The most expected question about ArtNetCity is: What makes this project different from other social networking websites like Facebook?
Of course, we have an answer.
First of all, ArtNetCity was not designed to be a social media like Facebook. It was designed around completely different idea. Facebook is a website to stay in touch with your friends and share information with them. ArtNetCity is a place for people to establish themselves in particular areas. Even though it may partially look similar to Facebook, it has different goal and therefore it has features, that facebook does not:
ArtNetCity allows you to create any number of custom pages with custom menus for each of your professions, hobbies or any other creative activities. You can create a page for your profession on Facebook, but it will be a standard page with standard menu. If you need to add or change anything to make it to better represent your profession – you will not be able to do much on Facebook. ArtNetCity gives you much more room: here you will be able to edit menus and add new pages as you wish as if it was your personal separate website. It is very important to present your activity as you see fit to help people see your special professional features.
Advanced search through professions.
ArtNetCity does have search by profession feature. Facebook does not.
ArtNetCity is giving the possibility to those who search to find those who want to be found. Professional pages, professionals’ media-objects, goods and services – all these things can be published, searched through and found on ArtNetCIty. This is what provides wide possibilities for self-establishment – here You and Your creative works will be looked for and here they are likely to be found.
Let’s now try to search for professional pages on Facebook by typing the name of the profession in the search box (the only way to do this). What will you find if you try to search for poets? Pages that have a word “poet” in the title. And these pages are not exactly of poets. The first thing in the list I found was Women's Clothing Store “Poet”, the second – page of music band “Poets of the Fall”. Moreover, you will never find a poet’s page that didn’t have the word “poet” in the title.
Search engine of ArtNetCity allows filtering search results by profession for goods, services, images, videos, audios and texts. This is a unique feature of our system that lets you navigate through all these objects with ease. No other social network (including Facebook) has anything similar.
Possibility to search for people who are professionals in different fields at the same time. Looking for programmer-designer-musician? ArtNetCity gives you the ability to do such searching. It would be near impossible to do it on Facebook.
We have advanced professional rating system. This rating helps to make searching more useful. Rating of a professional page is based on rating of all the contents of the page. Profession on ArtNetCity is not torn apart from a person like it is on Facebook. On ArtNetCity you can see the person behind his or her professional page, personal page, and other professions. Creative work cannot be represented in a separation from the creator! Rating system of ArtNetSity also counts personal rating and rating of other professions of this person using a special formula. That’s why you will get the most relevant, most useful search results on ArtNetCity. Moreover, you can monitor your rating on a separate page. There is no such possibility on Facebook.
We have texts as separate media objects with their own structure and possibility to be a part of professional portfolio. Texts are media-objects, that you can create and edit right on ArtNetCity or upload as a file: articles, poems, lyrics, stories, thoughts, etc. They are very important part of portfolio for every profession, and vital for some of them like poets, writers, translators and others. Facebook doesn’t have such media objects.
ArtNetCity has audios as separate media objects. Facebook does not have any.
Better structure of media objects. Facebook has albums. They are great if you have 3 or 5 or even 9 of them. But it’s far not enough for some professions like photographers that might have more than 100 albums. ArtNetCity has collections and albums. Just one more level of portfolio structure makes organizing and finding media objects much easier. Facebook only has albums because a few albums is enough for personal use, but it is not for professional use, and that’s why ArtNetCity has more advanced structure of media objects.
Professional goods. ArtNetCity allows people to sell things they create. This is crucial for self-realisation in most professions or hobbies! Goods are connected to professions, so you can sell things right through your professional pages. Moreover, as they are connected to professions, goods on ArtNetCity can be searched by profession (among other criteria). Facebook lacks these features.
Professional services. How can any creative person establish himself without offering his services? ArtNetCity makes this possible. You can offer services related to your profession and you can receive orders for those services. You can also search for services on ArtNetCity, so if you are, for example, a game developer that needs a couple of soundtracks for your new videogame, you can find composers who offer such services. Facebook does not have anything like that.
Orders for professional goods and services. ArtNetCity has a special system that makes working with orders easy for both buyers and sellers. You can place or take complex orders and organize them by various criteria. Our order management system is unique and was developed specifically for multi-professional use. Orders are connected to professions so your every profession has its own orders, yet you can work with all of them through a single page. Another important feature here is that sellers can decide whether accept or decline the order before taking responsibility for it. The seller can make this choice based on at the reputation of the buyer. Facebook does not have such a convenient trading system designed for multi-professional use.
Advanced reputation system. Why is it advanced? Because it’s even better than the one on Ebay. If you are interested in why it is so you can learn more about it. This reputation system will not allow sellers and buyers to carry out their unfair activities on ArtNetCity. Facebook does not have such reputation system.
Organization of contacts. Facebook has “friends”, we have “contacts”. Contacts are very important for any professional activity: they can be clients, potential clients, partners, suppliers, etc. – and they are not exactly “friends”. However, staying in touch with them and sometimes giving them certain rights on your page – this all can be useful for your professional activity. Facebook may ban your account for another try to add to friends a person who does not think that you are his friend. The possibility to create a hidden list of potential contacts also does not exist on Facebook.
This list is not over. It may contain more than 20 or even 30 differences that make us better for professional use. However, we didn’t make our system to be different from Facebook, we just have different goals, different fields. We have social network features in our project because it makes our professional network better, and therefore it helps us reach our goal to give people tools for self-establishment. We don’t want to compete with Facebook in social network aspect. We just want to make a system that will be valuable to people and that will help us all to get closer to the world in which talent and new ideas do not go unnoticed!
If ArtNetCity is a professional network, what makes us different from LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a professional network, but its purpose is completely different from ours. It is all about jobs, careers and resumes. It is designed to help people searching for a job in a company. However, it can’t help you to establish yourself as a creator. It can’t help you if you are not a specialist in demand by a big company.
You cannot add any portfolio on LinkedIn: no images, no audios, no videos nor texts. You cannot offer services on LinkedIn, you cannot sell products created by you. The only thing you can offer here is your skills. The only thing you can ask in return is a job.
LinkedIn has absolutely different goal. So if you are a specialist in demand and you are looking for a job, I think it’s a good place for you to try. However, if you create any products or offer services, and want to promote and establish yourself – LinkedIn will not be of much help to you.
The most important difference between Myspace and ArtNetCity is that on Myspace you can not sell neither goods nor services. Since there can not be any orders and reputation system - there can not be any self-realization. You can not create any complete site for your profession on Myspace. There are no instruments to represent yourself as a creator.
At a first glance it may seem that Myspace has it all: the professions, the portfolio, searching through professions. However on a closer look you start seeing that it does not. You can represent your professions to some degree on Myspace, but it is surprisingly limited. What can you do on Myspace? You can create a profession and say a few words about it. Then you can upload parts of your portfolio, and what you can upload heavily depends on the profession you chose. There are only 21 professions to choose from, so if you choose a musician, you will be able to upload audio tracks only; you will have no possibility to upload music sheets because you will not be allowed to upload images as a musician; you will have no possibility to say a few words about your compositions or upload lyrics to your songs, no additional information about you and your profession – because you will not be able to add texts as a musician.
Myspace does not let you search for images or texts, which makes those limited portfolios even less useful.
ArtNetCity is made for all professions, not just 21. You can upload any portfolio and any type of related materials all of which are so important for your profession. You can offer services and sell products on ArtNetCity. You can show yourself and your creativity to people, get in touch with them and establish yourself as a creator, professional, a person that tries to change this world and make it a better place!
We are not afraid to compare our system with other systems. We started this project because Internet doesn’t have a system with features that so many people need. We tried to implement them all on ArtNetCity. See it for yourself!