The exellence of being LINKEDIN side a business network part 1

Linkedin logo

Linkedin was founded in 2002 but launched in May 2003 by an ex executive of Paypal Reid Hoffman. Linkedin is a social network with a more business purpose. It links professionals around the globe, today (January 2009) it has more than 30 million online profiles and it is the twelfth most visited social network site. It differs from Myspace and Facebook by its population and the purpose of linking network.

The population on Linkedin is relatively older than Facebook or Myspace, its median age is around 35 years. Mainly to its lack of online gaming and mostly business applications. The purpose of Linkedin is not only business but also knowledge sharing, such as engineers that merge together to plan a scientific project, networking with other engineers around the globe.

The profile is resume minded, you have to add your education, experience your skills and interests, your achievements. Since October 2008 you have multitude of applications added to your profile.

This is the main bar menu

Left the side bar menu

The profile itself where you have 3 options edit and view profile and edit profile settings.

Right of the profile, you have a smale action bar with the following tools:

Send a message,

add (person’s name) to your network,

forward this profile to a connection.

The icons are for printing the profile page, to download a pdf format of the profile, download a business card of the profile and to bookmark the profile for later search.

right below the profile you can find some newsfeeds and information about the profile, such as the number of connections, the persons that have viewed the profile recently, the groups affiliated to, recommendations (from ex-managers or ex-colleagues endorsements).

Let us get a quick start on how to create a profile on Linkedin:

Facebook, the new social revolution 2

You can use Facebook for different purposes, besides finding your old classmates you can use Facebook for business purposes as well.  Different online job sites are all ready connected to Facebook to post and redirect its users to find jobs. Careerbuilders like as many others use facebook as a job interface.

Indeed those career sites know the power of social networking and its exponential growth of population around the globe.  more than 150 million people connected to Facebook are today and future talent potential.  Myself working for one of the biggest industrial companies in Italy as a talent scouter use Facebook to find talents.

How to find a job:

You can attach one or more jobsites as an application to your profile. You have to type the keyword jobs than click on application on the results menu.

A menu appears with a wide range (more than 500) of job applications:

The list is ranked based on the activity and the number of clicks on the feature.

This list provides you with a brief description of the application and its purpose.

How to apply online:

First choose the site that matches your needs and click to view application.

n.b. Not all applications can be added to your profile.

When you click on view you have an overview of latest feeds of the jobsite.

You can also become a fan of the application and therefore contribute to its popularity.

The page for application is purely branding the trademark.

These applications are developed by the careersites itself. These companies pay facebook for the visibility. Facebook developers provide them with page building tools in order to create a jobsearching tool for every profile. Depending on the application you can only search for a job if you add as an application to your profile.

The application page looks exactly as a group page or a fan page. Users can join the application such as fans or groups. You can even rate the application.  Add discussions, and comment the application on “Reviews” or on the “Wall” .

The jobprovider is presented with a glossary for the page.

Once you have add the application to your profile, you will find an icon of the application  under your page next to applications, or when you click on applications, scroll up on the menu.

on this image you can see two job on this image you can see two job on this image you can see two job on this image you can see two job

application, one by careerbuilders and the other by jobs/indeed.

Every application is used in a different way due to the fact that it has been developed independently  by the jobsite itself.

Also beneath on the menu bar you can find the icon of the job application.

Once you add the application you can start search jobs !!

How can I do Business with Facebook?

Before I talk about business, let me give you a tip first. Web 2.0 is about sharing, collaborate and interact with everyone into ecosystems with common goals and opportunity. Folksonomy are providing rich contents for everyone to share this knowledge, while contributing to development of science, business, entertainment and art. This means that whatever you want develop, you will have to be involve inside one or more groups with common interest. If you are a musician than you will be tend to joint a group of musicians that share the same passion you have for a particular instrument or music style, if you are a chemical engineer than you will rather go to a group that gather other chemical engineers like you, all with the purpose of sharing knowledge, perhaps ideas and new developments.

Facebook is not yet prepared to a more professional use of the site because it does not contain a search option for professional use. The only way you can gather business networks is to create groups which people can identify, you can either create a group where people will not be joining the group without the administration permission or a  free joining group.

Besides groups you can add a fan page of your brand, such as coca cola who add a fanspace on Facebook, it has more than 2.5 millions of fans !!!

this will boost the trademark but also its employer branding noticing its creative, young and innovative approach.

Facebook, the new social revolution 1

Facebook

The real reason for the success of Facebook is not so much the interactivity between networkers but the fact that you could find a friend that you haven’t seen for a long time !!

Other tools on this site permits its users to discover other friendships an communities. In fact the facebook culture is in fact a social revolution in many cultures where debates and discussions are taking place about the utility of the website. Some argue that the loneliness of the millennium man forces him to find shelter into virtual worlds. Others tend to emphasize the social revolution add by an awareness of self being and involvement in the creation of a mass connection. nevertheless the fact that you are in the form of a profile or avatar.

Facebook is at this moment the most visited social network site and it is the fifth most clicked website in the World Wide Web according to the Alexa’s ranking .

What is Facebook?

Facebook was launched in February 2004 by the young student Mark Zuckerberg. As the true legend goes Facebook was made by Mark while attending the Harvard University.  Its co-founder is Dustin Moskovitz that had planned to resign in October 2008 to found a new site with a business approach. The website was initially for Harvard Students, but soon other students from other universities argued an for an expansion. Soon “thefacebook.com” ( its original domain name) became a golden business. In 2005 “thefacebook” became “Facebook”. The population on Facebook grows exponentially, by today January 2009 it has more than 150 million profiles. Facebook has received many offers by media and internet giants such as AOL and Yahoo . CEO and founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg has always stand his point to maintain his website. nevertheless Microsoft, has acquired a part of Facebook, i.e. purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $246 million, giving Facebook a total implied value of around $15 billion. What is Facebook after all: Facebook is a social network of people aged from 13 and older that enables them to create a profile with information regarding identity, such as name, birthday and place, political preferences, religion, location, etc. to sharing pictures and video’s using API’s ( programs that enables the intermingle of websites) or uploaded data from their desktop such as pictures or video’s.  By changing your “status” on your profile you can inform all the persons in contact with you to share your state of mind or your duty of the day. Sharing information such as events, groups to be affiliated or online communities hubs. Other features that keeps any profile alive and busy are online games and funny surveys. Facebook enables people to track others by a search menu. Due to privacy reasons people can only be tracked by name or email, school and country which can be very vague.

The home page provides the user with newsfeed of his contacts, with updates of any change in your contacts profiles, comments and status.

Other newsfeeds provides you information about messages, invitations to events, friendships and gaming tools called requests. applications permits you to navigate to groups, communities, marketplaces within your network (linked to a specific location that can be changed every 2 months). You can even invite your friends that are not yet on facebook, consult birthdays and have an overview of people connected with one or more of your contacts with the application called “people you may know“.

The application board:

Within the application you can only see the pictures of your contacts, thus not the contact of your contact to the second degree. you can only see an application of a second degree contact only if your direct contact comments on their picture or in a wall to wall conversation.

Contacts can be removed because you as a user have the freedom of choice whether you wish to be connected or not.

The invitation module does not recognize a person or an email that is registered to Facebook, this is in fact one of the many controversial issues of the fakes within Facebook, that allows double profiles to co-exist so called fakes.

This issue is putting several popular figures in a troubled situation because their profiles were used by wannabees that faked to be entertainers, actors, musicians, businessmen or political figures.

Also people tend to double their profiles, therefore I suggest to search for your friends first on Facebook, if you do not find them send them an invitation.

Facebook Menu controllers:

There are three important menu bars:

The first menu bar: permits you to toggle between the home page with all the updates and newsfeeds of your contacts and your profile your profile page that regards your wall to wall messages and your updates.

An other feature is “friends” where you can view all your contacts and their profile update.

“inbox” where you can view messages not only by your contacts but also by groups affiliated to you.

your name is also exposed on this menu bar but when clicking you are directed to your profile page.

“settings” allows you to change your profile settings aswell as your privacy settings.

the search tool allows you to search contacts, groups and communities inside facebook.

The second menu bar is more applicative inside  the home page:

The profile picture can be updated whenever the user wishes to, also it also proves the profile to be active.

The “Status” is a feature that allows your contacts to know what your are up to, business, private or simply your state of mind.

The menu below can pinpoint some applications and updates by your contacts, “newsfeed” provides you with an overview of your contacts activity.

“status updates” provides you an overview of the latest updates of status by your contacts.

“photos” your contacts latest photo albums

“posted items” provides you about information or events and posted items such as flyers.

“Live feeds” gives you an overview of the activity of your contacts like latest friendships or movements with facebook’s applications.

The second bar menu on your profile is slightly different:

This menu bar is more interactive since you can you use this application to change your profile by uploading pictures, create albums, change your status and share information about you.

“wall” is a feature that allows you to see your own latest updates and messaging board.

“Info” is a feature where you can put your own information concerning your life, experience, school you have attended, some people use this feature as their own resume in order to be searchable for business or career opportunities.

“Photo” allows you to classify your uploaded photos into albums and to tag people inside this photographs.

“tagging” is a concept that permits with keywords to expose items, texts or pictures within the website.

If someone is tagged he or she will receive on his newsfeed the information that he or she has been tagged by someone, sometimes by someone outside their contacts perimeter. This tools has permitted long time unseen friends to reunite on facebook by tagging old classmates on their school pictures.

“Boxes” provides you an overview of some affiliation towards some games within Facebook that by surveying and your results affiliates you with figures such as a car, a legend, a mythical animal, etc.

Other features are viewed by the plus sign which provides also an access to the “Super Wall” which is a feature where you can message all of your contacts at once.

The last menu bar :

Gives you an rapid iconic overview of some application and features for you to use on your profile.

the feature that is of real matter on this menu bar is the chat option.

By clicking on its icon you can view a private chatroom where you can chat with your contacts if they are online on the chat. Also this feature is not fully developed because you cannot simultaneously chat with everyone, and the connection can be interrupted if you travel through facebook. you cannot transfer data on the chat option.

People that use firefox as a browser can see how many people are online above the icon of the chat on the menubar.

These feature will be one that needs to be developed.

Your guide through the social networking jungle

online social networks

Since 2004 after Tim O’reilly speech about the web 2.0 (the interactive www) never before was the use of online social networking so powerful. On its early days, with classmates.com created in 1995 with the scope to reunited your former schoolmates. Discretely other became to emerge from the web jungle. The first came with the purpose to find your lovemate or your ex-schoolmate others became business related or even knowledge sharing social networks that enabled scientists around the world to connect.

Today there are hundreds of them, I’ll get at least every day one or two invitations from someone I know or through my network to get connected into a new social networking site. Whether you are a scientist or a businessman or a recruiter, or a student or just a person looking for love or friendship, you need to know which social network is suitable for you, therefore I created this blog for you to comment as a guide through the social networking jungle. have fun……

Fundamentally you can divide social networks into two different types, the private or internal communities and the open communities.

Internal communities are platforms that have a selected number of connections such as a smallworld for example. In Smallworld you can only be registred if you have been invited by someone. Another example of private communities are specific communites with common interest such as Great cook community. Yet another example are intranet platforms such as a company community platform based on a online networking community of colleages of the same company. A company based in Italy provides internal platforms or entreprise 2.0 to companies, yooplus. It enables a company that has facilities around the world to be connected under an online work space. This online platforms facilitates the information traffic. When you put a newsfeed of the sector into the bullitin board, everyone will be able to see it instandly. Sharing documents is possible and the use of numerous applications such as API’s simplifies the intermengle of data traffic both inside as outside the platform.

External or open communities: are social networks where everyone has the possibility to join.  In most of this communities, both users must confirm that they are friends before they are linked.  If Peter lists Vanessa as a friend, then Vanessa must have to approve Peter’s friend request. Some communities allow to view friends of your friends till the thirth degree of connection. Others such as facebook allows you to see only the name of the profile with a picture.