Last month, I was first to blog on the fun site, CubeDuel, which had you picking between pairs of current or former colleagues, selecting which one you would work with again, in a site that closely resembled the often copied but rarely matched, HotOrNot. Last week, a new site entered the foray, taking similar game mechanics, but aiming to apply them to how well you know people's skills, and seeing where you rank. The idea? Possibly using anonymous references to crowdsource the best people on the Web for corporate roles. mixtent asks simply "where do you stand in your industry?", hoping that your ego will push you to find out just how well you stack up against your peers, and possibly, what this means about you.

With LinkedIn setting the gold standard for online resume hoarding and business network connections, its unsurprising other career-oriented, recommendation flinging sites would start with one's LinkedIn network graph to have you start practicing natural selection in the workplace. But while CubeDuel seemed like a harmless game worth about 5 seconds per choice, mixtent hopes to be more.


Instead of the game starting and ending simply with picking one person versus another in a winner-takes-all battle for cubicle superiority, mixtent asks you to select the best individual dependent on a specific job skill or trait. The site mines your Linkedin profile for keywords, and quickly has you doing battle for the position of best writer, blogger, editor, director, manager or whatever else you want to be when you grow up. Post enough votes, or get voted on enough, and you can see how you rank relative to your peers. There are even global leaderboards and similar rankings just among your connections.



Like most services that dabble in collaborative community voting, the most visible people from external networks perform similarly well on mixtent. For example, the omnipresent Chris Brogan tops both social media and blogging, gaining approval rates (where he was picked over competition) of 96% and 100% respectively. As the site doesn't offer comments, and votes are initially anonymous, there's no insight into the voting, so one's familiar avatar could be all you need to spring to the top.


The site encourages you to participate by locking your own rankings' visibility until you make seven votes in the category to pick others. For example, of you have "Oracle DBA" as one of your traits, you need to pick between 7 pairs of people who is the best Oracle DBA. Then you see if you are at the top, around 60th percentile, or surprisingly lower.



Oddly, at least to me, you can even force open the ranking of another user simply by voting on them the same seven times. Navigate to another user's profile, click an unopened box, and seven votes later, you can see where they stand. I was able to unlock Google's Bob Meese for Business Development and TechCrunch's Mike Arrington on Editing. Theoretically, if one were to hold a grudge against someone, they could pick all the skills and drive them into the mud with a cute 0 for 7 score, but it appears the system anticipates truth-telling.


Initial coverage of mixtent compared the service to another buzz-worthy launch of the last year, at Honestly.com, which was anticipated to provide unvarnished reviews of peers anonymously. (Hence its initial name unvarnished) But mixtent doesn't focus on longform reviews, instead just the raw clicks of the people. Maybe if there is significant volume, you can start to get an idea of who separates themselves as the great from the common, but it's early days. To start adding tallies to the system, head to mixtent.com.

Even if you love your current job or your last job, there's a pretty good chance you had some favorite colleagues, and others who you probably wouldn't mind if they disappeared. You might even have quietly cheered when they were laid off. But most of the time, there's no way for people to know that. Mining your LinkedIn data only shows what companies you worked for and how long. A few more clicks can make it clear who was at the same companies at the same time, and little else. Cubeduel, for reasons unbeknownst to us so far, prompts you to pick who you would work again, one versus another, in a workplace Hot Or Not-like skirmish. Find yourself popular, and your record just might trump that of everyone else.

Cubeduel, which taps your LinkedIn database to find your previous colleagues, surfaces two from the same company and puts them up for you to choose - one or another, just like a duel, but one where a coveted seat in the cubicle farm is a reward. If you've lived a pedestrian career, like I have, you may find yourself faced with two differing degrees of mediocrity, or have to choose between two of your best friends, bringing one to the wonderful world of employment, while kicking the other one to the curb with little more than a cardboard sign and black magic marker.


The site, first mentioned on Twitter by @daveschappell, was started by Tony Wright, the former founder and CEO of YCombinator-backed RescueTime, and Adam Doppelt, cofounder of Urbanspoon. Wright called it a "fun side project" and said it was "growing quite a bit faster" than expected.


Anybody familiar with the tried and true model of Hot Or Not can figure out what to do immediately. Two faces come up, and you click who you would rather work with again. The person selected gets 1 vote in their favor, and the other does not. After you have ranked 20 different pairs, you unlock your own rank, assuming people are voting on you, and coworker scores. The game continues after that, begging you to complete 100 matchups, to unlock company specific scores. And who wouldn't want to know how popular one's colleagues ranked against their colleagues, or if you were doing well in the popularity game?


Like Honestly.com, one of the promises of Cubeduel is anonymity. Your colleagues won't know if you picked them or didn't pick them, but leaderboards of the results are public. You can already see how people rank at top companies like Microsoft and Apple, Yahoo! and Google. I'm somewhat pleased to see Phillip Bogle, formerly of Mergelab and Jobster atop the rankings for both Google and Microsoft, given my coverage of him in the past, but I obviously can't swear to his work habits. Maybe his time upon the pile is short lived.

Want to start ranking your former colleagues and push the best folks to the top, and the drones to the bottom? Start a Cubeduel, and go have some fun. It's hiding in public at http://cubeduel.com.