Does iStadia Work for You? Networking

It's fascinating to watch the activity of our members and trying to find ways of helping them do what they want to get the most out of iStadia whether it's to try and get them more exposure, assist with self-promotion, get more business, find work or build their networks.

Some recent comments have made us rethink the way we see use of the site. Despite regular instances of networking and referral success most members have networks that consist of only three or four other members. With the basis of networking built on a desire to help others then I wonder what this suggests?
However it may be that members are relunctant to invite others on the basis of a perceptive inability to help anyway. It seems that another reason has surfaced in that there seems to be a reluctance (read shyness) to do this.

We have found that it doesn't matter who you are or at what level (student upwards) you can always help others, put them in touch with someone for some reason eg. it's always good to have contacts in complimentary roles. This can be a nutritionist for a sports psych, lawyer for an agent, coach for an athlete etc. and it doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be relevant now but should be looked upon as in investment. This is especially true if you think you might want to work with someone or need them to help you find a job. And all you have to do is send them a sitemail, it takes a matter of seconds. To help you do this, we provide you with a list of other members (on Mystadia when you sign in) that might be good to connect with. It sends a sense of value and community to do this. So go on, if you only invite one other member, it will increase most members networks by 25%. Click here to see a list of members.
You don't have to stop there, you can invite others from outside iStadia to be part of our expanding community - click here. 
Now many of you will have networks outside iStadia so to make this easier we will be launching a new application this week which will make it easy to import contact lists eg. from Outlook, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, LinkedIn etc. These will appear on the Networks homepage and MyStadia.

If you have any ideas as to how we can encourage members to build their networks as a genuine professional investment then we would love to hear from you.