Telonu: Think "Yelp" for the workplace
Yesterday, Telonu launched the beta for its free, workplace focused community content website. In Telonu's words, you can "Rave, Rant, Rate™ your workplace, the people there and lots of other stuff – anonymously or not." Essentially this is Yelp, but for schools and companies -- and just as importantly, the people or management at those schools and companies.
When you register with Telonu, you are asked for your full name and to pick a separate username. When you post a "Tell" or add a comment, you can choose to either use your name, your username or to post anonymously. Your name and username are never linked, so if you want to respond to something, but don't want to reveal your identity, you're covered.
On a school or company or individual's main page, you can see "Tells" -- which are reviews or general information about the subject in question, access the subject's "Watercooler" and "Stock pages and "Ask" or submit answers to a question.
Tells are just reviews or comments, generally from current or former employees. These focus on the various aspects of the workplace itself, like pay and benefits, work/home life balance and career growth potential. Right now, the bleak economic climate is leading to lots of layoffs, and many laid off employees are giving their two cents. This is good information for potential future employees, because you can tell a lot about how a company operates based on how they handle layoffs.
When you register with Telonu, you are asked for your full name and to pick a separate username. When you post a "Tell" or add a comment, you can choose to either use your name, your username or to post anonymously. Your name and username are never linked, so if you want to respond to something, but don't want to reveal your identity, you're covered.
On a school or company or individual's main page, you can see "Tells" -- which are reviews or general information about the subject in question, access the subject's "Watercooler" and "Stock pages and "Ask" or submit answers to a question.
Tells are just reviews or comments, generally from current or former employees. These focus on the various aspects of the workplace itself, like pay and benefits, work/home life balance and career growth potential. Right now, the bleak economic climate is leading to lots of layoffs, and many laid off employees are giving their two cents. This is good information for potential future employees, because you can tell a lot about how a company operates based on how they handle layoffs.
The Watercooler and Stock section are pretty interesting -- though they should obviously be taken with a grain of salt. Here you can read or discuss company gossip -- like are more layoffs coming, are things looking better -- and also discuss the stock price and whether or not this is a good time to buy or sell.
The Ask area lets potential employees ask questions and current or former employees can chip-in an answer. Because everything is anonymous, the value of the information is going to be subjective and should also be taken with some skepticism,
Really, the anonymity aspect, which is clearly crucial for something like Telonu to work, is also what hinders, to a certain degree, the effectiveness of the service. Anyone can post anything and that makes it hard to distinguish objective, helpful comments from the comments that have an agenda or former employees (or competitors, or griefers) who have a vendetta.
Still, even with these issues, Telonu has the potential to be a very, very cool service. Not only is the information helpful for potential employees, it is a great place for newly laid off workers to vent in an anonymous place.
