One of the UK networking scene’s biggest success stories celebrated their tenth birthday in February. Founded by husband and wife team, Thomas and Penny Power, over a family lunch in a pizza restaurant, Ecademy has gone from a small meeting of friends over a glass of Chardonnay in London’s Institute of Directors to become a multinational network.

In 2002, Penny Power wrote in a blog, “In time I am hoping it will become a global Business Network with franchisees in 200 cities around the globe so that wherever we all go as members we can find business friends we trust worldwide. Wouldn't that be lovely?”

Whilst still strongest in the UK, the US is now Ecademy’s second fastest growing market, followed by Germany. Over 350,000 people browse the site each month, from 222 countries. In fact, in 2007 there were 3.4 million unique visitors to Ecademy.

A social network which predates LinkedIn, Xing and Ryze, Ecademy was born of a desire to tap into the power of the then young internet to connect people. Thomas Power had recently left his job and was self employed for the first time. Penny and Thomas decided to call together a group of friends for a few drinks to discuss their idea for a new network.

Following that initial meeting in London, the momentum of Ecademy grew quickly. I was first invited along in those early days. Far from the feature-laden website we see now, Ecademy consisted of a regular emails and meetings, mainly populated by e-commerce businesses.

As I wasn’t too internet-minded myself, I decided at the time that Ecademy wasn’t a network for me. When one of my business associates tried to encourage me to go back and look at the site five years ago I initially resisted. When I finally did look a couple of months later I was surprised at what I found and how much Ecademy had moved on.

These days, Ecademy has three levels of membership; blogs, clubs, a marketplace, regular meetings across the globe and a host of other functionality. The key area of focus is network building, with lists of the top 100 ecademists, both by number of connections and reputation.

At it’s strongest, Ecademy helps people build a high profile, particularly among smaller business and especially in the UK. If you have an expertise to share, Ecademy is a great place to start, with content getting a high ranking on Google (type ‘Andy Lopata’ into Google and you’ll see Ecademy entries at positions one and two) and encouraging debate from fellow members.

I’ve certainly used Ecademy as a ‘profile building’ network, helping sales of my last book on its launch and increasing brand recognition across the UK. Over the last couple of years, I’ve seen my connections across the world grow through my profile on the network.

More than just being an advertising medium, however, Ecademy also promote collaboration between members. A number of new businesses have risen from the ranks of the membership, particularly from the BlackStar community, the highest level of membership on Ecademy. With the growth of small business in the UK, business networks are proving vital to producing new ideas and helping smaller companies compete with the big boys.

“People have a lot to learn about building a business on a collaborative approach and the internet can help with that”, said Thomas Power. “You need to monetize your knowledge and, to do that, you have to build a network on the internet.”

While the internet has worked to bring people together, in my experience, the real collaboration is happening offline. A survey of the Ecademy membership published before Easter found that members were getting business from online networking, but a much greater percentage of business came from offline meetings. Interestingly, this is despite a low participation in formal online networks by respondents, suggesting that the benefit comes from meeting in person with Ecademy connections.

Online networking is a powerful way to grow your network but meeting with people, getting to know them and building relationships moves that network into a much more valuable sphere. Ecademy works when you begin the relationship online but then build it in person.

Ecademy’s BlackStar members are a good example of this. While BlackStar members are among the most active bloggers on Ecademy, a number of them have dropped their online presence considerably but spend a lot of time meeting with each other and working on joint projects. Every day BlackStars will be meeting with each other, either building their levels of mutual trust and understanding or developing new business ideas.

While growing in popularity among small business, the next focus for Ecademy is to build its popularity among bigger business. A constant criticism of the site, as with other small business networks in the UK, has been that you are more likely to find life coaches, web designers and other micro businesses than corporate members. Last month’s survey shows that 96% of Ecademy’s membership has fewer than 50 employees, with the vast majority employing fewer than 5.

The situation may well change. Penny Power told me that, as a result of recent changes large organisations are showing a strong interest in membership. This includes opening Ecademy up and letting basic members experience much more of the site.

“Ecademy has gone though two major transformations over the ten years since we founded it”, Penny said. “The first was moving from pure Ecommerce members to general business, the second is happening now. We now know that employees of larger organisations want to utilise social networks to establish their expertise and grow their personal network.

“In the past they used sites such as LinkedIn for job hunting. Ecademy is different from LinkedIn in that it is about personal branding and relationships. This is becoming more popular with corporates and therefore Ecademy is seeing growth in this area as a result.”

While I am very much in favour of seeing more British corporates embracing networking; having heard the same criticisms of other business networks, members need to contain their excitement. Criticism of the absence of corporates is often formed from a desire to sell to them, and that may be a misguided approach.

Many members of business networks have much stronger links to decision makers within large business than the people from those big businesses who are most likely to join the network. If you have a strong business coach in your network, the connections they have, and the trust they have built with those connections, could be far greater than any corporate relationships you could build on your own.

If members start to swamp corporate joiners trying to sell to them, Ecademy’s efforts to grow their influence in this sector could be damaged. Similarly, if the larger businesses simply target the small and micro business market through sites such as Ecademy, the relationship cannot grow. Collaboration and mutual understanding need to be the cornerstone of corporate involvement, not sales.

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