Profile Timeline On ApnaCircle Too!

[UPDATE 2/25/2012: One of our readers who happen to be a ApnaCircle team member (and part of the team that build up the Profile Timeline feature on the portal), answered a few of our questions/suggestions that we put in "Our Views' section at the end of this post. We are so thankful to Nicolas Karlen for taking out time to visit the post and reply to the questions and happy that our users are getting the benefits by way of these question/answers in the section termed as 'Our Views' in nearly all of our posts. Here are the comments for our users to read on.]
I used to be a software engineer some time back. In one of the first project meetings that I attended in my initial days we (I was a mere participant, not that experienced yet) discussed a whole lot issues on the product that my company was in to. Out of all the pressure that we faced, the only thing I could remember was 'Change is inevitable' or put in a more pun way 'The only thing that is constant is the Change'. Since then I moved on but the thought has stuck. Settled now as well. The only thing that has grown is the understanding of the concept. More deeper and more wider.
Innovation has always been the key in the competitive world. And we all agree on that. You have to show your users that you are different every now and then. But that doesn't mean you land up putting a wrong foot forward. The thought process should be good and there needs to be a lot of research that needs to go in to the build up to any change that you bring about, and that is irrespective to the kind of product you might be selling.
In our recent posts we have been mentioning of the changes that the different social/professional platforms have been up to on their product. So we gave you news about social platforms like Twitter bringing in new Brand Pages, then there was news about Facebook getting ready for Brand Timeline and Google plus wasn't left behind on their Android app updates. On professional portals we informed you about the smart news on ApnaCircle.com. Today we bring to you the recent changes (seems were done in the past day or two) that were done on ApnaCircle.com. The changes were accidently discovered by one of our team members while trying to fill in some details on Social Crunching Profile on ApnaCircle.com. We however didn't see any notification on the Dashboard for the site, which was a bit awkward, as people might still take their time to discover them. May be accidently like we did, or may be on their usual course to wondering around the portal.
We cam up with the below list of changes that we could see. If you know there are more since the past few days, let us know in the comments section or contact us through our contact form and we will be happy to update the post with all details for our users.


Forums or Groups
The first time when we created our profile on ApnaCircle.com; we started looking for a section called Groups. Amazed as we were, we didn't find it. One of our colleague then told us 'they call it Forums here'. For a moment we both argued on what is the best terminology on this and we finally gave in with a consensus as there are quite a few online sites which believe in the former while others in the latter.
This morning we just happen to click on the Forum/Community link on the portal and voila, there was the message. A nice image/layer with enough information on the point that me and my colleague were arguing a few days before. Here's the look for you:

ApnaCircle Groups

So, finally ApnaCircle has started using the Groups terminology.


Questions Keyword Suggestions: Populated by Default Based on Your Profile
The other day we were just wondering if there is a way you could create company pages/profiles on ApnaCircle.com. We couldn't find it; neither on the Sign-Up page nor on the Login page of the site. One of our senior member suggested we post a question on the portal so someone (hopefully) will reply.
We finally decided to put one today and discovered this thing that no one in the team noticed as yet. So this, it seems, is a new feature. Read on...
On the questions page on the site there is a small search form for both the open and closed (navigation through the tabs). This form as obvious will assist you in case you need to find some questions based on your interest or some specific keywords. So far so common! What we noticed different however was, the keyword text field was already populated for us with a sample keyword. And this was for both the forms. On a little introspection it was revealed that the keywords were changing anytime you came on to this page, even when you clicked on the tabs ('Search' and 'Closed Questions') and they were from what the application found in your own profile. Basically from you 'Introduction', 'Keywords', 'Interests' etc. sections that you filled up during your profile creation. Here is a image from our profile for you to view:

Questions Keyword Suggestions

Profile Timeline
We kept the big change for the end!
We heard about Facebook and Twitter timeline. This is completely new to us. But we loved it. From your complete profile page the moment you say 'Add' or 'Edit' on either your 'Professional experience' section or the 'Education' section; you are taken to a section which looks like a education/professional timeline view (at least the URL of the page calls it a timeline as we see a 'profileTimeline' in it). You could see a year wise horizontal graph of your career and can add or edit the details.
For the details part near the fold you see which company you worked for in which year (and similarly which school or university you went to), plus the advantage here is that you see who are the Alumni of that Company or University (that will be on the right section). Again, here are a few images from our profile:

ApnaCircle Profile Timeline

Our Views
Change is constant and constant is good!
Yet again, we like the changes that we saw on the portal. No major changes as far as Groups and Questions were concerned but yes the Timeline feature is a good start. Especially when we still haven't heard any of this kind on any other professional portal (are we wrong, feel free to let us know). Although there are a few things that we were surprised at, things that we think the portal still need to look at and revisit with their ideas on. Here is a list:
- Groups
When you see the submenu under the 'Engage' topic, it says 'Communities', the moment you click and land on the page, the page heading says 'Groups'. So everywhere its either 'Create Groups', 'Add Groups' or 'Groups by category'. This inconsistency in the terminology is a bit confusing at first. 
[Update 2/27/2012: As of today morning we see that the Communities sub-menu title has been changed to Groups. Seems ApnaCircle heard us :)]
- Questions Feature
The questions keyword suggestion feature needs to take a closer look at the keywords that it suggests. For example, when we included keywords like 'hehe' and 'the' in our interest and keywords section they just showed up in our questions keyword suggestion. Similarly a Sr. in our title also showed up. Doesn't make sense does it?

Keyword that didn't made sense

We however removed these useless words from our profile.


- Profile Timeline

• The look is definitely a good start like we said earlier, but we didn't understand the 'Translate into another language' on profile timeline. Our assumption is that ApnaCircle.com is for Indian users so not sure why an Indian user will be using these languages apart from English!
• In the members pics shown on the right section (Alumni of the your present/past employer or University), we see some members that do not have any profile pic attached to their profile (and the same on the 'Members you may know' section on right of Dashboard). We think it would be good idea not to show the profiles that do not have profile pic. Since the profiles shown are a selection from a large number, it doesn't go with the professional view.
• When we land on our timeline, the page automatically shows the layer to add an employer or education details. We thought this is a little irritating if the user already has these details filled in. Shouldn't it be shown only for incomplete profiles?

Member with no profile pic

These are just a few suggestions based on our thoughts here. If you don't agree or have some more stuff to add, we are just a message/comment away!!
Happy Crunching!