Which is where Conspire comes in. Conspire was originally launched as a tool for the tech startup community to use to build networks. It is now opening up its network to all professionals. Instead of allowing and enabling undifferentiated invitations from everyone however, Conspire applies a smart approach towards professional networks. It analyzes a users' network and the strength of the various connections to identify who provides the best path to connect with others.
The way Conspire achieves this is by analyzing the email headers of everyone in a users' email log to map out the relationships and connections. Conspire analyzes a user’s To, From, Cc, Bcc and Date email headers—equivalent to the outside of the envelope—to determine how well a user knows each of their contacts and how well those contacts, in turn, know their own contacts. It takes the LinkedIn "how are you connected to this person?" metaphor, and filters it through a qualitative lens to give a "what is the strongest path to this connection?" answer.
Any individual who uses an email provider that supports the IMAP protocol can sign up to Conspire - and join the current 36 million-or so users on the system. The addition of general IMAP accounts will help Conspire grow. Currently it only supports Gmail and Google Apps yet, despite this, is still adding one million users per week.
On top of the raw data, Conspire allows users to overlay an editable profile on top of connections - every user will now have the ability to edit the profiles of the people in their network, including updating work history, links to social profiles, and photos.
Conspire is a very cool tool, and one which is likely applicable to other professional social networks. Clearly Conspire is in a race to build momentum and thereafter find someone to buy them - it's a high-risk, but potentially highly-rewarding, strategy.