Looking for a new way to find freelancing work, network, and help out your fellow freelancer? If you’re a Twitter user, Blellow may be right up your alley. Blellow is a social networking community for freelancers and creative professionals who answer the question “What are you working on?”
It works much like Twitter. You follow and are followed by other Blellow users, and you enter status updates (in 300 characters or less). The fundamental difference is that it’s work-based: you describe what you’re working on, a problem you are having, or help you need on a particular project or problem. Then, other Blellow members will reply to your thread with suggestions, solutions, or comments.
Here is more about how Blellow works.
Kudos
Blellow has a driving purpose of sharing knowledge and collaborating with others. Users who regularly help others solve problems and find solutions can receive “kudos” from the original poster of an issue or problem. You can give out as many kudos as you like for each thread. The idea is to reward the person who helped you the most.
Groups
Groups allow topics to be organized and sorted, i.e. Photoshop, Web Designers, Entrepreneurs, etc. By joining a group you can immediately interact with other members without having to follow anyone.
Projects
Projects allow you to post a request for assistance on one project. Projects can be paid or pro bono. Pro bono projects are unpaid projects meant to add to your portfolio, but may lead to further paid work depending on the project and popularity.
Jobs
The Jobs section is a job board that allows businesses and individuals to post jobs for full-time, part-time, and contract positions in the categories of design, development, writing and other.
Meetups
Blellow provides an opportunity for live gatherings for networking, socializing, or just getting to know the people you interact with on Blellow.
Overall, it’s an interesting new service that can be a potential powerhouse for freelancers once it takes off, especially for those accustomed to Twitter. The goal of information sharing among colleagues is great on it’s own, but the added features of a job board and project help may also make Blellow a great new way to find freelance work.
Have you used Blellow? What do you think about it?
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Thanks for the nice writeup, Alyssa! We are doing everything we can to help freelancers and professionals solve problems and do their job just a little better. Everyone at Blellow is currently freelancing or has in the past, so we are very familiar with the roadblocks and situations that arise in our field. Over time we hope Blellow can become the best go-to source for troubleshooting and connecting with your peers.
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:48 am
Yeah! I love it! Really awesome and usefull!
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:23 am
I like the concept, but it’s no different to what forums have been doing for years, except it limits people to writing down their problems/jobs within 300 characters. All it’ll end up with is people linking to external sites where they can explain their problem in more detail.
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:13 am
I like the idea and have heard good things from people who use it… but seriously, what kind of a name is Blellow? If a person hears it for the first time, the chances of them remembering it are almost zero. Don’t expect Oprah to do a show on it if she has trouble pronouncing it…
April 23rd, 2009 at 10:29 am
all the other web2.0 names are taken :(
April 23rd, 2009 at 11:49 am
Hi , I’m Angela, I’m from Blellow
Have You heard about Blellow?
Are you blellowing? No?
If you have a problem you can just Blellow someone for help, and they Blellow you back with solutions.
Other Blellowers are already doing it, and they love it, want to join us?
You can also get your own custom BlellowButton at BlellowButons.com
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I don’t want to be mean, but IF you want to be taken seriously,and you are really “doing everything we can to help freelancers and professionals solve problems and do their job just a little better.” you should start helping them from the start, and at least come up with a name that’s going to help them rememeber you, and help them communicate it to their peers, the world. Other wise the name is going to killl all your good ideas.
If you want to consult about a proper name, hit me up, i can help you, before it’s too late.
April 23rd, 2009 at 3:40 pm
blellow.com doesn’t work, blellow guys you need to take care when someone is writing about you, specially the traffic hit on your site will be high. If website is down at this point it disappoints the user and you loose the business.
April 23rd, 2009 at 4:46 pm
The name sounds like someone who twitters being sick on the pavement.
“@Username – I blellowed all over the place outside that last pub. Send me a barf later.”
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:20 pm
I could not register on Blellow :(
it says ‘Twitter username has been already taken’ for all try even for random characters.
I think it wasn’t my fault… :o
April 23rd, 2009 at 8:17 pm
I am also getting the ‘Twitter username has already been taken’ error. Won’t let me in!!!
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Ditto on the twitter username, so I tried logging in with my twitter info on blellow and I got user doesn’t exist. Either I do or I don’t.
Scrap the site and create a new one from scratch with a real name
April 23rd, 2009 at 10:18 pm
This is a great idea, I really believe Freelancers can team together and deliver affordable solutions and big business ideas to the smaller companies. Sort of like the open source projects taking on the commercial big business domination of the industry .
April 23rd, 2009 at 10:34 pm
it seems like a great site in concept, but the community still needs to grow. slightly hard to navigate, but i believe they are working the tweaks out.
April 23rd, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Thanks so much, Alyssa, for your comprehensive writeup about Blellow. Very much appreciate it.
And of course as luck would have it… our sincere apologies to all who experienced a login error. It’s working again. Did I mention we are still in beta? :P Thank you very much for checking Blellow out!
April 24th, 2009 at 12:35 am
What a great site this has turned out to be. While they had a few issues it appears these are corrected , what a resource for freelancers.
Bravo !
George Susini
May 15th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Mandi,
Keep up the good work, We understand you are in Beta, I think this will be a valuable resource for freelancers
George Susini
May 17th, 2009 at 12:02 pm