Programmers have a new option when looking to network with fellow technorati. Geekli.st, a social network for developers and their kin, has taken off since launching merely six weeks ago.
The site is the brainchild of Christian Sanz and Reuben Katz, two San Francisco entrepreneurs looking to change the way developers network. Sanz came up with the idea for geekli.st to ease the often painful process of job hunting. Job seekers normally go through the rigamarole of updating their CV, putting it on LinkedIn and reaching out to recruiters that don’t really understand an applicant’s skills. Geekli.st wants to take that model and turn it on its head.
Sanz and Katz emphasise that they’re building a community where developers like to communicate with each other. They’re trying to create safe place for developers to brag about their accomplishments and build a community of friends that are developers. Instead of creating job titles, they envision geekli.st users promoting projects and people involved with the project to the community. Instead of putting out a job requisition for a specific role, the goal is to find fellow geekli.st developers with complimentary skills to join the team.
Geekli.st promotes the idea of achievement cards, where users can promote cool projects they’ve worked on. Those cards are then shared with an activity stream with the community, where fellow users can “high five” others, make friends and uncover people with similar interests. Users can share their achievement cards with other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Eventually, geekli.st will add analytics supporting achievement cards, to learn how often they’ve been shared.
Currently there are no tools built into the site to help recruiters find potential candidates. Sanz and Katz are proceeding carefully, tracking user behavior on geekli.st and trying to be deliberate and thoughtful about how to best implement those features.