Flaw in the 4N system?

I used to be an avid 4N'er, attending 3 or 4 meetings a week.  I eventually reached a point where I no longer had the time to attend meetings and reluctantly, I let my membership lapse but I still 'pop in' to the forum from time to time to see what everyone's up to!  I recommend 4N to anyone who's interested and whenever I need the services of another business I always go to other 4N members first. 

This morning I needed a phone number so I went straight to that person's profile to get it.  I then went back to the 'search members' section to look for members in a particular business category and was told I have 0 searches left!  I assume this is because I'm no longer a paid up member but surely 4N should be allowing contact details of paid up members to be viewed by all?

Using google:

site:4networking.biz Stephen Mount

(replace Stephen Mount with who you're looking for)

Why not unlimited searches?  Yell.com will let you do as many searches as you like!

^^ Spam I guess?

Good tip steve! Shall bare in mind...

The only folks that have pretty much unlimited searches are the 4N Team Members because we need to book 4sighters and sometimes members onto our meetings.  I think that limiting the searches to 3 per day per forum member is not unreasonable as it cuts down the temptation for those who wish to gather data to spam people.  Yell.com is more like a phone directory whereas 4N is different.

Ahhhh, I always wondered why that was, thanks for the post Bev. I now know the answer xx

Most bigger sites limit searches, some say this publicly others (like Yell) just quietly enforce it so that regular users won't notice. If you don't want use of Yell for a day, try doing lots of searches in quick-ish succession

Google use a mix for lots of their items and if you search too often or view too many maps (or whatever) you'll be told in no uncertain terms.

There's often also a "flood control" to stop too many searches being done in too short a time.

That said, there's almost always workarounds like the one Steve gave.

Trevor

Fair enough but I just prefer to give my business to other 4N members, keep it in the family, so to speak.

I have to ask the question;  how many of you would prefer searches to be limited (thus possibly preventing spam) or unlimited (potentially allowing contact from 40 odd thousand 4N'ers?)

The disadvantage with just 3 is that a search (in the past at least) requires an exact search term. Someone named Tom may be listed as Thomas - get it wrong and you lose a go. Spell the surname wrong you lose another. Now you're down to one...

At the risk of treading on the toes of the 4N team, I see a possible new "feature" for the site in this thread...

Could members have an "address book" attached you their account.... so when they come accross someone who they think they may need in the future or have gone through the MLKT process and want to keep details handy to pass onto other members then they could have a list of profiles / contacts that they could save in their account to easily pass on as and when they need to.

Feel free to shoot this one down, but it's just a thought that popped into my head??????