Website charges to arrange contact with major honchos

The problem with professional networking websites, some users say, is that the people you truly want to connect with never respond. And you get more than enough contact with people you'd rather not hear from at all.

Now a local Internet consultant and an MBA candidate at MIT's Sloan School of Management have come up with a formula for a site they believe will maximize the likelihood subscribers will hear back from the professionals they want to contact:

Vshake.com lets members charge each other per contact.

Sagi Richberg, an Internet security and storage consultant from Ashland, and Sergey Greibov, a computer engineer from Russia and Sloan School fellow, believe that users who are willing to pay for contact information are more likely to get results. Richberg came up with the idea after joining several online sites and finding that many participants didn't respond to queries.

``You might never get a reply or there is a middleman between you and the person you'd like to reach or your queries are not answered in a timely fashion," said Richberg. ``The reason? People are reluctant to sacrifice their private information."

Vshake -- short for ``virtual handshake" -- let's each member determine how much to charge, and the system puts members into contact with one another without revealing the details of their contact information.

Richberg and Greibov hope the site, which they launched this summer with more than $300,000 of their own money, will attract such professionals as high-level executives in the entertainment industry who are too busy to read the scripts that land on their desks, but might be willing to take a chance for a fee.

``One of the things the system does is act as a proxy," said Richberg. ``So, let's say you are Bill Gates and you charge $10,000 for e-mail access. You would send the e-mail and Vshake would relay it via our system, but the person who purchases it will never actually see the e-mail address, or the telephone number. To get to Gates again, you would have to pay money again."

Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist at the Pew Project on the Internet and American Life, says whether the site takes off will depend on whether enough people buy into the idea of charging for professional capital.

``Certainly people with a lot of expertise or a lot of power within a network might have an incentive to join," she said. ``They would basically be putting value on social and cultural capital. But it also could be looked at as a way of keeping people with low incomes out of these opportunities."

Neil Closner , president of Bright Spark Inc ., a Toronto wireless software firm, said a business owner paid $10 to talk to him via Vshake.

``There is something to be said about paying to weed out frivolous contacts," said Closner, 32. ``If I had just put my name up and this gentleman contacted me out of the blue, the e-mail might have gotten lost. But I immediately recognized that this guy had paid to get my attention, and I felt compelled to talk to him."

The concept appealed to Barbara Finer , founder of Quivivity Marketing Partners in Marlborough, who heard about the site through a friend and listed her contact information on the site.

``I think Vshake might separate the wheat from the chaff," said Finer. ``So, I put up a brief profile as well as the amount I charge for my contact information. Then, I put money in an account so that if I choose to pay someone for their contact information, I can do it right away."

Finer says she wouldn't charge more than $10 for her information.

Vshake also helps users visualize relationships. The site contains maps of social links that are created when a user opens an account, free of charge, and gives his name, country, and e-mail. Links are formed each time he invites others to join. Characters connected by a red link are family members, a green link means a friend, and a blue link, a colleague. Links may be thin or thick. The thicker the link, the tighter the connection between two or more people.

``After that, you can decide who will contact you," said Richberg. ``You can say only verified users, which means they have been verified by our Vshake security system, or you can say that you will respond only to those people from your contact list."

Individuals with a ``V" stamped on them are individuals whose personal contact information has been verified by Vshake. The company charges $13 for verification. And it makes money by collecting 10 percent of the fee a member charges for a contact.

Diane E. Lewis can be reached at dlewis@globe.com.