Experts. Freelancers. Consultants. Coaches. Call them what you will, these are people we need for various tasks – be it physical training or assistance in penetrating a new target market.
As with anything else, such experts can be found in the digital world as well. And the places to find them, besides their personal blogs?
- Elance – a website dedicated for hiring freelancers for various jobs
- LinkedIn – social media for the professional community
But what happens if what I want is shorter? Or requires visual connection to the expert?
Then you resort to Skyping the guy, or to not do it at all. Until you start finding solutions that use WebRTC.
Here are several such companies that came into my radar:
- Wello. If you’re into fitness, but want to use the comfort of your home with a professional trainer, Wello is where you should be headed. There's a longer interview with Wello's CTO about their use of WebRTC.
- LiveNinja, who provide a community of experts in a plethora of areas.
- popexpert, coming out of stealth and offering a… community of experts. There's an interview with popexpert's CTO that deals about their concept and technology.
There's some real value in these solutions. There’s a line between finding an expert and interacting with him; solving the experts a large range of technical issues:
- How to build presence on the Web
- Creating a professional profile that includes information, ratings, articles and comments
- Handling scheduling of consultation meetings
- Dealing with payment issues
- Taking care of the actual consultation sessions
Doing all that without WebRTC is somewhat limited, falling short at the point of actual contact.
Will these initiatives succeed? Some will and some won't. But they definitely hit a cord for those who need a solid platform for their consulting business.
Expect to see LinkedIn joining this market – either by offering ways to communicate with professionals through their site, conduct interviews for job candidates or even interacting with Influencers. LinkedIn's latest attempt was at the "follow" concept that Twitter brought to the Web.
WebRTC is all about bringing down barriers of entry and enabling new use cases – do you see an expert market flourishing without the use of WebRTC? I can't.
Edited by
Braden Becker
