Connecting designers and developers

For independent application designers and developers, collaboration is often the key to getting work done quickly and well. Finding people to collaborate with, however, can be a challenge. As an alternative to navigating through the masses listed on generalized networks like LinkedIn, a new site from the founders of Rumplo–the T-shirt portal we featured earlier this year–aims to facilitate the process with a professional networking site specific to application development. New York-based CollabFinder bills itself as a place for designers and developers to meet in order to find collaborators for personal projects. Designers and developers around the globe can post profiles of themselves, including their skills, projects they’ve worked on and what type of collaboration they seek at the moment. A built-in ranking system uses a set of web tools to judge how popular and meaningful each individual’s projects are and to create a star-based rank for that person based on the popularity of those projects. Members of CollabFinder can exchange messages with each other on the site; they can also follow each other’s profiles for updates in status. Ad-supported CollabFinder was launched earlier this month. With collaboration at the heart of so much work today, it’s easy to imagine something like CollabFinder helping match up professionals in a wide variety of areas, beyond application development. The near ubiquity (and overwhelming size) of so many of the generalized networking sites, meanwhile, could mean it’s time for the industry-specific contenders to come in. One to emulate in the niche of your choice! Spotted by: swissmiss