Stig Kristoffersen asked:


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.



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Allison Merlino asked:


MySpace leads Facebook in revenue earned form advertisements. But recently, Facebook has surpassed MySpace in unique visitors. This is an astounding accomplishment being that MySpace had a three year lead and enjoys immense popularity. Users are leaving MySpace for Facebook in droves and it is speculated that this transition may be a result of class rather than trend.

Following the creation of Friendstar, a number of eUniverse employees saw its potential and used its more popular features to create a social networking website with a wider base. MySpace was launched in August 2003 and with resources including technicians, bandwidth and server capacity already in place users increased at an astounding rate.

MySpace operates from advertising revenue alone. There is absolutely no cost to the end user. MySpace is capable of using behavioral targeting to customize the ads that each user sees. Only Yahoo! has been able to collect more data about it’s users in order to customize advertising. The success of MySpace has trickled down to many young entrepreneurs who provide widgets or accessories that add to the functionality of the networking powerhouse.

MySpace encourages users to customize their profile pages by entering HTML. In addition musicians are allowed to upload and share up to 6 MP3 songs provided it is their own work or they have permission to use the songs. Over eight million artists owe their discovery to MySpace so far! Political organizations and politicians themselves have created MySpace pages to expand their membership and to get more young viewers involved in campaigning. MySpace offers many engaging features including Bulletins, Groups, MySpace IM, MySpace TV, Applications, MySpace Mobile, MySpace News, MySpace Classifieds, MySpace Karaoke and MySpace polls.

MySpace networking has many positive aspects, unfortunately, they are matched in number by negative aspects. MySpace does not have a customer service number readily available. Most problems are solved via networking with other MySpace users. HTML code is rarely met because those using the code are not experienced. This can lead to accessibility problems and freeze up web browsers.

Security is another major problem. Advertisements are abundant and some provide links to fake login screens that trick a user into entering their MySpace user name and password. Spam bulletins and infections are prime examples of security breaches. Social issues arise such as teens inadvertently inviting a large number of people to parties. People are also more likely to present themselves in ways that they would not in person which undercuts the purposeful design of MySpace which is to bring people together. Stalkers also are able to gather a large amount of information about an individual via MySpace.

Facebook is also a social networking website. Unlike MySpace its origin is not corporate but academic! Membership was initially offered to only Harvard College students. Shortly after in March of 2004 membership was expanded to include Stanford, Columbia and Yale. In September of 2005 Facebook welcomed high school students by invitation only then employees of Apple Inc. and Microsoft. Finally, Facebook expanded its membership to include everyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address in September 2006. Facebook members join networks which are organized by city, school, workplace and region.

Facebook remains privately owned by Facebook Inc. but has investors who are major players including PayPal co-founder Peter Theil, Accel Partners, Greylock Partners and Microsoft.

Facebook offers many of the same features as MySpace like banner ads, creating customized profiles, and the viewing of the profile data being restricted to users from the network or confirmed friends. Facebook’s features include the Wall, Pokes, Photos, News Feed, Facebook Notes, Chat and Gifts.

The most significant difference between the two websites is the level of customization. Facebook only allows plain text as opposed to HTML and Cascading Style Sheets. But despite its 3 year head start in the general public, MySpace fell behind Facebook in May of 2008 with a total of 123.9 million unique Facebook visitors. According to Alexa, Facebook’s ranking among all websites went from 60th to 7th from September 2006 to September 2007. It is currently 5th.

Currently young people are leaving MySpace in droves for Facebook. Some speculate that it is typical teens moving on from one trend to the next. Others speculate that Facebook attracts more affluent users. Facebook originated with Ivy League students who then attracted high school kids who were eager to become part of the culture in their upcoming college experience. Danah Boyd, a researcher for the University of California, Berkley, claims that the “goody-two-shoes, jocks, athletes, and other ‘good’ kids” are going to Facebook. These ‘good’ kids are attracted first to the Facebook’s origin and they are also eager to stay away from the controversy that surrounds MySpace. Therefore there is evidence of a class divide rather than a change in trend for all young users. It will be interesting to see if Facebook becomes similarly polluted.

MySpace leads Facebook in revenue earned form advertisements. But recently, Facebook has surpassed MySpace in unique visitors. This is an astounding accomplishment being that MySpace had a three year lead and enjoys immense popularity. Users are leaving MySpace for Facebook in droves and it is speculated that this transition may be a result of class rather than trend.



Best Price On Your Own Website

Cathy Goodwin asked:


OK, I don’t have kids, but I know a spoiled brat when I see one. And I just ran across a cool quiz: Is your child a spoiled brat?

Some characteristics of spoiled brats:

* Frequent temper tantrums

* Not understanding needs vs wants

* Doe what he wants — not what others want

* Demand to have all the latest new toys

* You are reluctant to show him off because he won’t make a great impression

* Scare away visitors

* Tries to take control instead of doing what you want

Why do parents care when their kids are spoiled brats? Because spoiled brats are no fun to have around. They drive away the people you care about most. They embarrass you in public, especially when it’s most important for you to make a good impression.

When we substitute “website” for “kids,” can you detect some similarities? Here are some characteristics of spoiled websites:

– They’re filled with “nice to have” toys: flash, animation, and objects that buzz, whir and chirp. They have lots of new gadgets and they always want more.

– They want to sit on the sidelines and enjoy compliments. They won’t get their hands dirty selling products and services.

– They embarrass their owners (who realize the website needs a makeover but they’re afraid to ask). They control you (“I can’t change what I offer – it won’t fit the website’s theme”).

– They disappear every so often (because their owners got locked into a 2-year web hosting agreement to get a free design and the hosting company isn’t the most reliable). So they get a reputation for being temperamental.

What spoiled websites and kids have in common is this: Somebody decided that throwing money at a problem would make more sense that delving into what’s really going on. So a troubled kid gets treats, toys and even cars. A troubled marketing concept gets buried under a four-figure graphic display that knocks your socks off.

The solution is the same for kids and websites. Back to basics. Set limits. Identify goals. What would be a reasonable expectation for today? Next week? Next year?

And then figure out how to get your website to do a little work around the house. Are you attracting clients? Screening clients? Collecting money? Saving time?

For instance, an experienced copywriter will create a site that motivates clients to hire you sooner rather than later. You might even be able to skip the obligatory “get acquainted” call.



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Shi Lei asked:


Your growth and success is not left to chance. In fact, your Internet marketing needs is systematically analyzed to determine the right solution for your business. And, whether you require a basic online tool or an all-inclusive marketing campaign, your solution is professionally implemented and monitored to ensure you gain maximum value and return. We have so many internet marketing tools but for good results you have to follow best process, some of them never delver’s good results.

It’s now up to you to decide what Internet marketing tools you need the most to instantly improve the revenue from your online business. Here are some important tools needed to achieve success in your internet marketing. Increasing Web Site Traffic: Getting traffic to your web site is of course the most important factor for your online business success. There are so many traffic generating tools, systems and methods and this is where we list the best of them.

Search Engine Optimization Tools (SEO): Search engine traffic is one of the highest quality traffic you can get, and it’s free. Here we list our preferred search engine optimization tools to help you improve your search engine rankings and thereby increasing your profits. It will improve quality traffic to your website. Keyword Research Tools: Knowing what the buyers in your market are searching for is critical for success. There are a lot of keyword research tools online and select the best ones.

Email Marketing Solutions: Using email marketing solutions to promote your online business is a very effective way to become successful. Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing.

Web Design Templates: By using attractive website you can attract customers very easily. Business websites are very important building trust with your customers. The latest standards and proposals aim at leading to the various browsers’ ability to deliver a wide variety of media and accessibility options to the client possibly without employing plug-ins. Website design is a process conceptualization planning, modeling execution of electronic media content delivery via Internet in the form of technologies. Submit your Site: There are so many automated search engines submission services where we can submit your site as many search engines as possible, we can submit bogs and forums and directories.

To achieve success in internet marketing requires various strategies. It also requires you to opt for the right strategies at the right time. It is never said easy to achieve success in internet marketing business. You have to keep a lookout for the right tools and tips to achieve your goal.



Best Price On Your Own Website

Stephen Campbell asked:


Internet marketing tool is an important avenue to convert website visitors into subscribers. Making them to stay at your site is not that easy if you do not have an effective strategy to do that. You may not fully aware about this, but your subscribers can bring direct traffic to your site.

Search engine optimization tools are some of various strategies to make your website visible to your potential subscribers. These increase the authority or relevance of your site whenever there is a search in search engines related to your site. If your site is ranked higher, then more potential clients can be generated and can be made this visitor as your subscribers. This is an effective internet marketing strategy for your online venture.

If an individual visits your web site and leaves, chances are that r he will not come again, most especially, if there is no significant reason to do so-your site is not of that relevant to him. If that is the case, then you have a little change to make your visitor to a regular client. Therefore, you need to develop your site as substantial as possible by providing a real internet marketing service.

But the bottom line is, this internet marketing tool will help you to make your visitor comes back to your website again. Imagine, if 1,000 visitors visit your web site, leave and never visit back again, you can think of making your potential revenue lost simply because of this case. You could have made these visitors to be your customers if only you have an effective internet marketing tool implemented.

Some may say that developing unique and substantial content can keep some of the visitors returning to your site, but usually, these content is not the solution. The real, long-term solution lies in transforming your visitors into subscribers of your mailing list.

Before your visitor leaves your web site, you want to make him or her into your subscriber via opt-in to your mailing list. You can do this by asking for your visitor’s name and e-mail address through your opt-in form. This simple strategy is an effective one to present your internet marketing service or products to your potential clients.

And if your visitor signs up to be on your mailing list, you can still reinforce with him via email. You can get your clients to consider your offer, or refer another offer to him or her.

In total, you want to transform as many visitors into subscribers as possible and acquire the potential revenue you rightfully deserve-the simple, wise way.



Best Price On Your Own Website