will collect and publish in your Channel. Maybe it's the Financial Times, maybe it's the Daily Telegraph, maybe your company site or blog has an 'RSS' or 'XML' feed (ask the people in the IT department if you need help finding out - but we show you how, shortly). No matter what the topic, if it has an RSS or XML feed, you can add this as a Source of information for your Channel. SoIndustry regularly checks Sources for new published items - when we find one, we send it to your Channel timeline.

There's a couple of really easy tricks for finding RSS or XML feeds which you can use as SoIndustry Sources. Firstly, if you're on a modern Web browser, like Internet Explorer 7, FireFox, Safari, Google Chrome, or Opera, when an RSS feed or XML feed is present, the top-right of address bar will show an RSS/XML indicator icon, like so;

Internet Explorer 7

FireFox

Safari

Opera

When the icon shows, click on it - the browser will give you a URL which you can copy and paste in to the Source form in SoIndustry. It's pretty easy (but we're working on making it even easier).

If you want another method for finding RSS or XML feeds, simply look out for the RSS or XML feed icon on a website. Click the icon and the website will give you a URL which you can copy and paste in to a new Source for your SoIndustry Channel;

Copy and paste the URL in to your Channel:

Question:

What are Members and Notables?

Answer:

When you start a Channel you assume the administrative rights to the Channel. This means you choose the Members, Sources and control the items that are published in the timeline. Depending on the privacy settings you have specified for the Channel, other SoIndustry members can join the Channel.

There are three levels of membership to a Channel. The first (and highest) is the Admin. If you started the Channel, that's you. Then there are Members, the default membership level assigned to people when they join your Channel. Finally, there are Notables, who sit in-between Members and Admins. As the Admin, you can choose to promote a Member to a Notable and this will give them extra privileges within the Channel (such as managing the updates and replies from Members).

To find out more about Channel membership settings, please see What Are Protected Memberships?.

Question:

What are Protected Memberships?

Answer:

When you start a Channel, you have the option of setting the membership preferences. These fall in to three levels;

Public: Anyone can join the Channel and participate through Updates and Replies.

Semi-Public: Anyone can join but, only Notables (those people promoted to Notable by the Admin) can post Updates to the Timeline. Members can only read the Timeline.

Private: only authorised Members and Notables can access the Channel. If someone requests a membership the Admin must approve their membership before they can access the Channel and the content within. Activities from Private Channels are not publish on personal Timelines and they are not included in search results throughout SoIndustry. Notables and Members have the same privileges as they do in Semi-Public Channels; only Notables can post straight in to the Timeline.

Question:

How do I change my Channel email notifications?

Answer:

You can change your Channel email notification options on a per-Channel basis. These options can be adjusted from the 'Options' tab from within a Channel;

Question:

How do I add/remove a Channel from my tabs?

Answer:

By default, all your Channels are shown in the tabs area on your SoIndustry interface. You can choose to hide (or show) individual channels in your tabs by visiting the Channel, clicking the 'Option' tab, and checking (or un-checking) the 'Show in Sidebar' checkbox;

Question:

What are my account details used for?

Answer:

SoIndustry needs an email address and a password (over six letters and preferably something that would be hard for someone to guess) to authenticate you when you 'sign-in' to our service. We do not share your account details with any other companies or services. We will notify you if these terms change.

Question:

Can I delete my account?

Answer:

Yes. Your account deactivation options can be found by clicking on the 'Edit Profile' link on your profile (or under the 'You' drop-down menu) and then clicking on the 'Account' tab.

Question:

How do I stay safe on SoIndustry?

Answer:

SoIndustry is about finding and keeping in touch with your industry. To do this, you need to share a little information about yourself. Look at your coverage on SoIndustry as the equivalent of getting that feature in the printed industry journal; you're an industry professional (with status updates, intelligent insights, and opinion, too) - you don't make money by keeping that fact a secret.

You don't need to share much information at all to get started on SoIndustry; your name, professional title (we call it a 'headline'), and status updates are all you need. SoIndustry asks you for far less information than the popular job boards and social networks, and we think our service is far more interesting to use and has a clear value proposition for you.

However, SoIndustry offers you the ability to protect your profile and status updates using the Protected Profile feature, but we think you'll be proud of your profile and will want to share it with everyone.

Question:

What's your policy on privacy?

Answer:

You can find our privacy policy here.

Question:

What are the Terms of Service for using SoIndustry?

Answer:

Our terms of service are found here.

Question:

How do I use SoIndustry from my mobile phone?

Answer:

We are working on a mobile version of the site, so if you have any suggestions, please let us know in our Suggestions Channel.

Question:

Who built SoIndustry?

Answer:

SoIndustry was founded, designed, and developed by Neil Cauldwell with Rspec & GitHub tips and troubleshooting from Ryan Townsend and BackgroundRB freelancing from Paul Horsfall.

Question:

My question isn't answered here. Where can I get more information?

Answer:

For any further questions, please contact us using the options on the Contact page .