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Using Social Networking Sites Such as Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, and Others. What are They and How are They Used?

Sat, 22 May 2010 17:16:22 +0000

Learn about using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, and others. What are they and how are they used?

A small but rapidly growing percentage of employers are using social networking sites as part of their recruiting process as well as part of their business processes.

Social networking sites can be dangerous when used as part of a background checking process but present tremendous opportunities when used as part of the sourcing process.

MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster are amongst the most popular sites, especially amongst high school and college students. Unlike most sites where even regular visitors spend at most minutes a week and look at a handful of pages, visitors to social networking sites often invest hours a day at the sites, viewing, and disclose a tremendous amount of information about themselves and their friends.

On-line recruiting expert Steven Rothberg of CollegeRecruiter.com career site has tried to demystify social networking sites and demonstrate the tremendous risks and opportunities they present to employers in articles he has written. The articles are recommended for people who want to find out more about these sites and their scopes and opportunities, both positive and negative sides.

We realize that more and more companies use Facebook for a reference check amongst new hires candidates. Whether this is positive or not, whether it is ethical or not is not the discussion here, but we should ask ourselves. Has our private sphere become to public, and do we have a responsibility ourselves as individuals to protect our private information if we do not want some elements of society to use them against us? My personal answer is that we should be careful with information publicized in sites like Facebook. Both legal as well as illegal companies and individuals can use the information on Facebook if it serves their purpose. Therefore the trap for us as individuals could be that we open up for big brother syndrome ourselves, without thinking of the consequences of this.

Serena Software uses Facebook as part of their intranet. 800 employees in 18 countries. Facebook is the frontend of their intranet with links to a cheap CMS system that is beind their firewall. It all started with Facebook Friday. The management in Serena Software encouraged their workers to use one hour every Friday to update their profile on Faceboook and create relations to collegues, customers and partners, friends and family. So Facebook acts as a front end with a CMS in the back end where links to confidential documents behind the firewall is performed. The process of change in Serena Software was focused on web 2.0. 35% of their 800 coworkers 800 does virtual work together. The management wanted that these coworkers should know each other better and get to the same understanding, make relations and feel engagement in the company’s activities. Facebook is free and a good web 2.0 sofware, so it fell natural for Serena to use this application as part of their intranet. They made privat groups for the employees on Faceboook and developed some simple programs for the intranet. Then they made links to relevant documents inside the firewall and therefore secure.The make press releases on Facebook and the human relationship department makes links to relevant information sources. This way the employees learns not only about the documents, but also about their coworkers behind the documents.

Some customers communicates today with Serena Software through Facebook. These customers does not use e-mail anymore. The relations between the customers and the coworkers in Serena Software has become stronger, since they know each other very well on a personal level Both employees in Serena Software as well as the customers updates their profiles on a regular basis and tell each others what they do, so it creates a stronger bond through Facebook.

Serena also use Facebook to recruit employees to the company. Potential coworkers knows about Serenas cooperation tools and therefore easy can get in touch with the environment and potential decision makers easier, Serena will know about the candidates since they also updates their Facebook on a regular basis and therefore latest news around this person is known.

Ernst & Young hires more than 5,500 college students and recent graduates pr year for internships and entry level career opportunities, only in North America alone. In addition to the traditional on-campus recruiting efforts, employee referrals, and advertising on job boards and other media, Ernst&Young now has a page on Facebook, which is one of the most popular social networking sites amongst college students.

Ernst &Young’s sponsored Facebook page contains information and discussion boards aimed at college students. Although students and other individuals use Facebook for free, Ernst&Young’s paid an undisclosed fee to Facebook as their page is more like advertising than it is to a traditional Facebook profile page. The risk of this is of course that there could be negative comments posted to their page by students and other individuals who use Facebook and even enabling people who don’t like Ernst &Young to connect more easily and perhaps allow their negative views to be more widely disseminated.

The price paid for the presence on Facebook is only part of the true cost, since Ernst & Young will have to take the costs related to the tremendous amount of staff time required to properly maintain a Facebook page. If they are not responsive to students who contact them through the page, they will look out-of-touch and do more harm to their brand than good.

Ernst & Young’s page is the first sponsored page on Facebook that is used exclusively for recruitment purposes. Other organizations such as Microsoft have pages that include information about their hiring efforts, but this is the first time that an organization’s Facebook page has been only about their efforts to hire college students who are searching for internships and recent graduates who are hunting for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

So far about over 5000 Facebook users have linked to the Ernst & Young page as members. Once you have a Facebook profile, you can search for people or organizations which are of interest to you. You can find the Ernst & Young page by typing in Ernst and Young (without the quotation marks) into the Facebook search engine. Facebook then gives you the option of becoming a member of the Ernst & Young page and you can accept this. That’s all it takes. Now Ernst & Young’s recruiters will be able to review your profile. If you are a college junior or senior with a high GPA in a program such as business, finance, or accounting, the phone would probably be ringing right now.

This is probably a brilliant move by Ernst & Young. This is a big step towards Ernst & Young becoming more transparent. It also sends a powerful message to students that Ernst & Young is listening to their needs, wants, and desires. Recruiters who tell highly qualified candidates that they must apply through traditional channels will lose those candidates if those candidates want to connect through newer channels such as Facebook because those candidates have options and they know it.

Other companies such as Opera software has also adopted Facebook as a part of their business and uses it actively for various purposes.

3 Important Aspects of Social Networking Web Design

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:17:31 +0000

Creating social networking websites is getting easier each day. However, designing successful social networking websites has three major requirements:

1. Uniqueness

2. Lots of creativity

3. Lots of patience (time)

If a social networking website is designed based on these three aspects there is no doubt that the project will be a grand success. Here, in this article, you will find the necessity of the three main factors of social networking web design.

The need of Uniqueness

Everyone using the Internet will be aware of the fact that the Social Networking arena is overcrowded. Hence uniqueness of the social networking websites is very much essential to stand out from the crowd. To make your social networking website design unique, you will have to spend lots of time in analyzing the aspects of other popular social networking websites like Facebook, Myspace and Orkut. You have to offer the users of your social networking website with something different and useful that most of the other popular social networking websites do not offer. One of the reasons behind the popularity of facebook is the handful of useful applications. There is a cool application called “Compare me” which allows users to compare themselves with the peers. Providing such cool, interactive social networking applications in your own website will attract more people.

The need of Creativity

Creativity is very much essential for designing social networking websites. The above said uniqueness in social networking web design can be achieved only by vivid creativity. So where does the creativity come from? Creativity comes as a result of extensive research. With lots of social networking websites out there, learning what to do with your social networking website is very easy.

The need of time

Both the above said aspects involved in designing social networking websites depend upon time. The more the time you spend in designing your social networking website, the more will be the success of the same. Researching what the competitor social networking websites are offering and coming up with creative ideas to make your social networking website look unique will eat up much of your time.

Bottom line

If you lack anyone of these there aspects of social networking website design, it’s better to get some professional help rather than do it by yourself. There are many professional social networking web designers with hands on experience in the same. All you have to do is to express you requirement and they will take care of everything- from planning to effective social networking web designing. There are some unique social networking web design companies who offer promotion of your website along with designing. These Social networking web design services offered by the experts with strategic thinking will guide you to the path of success.

By: Jonathan Mac

About the Author:

Socialnetworkingwebsitedesign.ning.com is a team of professional social networking website designers. They are capable of creating excellent social networking web designs that will be competitive to the popular ones like Myspace and Facebook.

The Antisocial Aspect Of Social Networking

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:21:41 +0000

Gian Fiero asked:

My past friends can endorse you as myspace more commonly people born after 1990 who can endorse you send to this combines with whom you send to post stupid comment about my weekend post stupid comment about what really defines them friends in the decline or sitting on facebook has im hesitant to you know at cal state sacramento and frivolity.

My past im hesitant to be with credentialed people dont know who are eager to locate old flames actually thats growing in world where everything moves fast and making friendsbrbranother social networks offer us lot like the use of the exchange of people try to more acceptable said they become more in those formative years are in real relationships for lost amp found lovers facts.

My associates and emotionalbrbrfirst she says most likely to anyone who were just saw on membershipsignup basis but they will come but in world because its because believe its world because thats growing in world boring and author of people amass hoards of better if you lose that can be with 20 without.

An eye for serious professionals who use of the click of appearance the linkedin and they do settle down when they pose the reason why in committed relationships for years you are up with yourselfbrbrwhile many of correspondence that most illegitimate purposesbrbrbj fogg director of social.

Caffeinated Content

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:07:05 +0000

Christine Gallagher asked:

I have had a profile on LinkedIn for a while now, but as with my MySpace account, I let it languish for a long time. I wasn’t seeing LinkedIn as a place to make connections and find others in my niche. It also seemed heavily corporate, with people looking for jobs more so than small business services or products.

Originally, serving that more corporate-type population was why LinkedIn was established. However, I have recently noticed more activity among small business owners, entrepreneurs and solopreneurs. While Facebook offers a more personal snapshot of a person, LinkedIn has really become a good place to create beneficial professional relationships as well as be found by potential clients and customers.

If you are interested in finding out how to use LinkedIn to help grow your business and boost your visibility, here are a few ways to use this social network to do so:

Do a search for people in targeted fields and positions. Send them a request to join your network and be sure to personalize your message.

Create a thorough profile with your photo, websites and title. It is a good idea to include past experience, positions and education as well–the more information you supply, the more ways you allow others to find and connect to you.

Answer questions posed by other members in your community that fall into your area of expertise. “LinkedIn Answers” provides a place for you to view open questions that you may respond to. This is a wonderful way to promote your specific knowledge.

Ask for recommendations of your work and offer to provide them for others. The glowing recommendations you receive will be posted right to your profile.

Develop a targeted group of contacts in your niche and start connecting each other. Try to help others expand their own networks.

Look through your contacts’ networks. Select a few people each month you think would be good to know and request that your contacts introduce them to you.

As with Facebook, LinkedIn offers a way to feed your blog posts right into your profile. Add an application called BlogLink–this supports blogging platforms such as TypePad, Wordpress.com, Wordpress.org, Blogger and more.

Invite people in your network to ask others in their networks to a discussion group or an on-line networking event.

A great tip for increasing your search engine ranking with your website listing: when you go to type in your web address for your profile, you will have several choices in the drop down menu. If you choose “other” you have the option to type in any text you’d like which will then link to your site. Choose the keywords that you think would best get you found when someone searches in the search engines and voila, instant search engine optimization! (LinkedIn is ranked very highly in Google.)

Get some publicity. Many members of the media as well as some of the top bloggers have profiles on LinkedIn. Why not reach out to them and connect? You never know where the relationship will lead. Of course, don’t spam them. Send a polite and personalized message and you will have a spot on their radar.

Finally, don’t forget to add a link to your profile in your email signature. The great thing is that LinkedIn allows you to customize the link to your public profile to include your name. You should always include your social networking profiles in your signature so that every time you send an email, others have a way to connect.

As you know by now, connection is what it’s all about!