• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, January 22, 2015

Hold the phone! I mean the mouse! Or whatever we "hold" now that no one uses the phone any longer. There's a new...wait for it...social network for marketers launching. Introducing Shocase. Basically it's a portfolio site for agencies and freelancers to show off their work. Yeah, that's never been done before.

Oh but wait! It's a social network. There's interactivity. Interactivity, I tell you! Yes, you can get industry news, interact with fellow industry mates and...grow your network! As described to me, it's "LinkedIn + Pinterest + Facebook + YouTube rolled into one."

Yeah, this is awesome. A specialized social network for marketers. Remember Ning? That company allowed any industry or any person create their own specialized social network. It didn't go over too well. 

Of his baby, Shocase Founder and CEO Ron Young said: "We think the next giant shift in media is happening right now. In the same way that TV was different from print, social media is just as different from TV, and we are seeing the first emergence of vertical social networks."

Clearly, Young has never heard of Ning -- which, while not all that successful or as robust or as focused (yes, I'm un-making my point), was doing the vertical industry social networking thing ten years ago. Of course, Lee Clow, Chuck McBride and Vince Engel are on the thing so maybe it has a chance.

Of Shocase's goal of connecting the marketing community, Young added: "It is harder than ever to find the right marketing or PR person, so the public needs a new platform to find who has the hippest shopper marketing in the packaged goods market place or who understands PR in a particular vertical. Shocase is a real-time catalog of the marketing or PR work that people have done."

Or people could just consult the AgencySpy comment section for the unfettered truth .