Telonu is a sad and misguided service that lets users post reviews of their companies and the people at them online. It is similar in theory to sites like JobVent (www.jobvent.com) or GlassDoor (www.glassdoor), and I stress \"in theory\". I\'ll review those two later on I hope, but based on a quick examination, Telonu appears to be the weakest of the companies entering this market. In general, I think the \"market\" for this type of service is dubious but let\'s start ... More >>

Telonu is a sad and misguided service that lets users post reviews of their companies and the people at them online. It is similar in theory to sites like JobVent (www.jobvent.com) or GlassDoor (www.glassdoor), and I stress \"in theory\". I\'ll review those two later on I hope, but based on a quick examination, Telonu appears to be the weakest of the companies entering this market. In general, I think the \"market\" for this type of service is dubious but let\'s start with Telonu and then get into the market a bit.<br /> <br /> Telonu\'s problems are numerous. Where shall we start?<br /> <br /> Let\'s start with the easy and obvious stuff. Telonu\'s website is a wreck. A site that asks you to rate your employer and/or people at your firm should make at least some effort to look professional. The colors, the design and the layout are more appropriate for a teen site rather than one that is for serious commentary about the merits (or lack thereof) of a particular employer. There\'s been some mention that the design of Telonu is like that of Yelp (www.yelp.com) but those comparisons are baseless. If you took Yelp\'s clean and logical design and put it into a blender, you\'d get Telonu. Even navigating throughout the site is painful with pop-ups and a general lack of intuitive UI. Telonu\'s design in case you had not gathered from my comments is terrible.<br /> <br /> Beyond the design, the bigger problem is that Telonu doesn\'t seem to know what it wants to be. The site invites you to \"Rave, Rant, Rate™ your Office, your School, the People there and everything else.\" What exactly does that mean? You guessed it - while trying to be everything to everyone, Telonu succeeds in being nothing to anyone. Pick something (one thing) and do it very well. <br /> <br /> Telonu\'s tagline leads me to believe they want to be some sort of Juicy Campus (www.juicycampus.com) for adults. Unlike JobVent and Glassdoor, Telonu lets you rate and review not just the employer but people at your firm. So you can rate your boss or make comments about your colleague who drinks too much at company happy hours and says inappropriate things or presumably, you could just spread rumors about people. It appears that Telonu doesn\'t have designs on becoming a real destination for job seekers but some sort of cheap knockoff where immature people can rant and rave. There are probably some legal problems that could emerge from this, but I hope that Telonu spent some money to ensure their legal terms of service are tightly formulated. Perhaps that is where the money for the website design went?<br /> <br /> So for one second, let\'s assume that Telonu wasn\'t an eyesore and was for serious commentary about employers. In this case, what are the problems with this model? There are many, unfortunately.<br /> <br /> Model Problem #1<br /> Anonymity reduces legitimacy of reviews - When you give people an open forum to post anonymously, you tend to attract the disgruntled and disenfranchised. Making things worse is the likelihood that these services will attract many more negative reviews than positive ones. There\'s an adage that says \"Make one customer happy and they\'ll tell 1 person. Make one customer unhappy and they\'ll tell twenty people.\" The same thing applies to employees. If you\'re happy in your job, your not looking for places to write about how happy you are. Ultimately, the site will attract more negative than positive reviews, and the reality is that a site with numerous negative reviews is not very interesting to those looking for insights about an employer. <br /> <br /> Model Problem #2<br /> There is no \'stickiness\' at such sites - When you are unhappy in your job or looking for a job, you may come to the site to read or write reviews, but once you are out of that predicament, why would you come back? What kind of relationships can these sites really build with users? It seems like any relationship would be pretty thin as there is nothing that would bring the same users back. <br /> <br /> Model Problem #3<br /> Not another advertising revenue model - It\'s pretty unclear how these types of sites will make money. If the goal is lots of eyeballs clicking on ads, that is a risky way to go as many others have proven. Good luck with that. Perhaps they hope to turn into job board/job search sites but I\'m not sure what they offer is differentiated from the other players out there already in a crowded job market. <br /> <br /> Model Problem #4<br /> Right now, employers have the leverage. The market is terrible and most people are happy to keep their job. Even people looking for jobs will likely ignore negative feedback if it\'s the difference between paycheck and no paycheck. Yes, it\'s the old \"beggars can\'t be choosers\" mantra.<br /> <br /> I do have some ideas on how these sites might make money, but I\'ll save those ideas for my reviews of GlassDoor or JobVent when I get to those. Upon a cursory look, those seem to be at least a bit more professional and legitimate than Telonu.<br /> <br /> By mid-2010 at the latest, I expect Telonu will find itself out of work. Don\'t say I didn\'t Telyouso. << Less