Tag: LinkedIn

  • Corporate Talk

    I’ve always maintained that social media has this uncanny way of stripping the veneer of most entities – be it people, products or organisations.

    At one point of time, Mouthshut used to be my preferred destination for user reviews. All the ads, all the DMs, and all the brand ambassadors would be collectively shown the door, if the user reviews declared the product a failure. Although, niche portals have taken away quite a bit of my dependence, I am still a user and so, was pleasantly surprised to know about the new section called Employers. (via AlooTechie) Yep, Mouthshut now allows users to review organisations that they’ve worked in, something like what Jobsnetwork.in has been doing, though that’s more a discussion board. Criticat seems to be doing this very well, though.

    But they’re not the only guys with this agenda. I also came across a site called Jobeehive, whose proposition is “Before making your next decision, see company reviews, salary and advice given directly by employee”.I wonder why a service like LinkedIn (hey, they got more funding recently) hasn’t gotten into this, though. It could be the social angle to the networking relationships that are the problem. The typical user would be connected with his ex-boss on the network, and would hesitate before giving a negative review of work conditions/ salaries/ experiences etc. Everyone loves un-burnt bridges, social media be damned!! 😉 Shine, the career portal from HT, also limited itself to salary tools, and hasn’t built a review feature. I guess there are somethings people don’t want to share, for everything else there’s social media. 🙂

    However, I live on the hope that transparency – in employees, and employers, will eventually become a reality. I read about a new service called BeenVerified, which helps employers verify candidate backgrounds. (via CenterNetworks) Meanwhile, in the last couple of months, the enterprise tools based on popular social media tools like Twitter have also been seen in the market. I’d written about Yammer earlier, the winner at TC50, and its premise of ‘Twitter for business’, and about a similar service, Present.ly. Later, Yammer also introduced Yammermail, you can read about it here. I also read about Co-op recently, which adds time tracking and project management to the ‘what are you working on’ feature. Smibsnet, seems to be on the same premise.

    But the most interesting service I came across has to be SocialText 3.0, which “applies next-generation Web 2.0 technologies to the critical challenges facing businesses”. It seems to be a mashup of several web 2.0 entities like wikis, microblogging, Facebook, Friendfeed..and Twitter (as SocialText Signals) So it allows people to describe themselves, subscribe to others’ activity streams, edit information streams, and all of these get updated on a dashboard, which would help users in organising and using data better. By using the collaborative properties of all these tools, SocialText does seem to have gained an edge over other enterprise services in this genre.

    The tools are definitely being built. It remains to be seen though, whether/how much organisations are willing to use them. Such tools would also dispel concerns about social media being just a productivity reducing mechanism.

    until next time, organisational chats

  • Twitter – the official version

    There were some pretty interesting new things that came out at TechCrunch50 last week. TC50 was a conference that took place from September 8-10, 2008 where 52 of the ‘best’ startups were launched in front of an audience that consisted of the industry’s most influential venture capitalists, corporations, fellow entrepreneurs, and press. I guess that would be bleeding edge. I followed it, thanks to some excellent coverage by StartupMeme. And that’s where I read about Yammer.

    Yammer intrigued me because of its utterly simple premise of ‘Twitter for business’. Where Twitter asks ‘What are you doing’, Yammer asks ‘what are you working on?’ I was even more intrigued because that’s a question LinkedIn has been asking for sometime now.  While the premise is simple, it does create some interesting new propositions – it only allows logins through official mail ids, making it quite secure, it lets users start their company network, invite people, and then serves as a database with individual profiles and conversations. For any user, it would be like a Twitter limited to his colleagues. All this is free, and if the organisation wants to play admin, it has to pay. Yammer already has Blackberry and iPhone apps. Apparently its demand was such that about 10,000 people and 2,000 organizations signed up for the service the day it launched.

    And then Yammer just went ahead and won TC50. Chris Brogan smartly notes that the Twhirl client + a laconi.ca backend would amount to the same thing, with the added advantage that Twhirl also allows tabs of Twitter and Friendfeed. RWW just ripped the Yammer model threadbare.

    Now, I see some contradiction in all this. Twitter’s popularity lies in its simplicity, and a quite transparent way of communicating, and sharing. There is no officiating, there is nobody looking over your shoulder. To me, Yammer sounds a lot like Intranet 2.0, and assuming that organisations do allow it, later, if the organisation takes admin charge, I don’t know how many employees will still be comfortable using it. And why would organisations want control in the first place, if the idea is conversation? I’m wondering whether the existence of Yammer will make a Twitter enterprise solution irrelevant.

    There’s been some stuff happening over at Twitter too. The recent coverage of a funeral via Twitter led to questions about privacy issues. (via RWW) My take is that in a social environment, you avoid people whose conversations you don’t like, just like in the real world. In the long term, it will help people decide what they talk about and how. I’d mentioned two tools in my last Twitter post. A cool tool for marketeers – Twitterise, and Twiggit, a good mashup of Twitter and Digg. I came across two more tools – Tweetburner, a sort of feedburner for Twitter which could be a great tracking tool for brand and PR guys. Read more about it here, and Dwigger, another Twitter+Digg tool, but different from the earlier one i mentioned. In this you can paste a twitter message URL, or a new Dwigger only message, all in the by now familiar 140 characters, and submit it to Dwigger, to be voted and commented on. Hmm, more on that here. I also found a personally useful tool, which gives an analysis of your Twitter usage. They have done it using Yahoo Pipes, and rendered it using the Google Chart API. Very interesting. Check it out here. Meanwhile, Mashable has just posted their review on Fidj.it, ‘a micro-blogging service that’s like a Twitter and Pownce mashup.’ Shall check it out soon.

    To conclude, there are more and more twitter tools being developed for different user needs. If Yammer actually becomes a huge success, through some radically fresh employer attitude, I’d like to see a bridge between Yammer and Twitter. One service that allows absolute transparent conversations within the organisations, and another that allows brands and organisations to be transparent with its end users. It could be quite an awesome combination.

    until next time, feeling fidgety already?

  • Blurring Social Networking lines

    ET had a story sometime back on how sites like Facebook, LinkedIn etc are helping SMEs and entrepreneurs gain business. It adds on to my belief that when the target is niche market segments, the net is the best medium to try out.The more encouraging part for me is that since these media are working for them, they even plan You Tube ads. So, they grow the medium, and the medium grows them!!

    Yes, social networking is not exactly the most known thing in the world, as this article would argue, but as far as online behaviour goes, the Indian stats are a bit encouraging on some parameters. And, with efforts like these, our internet penetration figures might start looking up sonner rather than later.

    So what have the social networks been upto? Lets start with business networking, where I’ve been reading about a lot of new launches. A new business network called ZaaBiz has been launched in India. More details on its activities can be found here.

    Konnects hopes to bridge the gap between Facebook and LinkedIn. According to them, Facebook has not been designed for business purposes, while LinkedIn is too restrictive. So, Konnects has come out with a few features, that will even enable even fresh graduates, who don’t have many years of work experience or projects to show, to share the projects they’re working on. Konnects, based on your profile, will reccomend groups and discussions that you should be part of, and plans to introduce IM and VoIP integration in the future. (via Mashable) I think all these together make it a very differentiated value proposition.

    The third interesting new site I came across is Publictivity. It aims to use social networking to boost productivity, by allowing users (in organisatons)to create work groups, and share information, files and it even has a video viewing mechanism. What I loved the site for, and it has nothing to do with the service, is that they have used Dunder Mifflin (of The Office fame) and an option to chat with Dwight!! Awesome example!!

    The last one I came across is 2Vouch, an Australian social recruiting website which offers referral rewards, with an option to donate to charity also. Companies don’t have to pay to advertise, they only need to pay if they hire a candidate. (via Mashable) The concept is interesting but I wonder about possible loopholes. Is it, for example, possible for a company to get the contact details of a candidate and then route it through other means?

    So, what has LinkedIn been upto meanwhile? For one, it’s been adding small features, like highlighting the sections of a profile that have changed, since you last saw it. (via Digital Inspiration) It has added enhanced group features, that includes a centralised group hub page. (via Tech Crunch). It has also tied up with CNBC to air content generated by its users on CNBC. (via PluggdIn) I share the view that most of these are quite basic features, and LinkedIn not only needs to be adding such things much faster, but introducing innovations too.

    This is of more significance, when we consider that the competition is not only new business networking sites, which are coming out with some neat innovations and targeting specific requirements, its also generic social networking sites like Facebook, if we go by certain studies, which raises the possibility of  business networking on Facebook superceding that on LinkedIn.

    Speaking of social networks, the interesting part is that inspite of the demise of entities like Yahoo Mash, new social networks still seem to be popping up. I read a post on Fwix, which, in addition to a great GUI, also shows the user, the most trendy information going on in his locality, by aggegating about 500000 stories per day. It also allows add on services, the list includes YouTube, MeetUp, Eventful Delicious, Twitter, Flickr and just about any you can think up. BBC has also launched its radio social networking site Radio PoP. And the omnipresent Google, in addition to its own social network Orkut, has opened up another front by adding a twitter-like ‘following feature’ to its blogging service – Blogger, so that users can now become ‘fans’ of other blogs. They have integrated it with Google Reader, and also plan to integrate Google Friend Connect into this, which brings it closer to creating blog based communities. (via The Inquisitr)

    There are new tools that are emerging in the social media space. How Sociable, which allows you to track your brand in the social media space; Lotame, an online advertising agency that is looking at changing the way advertising happens in social media,  Edopter, a way to discover and share trends in fashion, lifestyle, music and so on. New models are on the horizon, like contextual search in social media. The tools are there, its now for individuals and brands to make sure that they are used to their full potential. Like this article correctly states, business can no longer afford to ignore social media, and what GM has done – launching an anti-misinformation site, is perhaps a great start.

    until next time, socialise

  • Community Opportunities

    While BBS and IRC could technically be called communities, I’d still consider my first major experience with a community to be blogging. It wasn’t the kind of social communities that we see now, this was more a set of people who frequented each others’ blogs, but used names like well, manuscrypts. Yes, it is a remnant of those days. 🙂 With the advent of the likes of Facebook, communities started getting built basis real world relationships. With a business network like LinkedIn, it became even more focused, in this case, a set of people who you dealt with (or potentially could) in a business scenario. So, why have I been giving you the nostalgia talk?

    Well, I still believe that blogging is a good form of communities, though social networks and micro blogging are the rage. While I have a good rapport with my Twitter crowd, I have known several of the people who comment on my blog, for years now. Over these years, they have become good friends. So, the news that Live Journal, a major blogging platform, has made special plans for India,  was very heartening. Now I’ve never used LJ, I started with rediff, moved to blogger, and am using WordPress for this blog, but I’ve known several who swear by it. We’ll come back to their offering in a while, but there’s an interesting flash fiction contest they’ve launched in association with Caferati, you might want to check it out. I’d have loved Blogger or WordPress to give India some attention (or have they already?) since they are extremely popular here, but the WP guys, i guess, are busy with Buddypress, a social network based on the multi user version of WP. Its supposed to have all the stuff that a social network should have and is expected to be completely out by December.

    Like I said, blogging still has the potential to build communities. In the case of LJ, I have always thought that they were for the constantly updating kind of blogger, not the constantly ‘upgrading’ kind. Let me clarify that, since it might be misconstrued. By ‘upgrading’ I only meant the tendency to tweak around, play with code (even if you don’t know s**t about it, in my case), test out new platforms, and finally get their own domain. So, the name fits, as does the contest idea. In the case of WP, it’s a great place to be once you’re comfortable with blogging, I’ve even seen people start with WP. And that starting up crowd will exist for sometime. As more experienced bloggers move on, there will be guys who discover blogging. A community will actually be a great way to encourage stickiness. Coming back to LJ’s action points, they are aiming at localisation (translation and multilingual interfaces), Socialisation, and Integration (accessible through many platforms). The first one is quite important especially considering that Orkut has made quite some strides in this area. Like I have said before, I can’t understand why Orkut can’t link with Blogger, for blogs + friends communities. Hope LJ’s plans make them think about this.

    Okay, now that’ve you digested the LJ news, check this out. LinkedIn has got India specific plans too. They estimate the Indian market potential to be about 20 million users. To give you a perspective, their current global base is 25 million users, and India’s share is 1 million. They’re looking at a few strategic players locally, to help build their brand. If you notice, they already allow you to add contacts from Rediff and Indiatimes. A tie up with a local brand would definitely be a win-win. Imagine seeing a job on Naukri and being able to recommend your friend for it with his LinkedIn profile link. LinkedIn can have contextual listings provided from naukri’s base and share revenues. References are made easier with LinkedIn data. And a job portal/aggregator is not just the only kind of strategic alliance. An entity like Criticat, for instance, which lets you rate companies and share experiences would also be a great fit. There are indeed tremendous possibilities, which could result in increased transparency in at least the HR/Recruitment/Work Culture part of the business.

    until next time, jobs ahead 😉

  • Marching to different beats

    I read an article today on LiveMint, which deals with creating UGC for TV and Radio. Well, for starters, I think its already being done. The polls, the debates etc on news channels, and more importantly, the reality shows, are all user generated content. Of course, the packaging differs because unlike the net, time is also a factor on these platforms. 24 hours vs what content to put there.

    It also took me back this post, where I’d talked about the relevance of mass media to pure play internet entities. In a warped sense, I’d agree with the article that in a true convergence era, a medium like the internet, which has already absorbed user participation as one of its tenets, would play a larger role in shaping media consumption. So much so, that going forward, I’d bet heavily on an entity like Instablogs, which would find it easier to adopt to platforms like the television or radio. Yes, they got funded too, isn’t that just awesome?

    Which also brings me to another layer of thought, something I’ve touched upon earlier, if mass media entities want to test out the wild wild web and the currently hot social media scene, and what it could do for them, what is the better way of doing it – creating their own scene or leveraging existing popular platforms. I came across examples of both kinds today.

    While NYT is perhaps the best newspaper website in the world, it also plays a bit on social media (check out this facebook app). And today I read about the partnership it had entered into with LinkedIn. LinkedIn users will now get their industry related news from the relevant sections of the NYT site, and these news will have a share option. I think that’s an absolutely great way for LinkedIn to give a good value add to its users, and also stimulate conversations and for NYT, it creates a lot of relevance to the user, and will increase the website’s pull. That’s NYT’s way of leveraging a relevant social business network.

    The other thing that I came across is Radio City’s new website. (thanks to @thej) I haven’t done a complete tour yet, but it seems like they are primarily aiming at build communities there – a section called ‘Friends of Music’ has blogging, groups, finding colleagues(?!) and catching up with others attending gigs. In fact, the profile is also very orkut/facebook, and shows options for picking friends based on geography/music taste/school/workplace. Yes, i cringed at the last two too! It also has a calendar with some events already updated, and even has a karaoke section.  There is also an option to upload videos (upto 20MB) In addition, it attempts a Yahoo Launch by allowing you to create your own station by adding tracks. But I think it is also a way to take ownership of the music space – there is a musicopedia, a lyrics finder, a music news reporter and so on, which aims at making this the one stop resource for music in India. Yes, you can also listen to popular tracks, and stations created by users/ pre packaged ones (eg. KK, Alka Yagnik, though the content in this is limted, as of now). In essence, a decent effort, for trying the music ownership strategy, though from a new media perspective, I’d have liked more focus and efforts on podcasts (like Big FM), a talk show platform, better forums etc, instead of all that work on the orkut style social networking.(classmates and colleagues)

    While I’d usually go with leveraging existing social media, i think  a part of Radio City’s route does have its benefits, given the popularity of music and Bollywood in India, and its potential for creating communities especially with the context that Radio City offers. What they do beyond this would be the really interesting part.

    until next time, tuned in