A new social community that is focussed on the single topic; superyachts, has been created by Douglas McFarlane, CEO of Lomond Yachts.
SuperYachters is aimed at broker, crew, service provider or a prospective or current owner, and journalists like us.
The idea is to promote a way for those in the industry to connect with others to ask a question, share a product, find out about a technical area, or simply to look at some fantastic images.
Douglas McFarlane has been obsessed with social networking since 2004 when Mark Zuckerberg brought his college pet project to life.
“Love it or loath it, hundreds of millions of people use the wide range of ways now available to communicate and interact online. In many cases old methods of communicating are dying off. Ask your children how they get in touch with friends and email, text and the plain old telephone will be low on the list.
“In business it’s been a slower change. LinkedIn has been more of a front runner than other services where business people feel more comfortable with connecting with professionals. The etiquette is more fitting for those who expect a standard of interaction and levels of maturity rarely found on other social networks. Professionals now feel more at ease with publishing an article, whereas they wouldn’t necessarily want to be called a blogger. Similarly with sharing images and other links which may be seen as time wasting if it was on Facebook or Twitter.
“In the world of superyachts, the industry is, in general, a friendly people oriented community. At boat shows you’ll find plenty of people wanting to talk and share business cards or product information. As a broker, I find meeting and working with other brokers an essential and enjoyable part of the business. So in order to connect more with those people I normally meet at Antibes, London or Monaco Yacht Shows, I created a community to help to do that all year round. SuperYachters was born.”
Douglas then went on to explain what SuperYachters unique selling points and how easy it is to use. He explained, “The difference with SuperYachters, as a social space, is that it has a community focussed on a single topic. Whether it’s a journalist, broker, crew, service provider or a prospective or current owner, there’s now a way to connect with others to ask a question, share a product, find out about a technical area, or simply to look at some fantastic images. There’s a close integration with LinkedIn, and new users can sign-in with their current LinkedIn profile, use a browser widget to click on an article they’ve enjoyed reading, and publish it to their LinkedIn profile, all their LinkedIn groups, Facebook and Twitter accounts, all with a couple of clicks. Sharing and connecting has never been this easy.
“It’s off to a great start and the first group of early adopters, including journalists, brokers and public relations people have jumped on board. We’re looking forward to welcoming more over the coming weeks as people get to know more about it and help to shape its evolution.”