Social networking site, which caters to the enterprise, swims downstream with a site for shops with 10 employees or less.Moli.com, a social network geared toward helping its members sell goods while managing their professional and personal lives from one account, is set to launch a new site to let small business owners get insight from their peers and field experts.
The Small Business Center, which will be formally unveiled May 20, is free and accessible through the Moli.com home page, which launched late last year.
West Palm Beach, Fla.-based Moli, which makes money from ads through the Google DoubleClick DART ad-serving system, had 60,000 users in December but now boasts more than 242,000.
According to Forrester Research, there may be no shortage of dollars spent on enterprise social networking tools. The research firm said enterprise 2.0 tools will comprise $4.6 billion by 2013, with social networking leading the way.
With the Small Business Center, Moli is hunting for the 22 million U.S. SMBs and 40 million SMBs abroad. Moli caters to SMBs of 10 employees of fewer, specifically creative types, including freelancer artists and designers, sound engineers or software programmers.
To help polish the Center, Moli has partnered with E-Myth Worldwide, a Santa Rosa, Calif., provider of entrepreneurial education tools, Matt Murphy, vice president of global marketing for Moli, told eWEEK.
The site is packed with content, including news articles, podcasts and videos, as well as e-learning courses, how-to guides and Web sites relevant to their expertise.
The site allows members to network, communicate with owners in similar industries, and share expert advice, resources and tools on how to succeed. The Center also includes interactive forums, where members can engage with entrepreneurs and business experts to form partnerships.
Or, if a guy just started his own graphic design firm, he could surf the Moli Small Business Center to see tips of the trade from those that have gone before him. It presents an interesting competitive scenario, one where up-and-comers can piggyback on the processes of those they are looking to compete with.
Moli is also working with AOL's Yedda, a question and answer tool, where SMBs can ask questions of 10 million people in the community and get answers back in real time.
SMBs can also build a storefront to start selling their wares in less than 30 minutes using Moli's e-commerce tools. This costs $3.99 per month and Moli does not take a cut of the transactions.
Longer term, Moli plans to launch mobile applications to improve the experience for users of iPhones and even Google Android-based handsets, whenever they appear.
Moreover, Moli will support data portability efforts, said Judy Balint, MOLI president and COO. The company Supports Google's OpenSocial APIs, but has not opened its own APIs yet.
Clint Boulton here. Would you use Moli to manage your personal life and launch your startup?
