Do you want to build your social network?

Thinking of building a social network

When we see the huge success behind several social networking sites, we cannot hide behind our desire to create one of our own, telling that its a goldmine to be explored.  The truth is, it is not so easy. Facebook has its success, due to its unique way to present its applications to its users. Linkedin has its success because it is the first  site to mix your profile and your career path in order for you to promote  yourself and your business to the world. Myspace is a place where you can upload music, videos, get to know people with the same passion as you.

Every social network has its own way to contact its users.   SO, if you want to create a social network platform you need to create something Unique, not like facebook or myspace or netlog. Creating an original general site is the only way to distinguish from the others. You don’t need to register to another social network if all of your friends are already on facebook, if the answer is yes, I will register, how many of my friends will follow me?

But if you create something completely different, than maybe it will grow.

Another problem is technology, unless you are a programmer yourself and you have time, you can program the site with all its complexity. The technology behind web 2.0 is more complex than just creating a website with html or css language, add with some flash or javascipts. NO, interactive web needs a platform with more memory than you ever could imagine. PHP, CSS, RSS, XHTML, wiki, JAVA are few of those web 1.0 and web 2.0 languages you can use in order to create your social network site.

I have interviewed many of the founders of social communities sites and the major problem is to keep on with the sustainability of the site. It means that you need to keep buying servers in order to keep up with the growing number of profiles, sometimes without receiving any money from advertisement . Wikipedia for example, since it is a not profit organization receives donations from its users and developers ! mass collaboration !

Facebook has monetize it with its applications (that for some are merely recognizable as advertisements)

Linkedin has recently started with advertisement but receives part of its revenue from companies who would like to use this professional tool to promote its employer branding and premium membership, which allows a better use of its applications.

Another weakness is the cost of creating such platform, starting with a minimum of 10,000 $ for programming.

The jungle is tight and there is little sunshine left to grow.  Few have failed and have perished in the race.

According to Lorenz Bogaert, founder and CEO of Netlog, at the moment we are assisting to a mature face of evolution of online social networking, the whole is becoming monetized.  The only possible way to gain profit is by finding ways to monetize its use, like opening a shop inside a shopping mall and make it profitable.

A few have done it with linkedin such as the registration to groups such as InvitesWelcome.com (Open Networkers) or GroupLinked.com or LION500.com (Open Networkers) and TopLinked.com (Open Networkers).

I would not recommend to build a social network but if you need to create one, a niche than I would recommend Linkedin groups or NING, which is a online self building social network with all its feature, it is free but  you cannot gain money cause you do not own the site.

How to recruit on Linkedin?

Linkedin has been used for different applications:

* For business purpose: finding new join ventures, business partners, client search

* For Knowledge Management: Gathering information about companies and its turnover

* Sharing knowledge: groups of engineers or scientists gathering together to share information

* Job search: searching the right job or being found by a recuiter.

* Job matching or Recruiting: Searching for workforce

Linkedin provides several tools in order to facilitate the search of interesting profiles.

But first let me give you some tips about the type of profile you can find on Linkedin:

Since people register on Linkedin for different purposes, not all are interested in being contacted for a job. Every person can edit his contact settings which can be showed on its profile:

Contact Settings

Interested In

• career opportunities
• consulting offers
• new ventures
• job inquiries
• expertise requests
• business deals
• reference requests
• getting back in touch

Basically without any charge you can search for profiles on Linkedin, if the person has filled his career path than you have an overview of his resume.

Click on “Advanced People Search”:

The Advanced search permits you to have an overview of keywords and fields that will facilitate your search:

When you have filtered the search, a shortlist will be presented.

The search can be saved, allowing to receive a feedback from the system in case another profile will match your request by email.

How to contact a profile  ?

* You can send an INmail: INmails are internal messages on Linkedin, you can send and receive inmails. It can be viewed on your “inbox” left of your “profile” or “home” screen. Inmails can only be used by premium members that have 3 to 5 Inmails per month, if not used, it can save them.

* You can be introduced to a profile: Relying on someone who is connected to you on the first degree, asking that person to introduce you to the desired person who is connected to him or to someone that is directly connected. Sort of word to mouth message.

* Invite the desired person to be connected to you: Linkedin has a privacy policy, that states that you can only invite someone if you really know that person. Several recruiters have a problem by using this tool. You can either state that this person has worked or done business together or either know his or her email address.  The invited person has the choice to archive your request, to deny by clicking “I don’t know that person” or to accept your request.

N.B. mostly people interested in career opportunities will accept your request if interested (therefore showing their curiousity towards your offer).

In the case a person does not accept your invitation than the system will register denials and will block you from invitation without the person’s email address, explaining that several denials have been registred.

In this case, you will have to send an email to the customer service.

Suitable letter for invitation:

Invitation letters must be informal and personalized.  The invited person must feel the interest regarding his or her profile. You must provide you coordinates in order to be contacted: tel number, company email, mobile, website, etc.

Linkedin has also create a tool dedicated to companies and recruiters:
Linkedin Corporate Solutions or Linkedin recruiter:

This tool (cost around 30,000 $ or more) allows the recruiter to search any profile on the Linkedin network.  The recruiter has the possibility to create job slots on the marketplace of Linkedin jobs (see next article about Linkedin jobs).

You have the possibility to save you search into folders left of the window and bookmarking  the interesting profiles.

This application allows you to contact people, with 250 inmails per month.

The corporate solution provides a company a certain visibility in order to improve its employer branding by creating a company profile.

The company profile provides users with information about the company such as location, updated stocks, who’s who on Linkedin, latest promotions or hired people. It is a very useful information for recruiters for Market intelligence purposes. ( you don’t need a corporate account to view company profiles)

You can view company profiles by clicking on Company:

In order to have good results in recruitment in Linkedin you need to be connected to a lot of people, therefore most of the recruiters on Linkedin are connected to a whole world of people, millions and millions of potential candidates !!! Thus my final words are: Connect yourself to the world !!!

The Excellence of being Linkedin side a business network part 2

Linkedin population:

As you may already know you cannot see entirely other profiles if they are not connected to your network (till the 3d degree) therefore it is important to connect to “open networkers”. These profiles allow you to access their professional network till their second degree of separation, which becomes your 3d degree network. “Open Networkers” are social connectors hungry for connections! they allow everyone to connect with them and they send invitations all along to be at the center of a major hub of connections.  To define the population of Linkedin we need to focus on their behavior. Linkedin is at the moment by far the most visited business network on the Web planet with more than 30 million registrations. The truth is that a lot of this connection are not actively networking but have just a presence inside the network. I call them  “Passive Users“, They have a connection or two, are not involved in any group or do not participate at questions or polls inside the network. They just have a profile with little information about their experience, study and they are not open to contact at any level. The second type of users are the  “Open minded” users, they have a full profile and are frequently using Linkedin as a platform to talk with their colleagues (even with competitors).
With the purpose to share knowledge. For this type of profile, the exchange of information is crucial for the development of its projects. They can accept any job offer but is not actively seeking. They have a network between 50 and 250 direct connections and an estimate of 130,000 connections in the second degree of separation

The last type of users are the “Open Networkers”, as I told previously they are active users of Linkedin, they are connected to thousands and thousand (some more than 15,000) in direct connection. They have a visibility near to the total some of registration (Jan 2009 30 million).

How to search a profile:

Here is a video that permits you to search a profile,by name:

http://www.new.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1104816257657&oid=73545559672

Linkedin poll

[http://polls.linkedin.com/p/20860/pfgmp|leo://plh/http%3A*3*3polls%2Elinkedin%2Ecom*3p*320860*3pfgmp/1YRF]

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.