I told you about the website Recommended  a short time ago. In this time of shopping and searching for great service, I thought it was to talk about it again. This free site is a cross between LinkedIn and Facebook for businesses and freelancers. Like other sites, Recommended lets people set up a page with information about their business or services and then get recommended by their customers. But it goes a little deeper than that, they’re working to fill a gap between social media and business in a way that no one else is.

Full disclosure, I first learned about Recommended, and its founder Aaron Lee, when I did a little freelance user experience testing for them. I was very impressed with what I learned about the site during the testing, so much so that I joined the site and have been sharing it with friends and business contacts. Let me tell you why.

Websites like LinkedIn and Facebook are great and have their place in marketing, public relations, recruiting and brand awareness. LinkedIn is a great place to find contacts, that is what it was made to do, but it doesn’t do much to really give small business and freelancers to show off their skills. Facebook is a great way to market, but it doesn’t necessarily give people a full picture of the services someone offers, and how their clients feel about them. It’s these things that Recommended does best.

Recommended allows users to market and make connections, but it’s more about what the business does. It also does recommendations better than I’ve seen anywhere else. As a consumer looking for a business or service, you get a user friendly website that allows you to dive past the hype and glitter of marketing and look more closely at what the business or freelancer does. You get the opportunity to read recommendations and leave them in a way that feels more honest and real than other sites. As a freelancer or business owner you get a site that looks clean and professional and lets you get your message out without the clutter and advertising that are all over other sites.

Since I first mentioned the site, they’ve added new functionality, and have even more in the works. One of the new additions to the site is “Work” – a portfolio like  option that allows the business or freelancer to showcase some of their best work. For example, a software developer could provide information for the kind of work they specialize in and pictures of what they’ve done. They haven’t finished perfecting the Work pages yes, they’ll be expanding it to accept different file types to allow someone (like a freelance writer) to add different kinds of examples. You can check out examples of Work at work

These are still early days for Recommended. They’re adding new functionality all the time. As I’ve told everyone I’ve discussed Recommended with, I think that this has the potential to be huge. It could be a real game changer for small businesses and freelancers by giving them more freedom and options than are currently available.

I recommend Recommended wholeheartedly. I encourage you to get in on the ground floor and be part of this effort before it explodes. Take a look around, I think you’ll be impressed.