20 Things you Should Know About KILTR
So - if you've not heard of KILTR you probably don't live or work in Scotland, or have any connection with the country whatsoever, for this is a social networking group for those north of the UK border or connected to it. With members spanning the world around, the community is there to connect with one another, offering contacts for businesses, family members and friends alike. Here's some things you should know about the site to begin with.
1) KILTR is the new professional social network for everyone with an interest in Scotland.
2) While Scotland has a population of 5.2 million, there are an estimated 40 million worldwide who claim Scottish heritage and an estimated 100 million people with a connection to or interest in Scotland.
3) KILTR aims to harness the potential of Scotland’s global contacts book by helping to create valuable new business relationships and opportunities for collaboration, both domestically and overseas.
4) KILTR was highlighted by BBC tech correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones (in his 2011 radio series “The Secret History of Social Networking”) as a niche network with the potential to disrupt the social media landscape.
5) KILTR was founded by Brian Hughes and Stewart Fraser in October 2009 and launched to public beta in August 2010.
6) KILTR is a venture capital and angel investor funded start-up, with Par Equity, Barwell and the Scottish Investment Bank providing combined backing of almost £1 million to date.
7) KILTR has attracted more than 20,000 members to its community since publicly launching its beta test version.
8) To date, 67% of KILTR’s members are business owners or senior executives.
9) To date, 18% of KILTR’s members based outside of the UK.
10) KILTR believes the niche approach to online networking provides users with a sense of shared values and common ground from day one and more closely reflects the way relationships are formed in the real world.
11) KILTR’s niche approach also means that user-generated content is far more likely to be focused and relevant to its membership, making time spent on KILTR more productive than time spent on other platforms.
12) KILTR’s community can share news, views and opportunities quickly and easily via posts (and replies to posts) enhanced by rich media from YouTube, Vimeo, LiveStream, SoundCloud or MixCloud.
13) There are already hundreds of specialist groups on KILTR reflecting different industries (e.g. Digital Media Scotland) and interests (e.g Eco-Scot).
14) Posts on KILTR can be shared easily via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
15) The Scottish Government recently created its own profile page on KILTR.
16) The launch of KILTR version 1.0 is scheduled for March 2012.
17) New functionality for version 1.0 will include Business pages and Jobs functionality.
18) KILTR is free to join and free to use.
19) KILTR makes it easy to import your existing contacts lists from LinkedIn and from email applications including Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook and Windows Live.
20) KILTR is financed, based and built entirely in Scotland. The underpinning technology has been developed from scratch, giving KILTR the potential to license the platform to others in the future.