Website revitalises business networking

Added: (Thu Jul 25 2002)

Pressbox (Press Release) - WEBSITE WILL REVITALISE BUSINESS NETWORKING

How www.pastworkmates.com can lead to future contacts.

An exciting re-launch in June 2002 is set to breathe new life into the world of good old-fashioned networking. The website www.pastworkmates.com matches the appeal of Friends Reunited but with a host of helpful business-related features, opening up a global resource of informal social and professional contacts.

The basic free service offers everyone who registers the opportunity to track down past workmates and find out what they have been doing since losing touch. You can post your own details, saying as much or as little as you like, and there is also the chance to take a candid look at some of the office antics that others have got up to at Christmas parties and in the stationery cupboard!!

But it is the site’s pay function, available for just £7.50 a year, which seems certain to become the big attraction. Besides providing email access to the past workmates you have tracked down, and enabling users to upload nostalgic photos and reminiscences, this offers you the chance to link up with business people around the world to ask or offer advice on any work-related issues.

Paying members automatically join the global workmate network: making new contacts with people asking questions of others in a sector or a country they are hoping to move into; sharing details of forthcoming corporate events; and contributing to discussions about what certain jobs, industries or companies are really like – with a clearly stated right-to-reply policy in effect.

www.pastworkmates.com is the brainchild of British husband-and-wife team Shelley and Stephen Gorys, who have already proven themselves as successful entrepreneurs in the Telecoms and IT Recruitment industry. “The idea derived from the way we built our own company – it all came from networking with past workmates and like-minded people,” says Shelley. Stephen continued, “When anyone logs on these days, they want more than just the opportunity to ‘make contact’”. “We believe pastworkmates.com combines the ability to make contact with previous workmates and a host of other services”.

Will it take off? A trial site has been active since November 2001, and for an unpromoted resource it has already been receiving significant hits and registrations. In June the website launched it’s revamped site, with a refreshingly user-friendly design by creative services specialists Four by Four, who are also contributing to a major marketing drive run by Axis Communications.

As Shelley Gorys says: “Anyone who has spent time working for an organisation of any size knows this is how business really works. Nostalgia is great, but as the saying goes, it isn’t what it used to be! What people want is an informal internet resource they can really benefit from using.”. “This site is not for just a certain type of professional. We want from the local doctor, farmer, policeman to politician and pop star to become a workmate”. Fun is something we all seek in these troubled times, perhaps www.pastworkmates.com will provide this failing skill?
ENDS


EDITOR’S NOTES

Shelley and Stephen Gorys are co-founders of Fleet, Hampshire-based consultancy Alexander Francis, a leading supplier of technical staff to the Telecommunications and IT industries. (www.alexanderfrancis.com)
Four by Four Creative Services and Axis Communications are London-based independent companies, which have websites at www.fourbyfour.com and www.axiscomms.com