Social startup on a mission to sign up Microsoft 'rockstars'
Social tool Rockstar 365 ranks Microsoft professionals to help them get recognised and win new business
A social media startup site is on the hunt for Microsoft specialists to join its site ranking techies against their peers globally.
South Africa-based Rockstar 365 launched in March and already has 10,000 users registered worldwide, with its three biggest markets being the US, UK and South Africa respectively.
The website allows the vendor's specialists to input their Microsoft-accredited qualifications, exam results and training as well as real-world information such as project-specific expertise and references from customers and colleagues. All the data is then translated into a ranking reflecting how the individual stands against peers in their region, country or even globally.
The firm claims professionals can benefit by adding their rankings on CVs to improve their chances as they search for a new job, but that their employers can also cash in by shouting about the "rockstar" credentials of their staff in order to win new contracts.
Microsoft-certified techies working in the channel make up a key portion of the site's membership and the firm is on a recruitment drive to welcome on board even more specialists, although it does not have a specific target number of users in mind.
The website is strongly integrated with social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and its co-founder Paul Slade said that the more social integration the company includes, the higher user engagement will be.
"When it comes down to it, engagement is driven by value," he said. "The more value we add, the higher engagement will be, it is simple. So far, if we take the interaction we've had just behind the scenes... engagement is high. We can always improve, but from that feedback we think we've got a good model."
Profiles on the website for users are free, but Slade said in the future, the business model will be based on companies paying for profile pages.