Posts Tagged linkedin

Social Media – Top 25

Posted by Paul Holmes in business, internet, personal, social media, society on August 30, 2010

Social Media Camp, Victoria BC, October 3rd, 2010

It’s been over 8 months since my last social media top 10 list, so I figured it was time for an update. Last time, my top 10 list was actually a top 18, so I figured I’d just bite the bullet, and make this one a top 25.

If you are using social media for business, you are probably best to stick with LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter (perhaps with a dash of YouTube or Flickr). But if you are a geek like me, you might find a few little gems in this list.

25. Google Buzz

So much buzz, yet so little sting. It’s my new FriendFeed, although I don’t think Google intended it to be used this way. I rarely use it, despite the fact it’s in my face every time I use GMail.

24. MySpace

Oh! How far you have fallen, MySpace. For those of you who haven’t heard of MySpace, it’s a website where you can find music. Is there anything else? Not really. Don’t accuse me of dissin’ MySpace though, you’ll notice this list doesn’t include bebo, hi5, Friendster, Multiply, Plaxo, ecademy, or any of the other also-ran general interest social networks.

23. Identi.ca

It’s like a better Twitter, only it hasn’t reached critical mass. I hope they have some commercial success with status.net, because competition is good.

22. FriendFeed

As predicted, Facebook bought FriendFeed and did nothing with it. It was number 10 on my last list.

21. meme by Yahoo!

I have met some very interesting people on this. It’s another offering that blurs the line between micro-blogging and blogging (like Posterous and Tumblr tend to); it seems to be a great place to profile photography. Like VIMEO, it’s a better network not for the features or marketing potential, but for the interesting users and their content.

20. Hunch

Great idea – a taste graph for the social web. I hope it catches on; a good idea is only that unless it gains critical mass. Notably, the founder of Hunch was also a co-founder of Flickr.

19. StumbleUpon

I have nothing against StumbleUpon, and I know it can be a dream come true for people who spend all their time on SEO. It’s fun and easy to use, but I honestly don’t use it much…

18. Slideshare

Share your PDFs and PPTs easily, embed them elsewhere, and share them directly on Slideshare itself, with your friends and contacts there. Great tool!

17. Goodreads

Do you read good? This is a great social network for people who like to read. I love it, even though I don’t read so goodly.

16. Flixster

I like movies. In fact, I like movies a lot. The Flixster website itself is a bit MySpace-y, but the iPhone app rocks. You can mark movies you want to watch, and rate your movies, and add a review. It doesn’t seem this network has caught on, but I use it at least once a week.

15. Sprouter

If LinkedIn is Facebook for business, then Sprouter is Twitter for business. It seems to be catching on. Time will tell.

14. Tumblr

It’s a blog or a microblog, and a social network, all beautifully united. Simple. Fun. I use it a little.

13. Posterous

Another good and simple blogging tool. Notice Tumblr and Posterous are neck-and-neck, I only put Posterous a notch ahead because I use it to subscribe to some great blogs (and they e-mail me a daily digest). However, I don’t use it much to blog (see item 3 for my real bias).

12. Gowalla

Share your location with your friends. Creepy, but fun and interesting. There are a bunch of tools that do this: Gowalla, Foursquare, Yelp, BrightKite (not on this list), and now Facebook Places (not yet available in Canada). Admittedly I use all 4 (soon to be 5) on my iPhone, and sort of get a kick out of it. I like Yelp the best, and it has a legacy review function, which is, in my opinion, way cooler than the simpler Gowalla and Foursquare.

11. Foursquare

It seems to be the category killer, but the game is definitely not over, especially with Facebook getting in on the act, and Yelp revving up their user base. I put Foursquare ahead of Gowalla, because you can be Mayor of the places you visit! Imagine my joy in being Mayor of First Choice Haircutters!

10. YouTube

Oh, YouTube. So famous, so popular, so immature and anti-social. Your comments remind me of things I used to say when I was 12. YouTube is great because it will host your video, and because it has critical mass. But for grown-ups, VIMEO is much better.

9. VIMEO

It’s like a nice YouTube. Better content, and more mature users. I’m a bit surprised it’s done as well as it has, considering YouTube’s market dominance. There have been other contenders in the video space, too – DailyMotion, VEOH, and others.

8. Meetup

They actually had a friend feature, but they apparently phased it out. But it’s still a social network, in that you can find members of your meetup groups, and see what other groups they are in. It also allows you to indicate your interests, and suggests new groups to you based on geography and interest.

Best of all, Meetup is about meeting people in real life, not just online. And isn’t this the best sort of social networking there can be?

7. Digg

Geek alert. I still like Digg. It’s fun. Sorry.

I’m still a bit unsure about the new version (I was an Alpha user), but I think it will be better in the long run.

6. Facebook

I don’t really like Facebook. However, it must make the list because I do like that I can connect with almost all my friends there. Also, it has some great marketing tools (like Facebook Business Pages and Facebook Ads).

5. Yelp

I really like Yelp. I think it’s better than Gowalla and Foursquare. It started out as a review site, but they’ve since added the check-in functions to mirror Gowalla and Foursquare, and you can be a Duke (or Duchess) instead of a Mayor! What can be better than that!? It’s gaining critical mass, albeit not as quickly as Foursquare.

4. Flickr

Best. Photo. Sharing. Tool. Ever. Forget about TwitPic and TweetPhoto and that frog one… if you want to Tweet a photo, use Flickr! It has some incredibly powerful group and sharing functions, and is itself a social network, too. If you’re going to share photos on Twitter, it’s hands-down the most sensible tool to use.

3. Blogging using WordPress

I’m a huge fan of blogging, and a huge fan of WordPress!

I’ve organized two WordCamp events in Victoria, and cannot say enough good things about it. It’s a great product. It’s easy. It’s fun. It’s free (you have to have web hosting, but if you have a website, you can add WordPress fairly easily).

There are numerous other blogging tools (some mentioned in this list), but with the self-installed version of WordPress, you own your social media! And you build your own community. You are not reliant on a startup with an unknown revenue situation or business model to host your media.

I’m a big fan of integrating Feedburner and Disqus, too.

2. LinkedIn

Are you in business now? Will you one day be in business? Do you have business dealings? Are you a professional that might expect one or two job changes or career focus changes sometime in the next thirty years? Are you a student? Are you management? Are you between the age of 18 and 80 and expect to live and work for the next 6 months, or longer?

I’m not going to beat around the bush here. I’ve heard all the excuses for not being on LinkedIn. They are all misguided (at best), lazy or stupid (at worst), and of no validity whatsoever.

You must sign up to LinkedIn immediately, and shame on you for not doing so before now!

This is not Facebook – there are no party photos, funny status updates and kid’s stuff. This is serious business, and it will take all of 5 minutes a month out of your hectic schedule.

1. Twitter

I (heart) Twitter.

It can be whatever you want it to be. If you want to talk marketing on Twitter, there are definitely some best practices. But outside of that world, there’s no right or wrong way. Want to socialize? Want to meet people? Want to talk business? Want to talk shop with other people in your business? Want to find out the news or the weather?

Jump on in and join the conversation!

Twitter, as crazy as it may sound, in it’s 140 character glory, is really the everything network, and remains steadfast in it’s number 1 spot on my list.

Epilogue

There you have it, my exhaustive list. You may notice I removed Instant Messaging from the list. I’ve decided it doesn’t apply to this list. Like text messaging, I still use it, of course, and occasionally do business on it – but it’s not inherently social in the 1 to many sense that we’ve come to recognize social media as being.

Like my list? Hate my list? Agree with something? Disagree with something? Did I miss something real obvious?

Please comment on the site!

digg, facebook, flickr, linkedin, meetup, social media, twitter, wordpress, yelp

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Top 10 Social Media

Posted by Paul Holmes in blogging, business, personal, social media on December 1, 2009

I have written various articles on social media in the past, and a few people have asked what my favourites are. The following list is not “the best”, nor specifically “the best for application X”, rather my favourites – those I enjoy using or gain specific benefit for using.

10. Ning‘s (like Your Canada)
Ning is a really cool product that allows you to launch your own social networks around specific themes. Your Canada is an example of one I launched to add a social component to our popular Your Canada website.

9. FriendFeed
Everyone was getting excited about FriendFeed, the ultimate social media collaborator. It’s a cool tool because it let’s you tie all your social media activities into one stream. It can be a bit overwhelming though, so I find myself using it sparingly these days.

8. YouTube
Anonymity is still the name of the game on YouTube. As a result, you get poorly spelled and otherwise idiotic comments on videos all the time. This is too bad, given that it otherwise is the best place for exposure, and the tools to connect people socially are actually pretty good. The social aspects of video are still developing, and I suspect a number of other sites may take the lead in “social video” while Google focuses YouTube more on commercializing what they have (and doing this primarily by pushing sponsored videos, vs. an advertising model). Some to watch include Vimeo, DailyMotion, 12seconds.tv, Ustream.tv, blip.tv, and about a few dozen others.

7. Flickr
Yahoo! has one product that kicks ass and totally owns it’s vertical, and that is Flickr. Flickr is the best social medium for sharing photos/images. Picasa is Google’s alternative, and it is OK. A few others are Photobucket and Flixya, but they are a long way from successful at this point.

6. Digg
The DiggBar has revolutionized Digg (much to the chagrin of the ol’ skool Diggers). I use it all the time, and am a bit of a Diggaholic now. It’s a great tool for sharing interesting stuff you find on the web. It also has some great integration tools to very easily share “Dugg” stuff on Facebook and Twitter. I use Digg every single day.

5. Instant Messaging
Three years ago this was number one (followed by blogging and online forums). Three years ago, I did 100% of my instant messaging using MSN Messenger. Two years ago, 80% was MSN and 20% was GoogleTalk. Today, 50% is Facebook, 30% is GoogleTalk and 20% is MSN. As always, ICQ and AIM are 0%. Instant messaging is still a great way to get ahold of people in a hurry.

4. Blogging
I love to blog. I have at least 5 blogs I update regularly, and I love posting comments to other people’s blogs (which is what makes it a social medium). I also love WordPress; I am a total convert to the platform. I even organized a WordCamp in Victoria a few weeks ago, which was tonnes of fun.

3. Facebook
I was a Facebook holdout for ages, but have grown to like it. I like it because almost everyone I know is there. The platform itself is annoying sometimes, and frustrating at others, but they have the critical mass, so it remains a tool I continue to use, even if I use it despite itself.

2. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is great for business. At a recent presentation I gave at the University of Victoria to all of their business students, I asked several hundred students how many of them were on Facebook, and almost every hand went up. I then asked how many were on LinkedIn, and about 5 hands went up (I think a few of those hands were faculty, too). This is ashame. LinkedIn is a great tool for business, but also for career building. The guy sitting next to you in class today might be CEO of some big corporation in 10 years. Stay in touch and add them to your network on LinkedIn. I’m not sure if I got through to them or not.

LinkedIn is easy, passive and a great way to introduce people. It’s sort of like a virtual business mixer, but doesn’t require you to smile and dress nicely.

1. Twitter
Even people who love Twitter make fun of it. Twitter is an amazing tool for connecting with people and getting a message out. Through the power of the retweet, your potential network is huge. That conference I organized back in #4 above – I used Twitter as the primary medium through which to promote it, and over 100 local (and international) people showed up. Not too shabby for something people love to make fun of.

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I’ll review my list every once in awhile as my tastes change. It’ll be interesting to look back in the future and see what has changed.

I can already say that “FriendFeed” used to be much higher up the list, and I expect there is a good chance Google Wave and Foursquare will appear here in the next year or two. The influence of mobile and video (and mobile video) should introduce a few new angles to the equation, too.

A few others that I use that didn’t make the top list are Plaxo (11), Yelp (12), Identi.ca (13), Vimeo (14), Meetup (15), SlideShare (16), MySpace (17), and StumbleUpon (18). I have profiles on a few others, but don’t use them much.

I’m always happy to connect with people I know on any of these networks, see my social media links in the right column to link to my profile, or visit my Contact page.

blogging, digg, facebook, flickr, friendfeed, instant messaging, linkedin, ning, social media, twitter, youtube

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Dammit LinkedIn, I’m a college dropout!

Posted by Paul Holmes in business, humour, internet, personal, social media on November 20, 2009

My LinkedIn profile is 85% complete. It has been since I first signed up, and probably will be in 5 years. Why? Because I have not included my education. Here’s my recent correspondence with LinkedIn:

I do not wish to include education in my profile. I am a self-employed college dropout, and it is not relevant.

Yet LinkedIn does not allow an option for “include none”, and insists my profile remains only 85% complete. I find this really annoying, and would appreciate the option to include no education component in my profile.

Is my life incomplete according to LinkedIn because I have been largely educated within the University of Life?

Here is the response:

Dear Paul,

Thank you for contacting LinkedIn Customer Support.

And I want to apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.

Unfortunately, this option cannot be changed at this time, I will sent your information to our research and development team for future consideration.

[...]

We appreciate your commitment to making LinkedIn a stronger community!

It was mostly written in a late night moment of jest, but I do wonder how many others fall into a category like mine. Is Bill Gates on LinkedIn? OK, Bill Gates has been a bit more successful than me, but he’s had a few years headstart.

For those who don’t know me terribly well and aren’t already bored by this post, I’ll fill in some of the mundane details of my life.

As a teenager, I was very interested in computers, and would often stay up very late working on them. I wasn’t interested in games, but communications. One of the first things I did with my new 80286 computer and 1200 baud modem was open my own bulletin board system (BBS), which allowed people to dial my computer up from their computer, using the phone line, and post messages, download files (ironically, usually games), chat (when I was around), and send private messages.

Before the Internet came into popular use, my BBS was a node of FidoNet, a global network that operated across phone lines around the world (my address was 1:340/36).

I also found high school exceptionally boring, so much so that I barely graduated. They’d always enroll me in special classes for smart kids (or smart asses, in my case), but I’m fairly certain I never once applied myself. I had a C- in English 12, due primarily to the fact that classes began at 7:45am, so I missed about a third of them.

After high school I took an operations job with a medical software company and worked my way up the ladder there. I quit after a few years to take Political Science and History in college (I even took an English placement test, which ironically allowed me to skip the first English composition class, despite almost failing English 12). I went for one semester, but was given an opportunity to go back to my previous employer. The offer was for far more than what I might have earned with a PoliSci degree, so I dropped college and went back to work.

In 2000, I made a strategic exit from that company to start my own web company, and have been doing that ever since.

Let me be clear: I am not anti-education. Far from it, I am an enthusiastic supporter! I am often invited as a guest speaker for business students, and often work with people in my community to support the local University. I have a tonne of respect for anybody with an MBA, a Masters Degree, or a Doctorate – they clearly have a hell of a lot more patience than me!

So when people ask about my alma mater, life experience is my response.

BBS, Bill Gates, College Dropout, Education, FidoNet, History, linkedin, Political Science

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Guest Blogging 101

Posted by Paul Holmes in blogging, internet on August 20, 2009

I was recently invited to submit to another blog, to blog on the topic of blogging. This practice has been around for ages, and is generally referred to as Guest Blogging.

I wrote a short article about Feedburner.

Guest blogging is a very interesting concept. On one hand, bloggers are limited by the amount of time they have, so writing content for another blog (that adds value to that other blog) might seem counter-intuitive.

If you blog for fun (and not to try to make millions of dollars), as I mostly do here, this isn’t that big a deal.

There are a couple of benefits to guest-blogging which may not be immediately obvious:

By posting a well-written blog entry, you enhance your reputation as an “expert” or at least a “reliable source”. Certainly you were reliable or expert enough to be trusted by the person who you guest-blogged for.
When that blog content links back to your website, it’s of far greater value from a Search Engine Optimization perspective than yet another link from within your own website. Google, and other search engines, don’t just count the links coming into your site, they look at where they come from, and they look at the context (i.e. which keywords are linked). If you are linked from a highly reputable source, it will enhance your reputation within Google’s Almighty Algorithm™.

There is an excellent Guest Blogger group on LinkedIn to meet with others interested in guest blogging, and to otherwise discuss the concept.

Needless to say, my little experiment isn’t earth-shattering, but it certainly was a great deal of fun.

feedburner, guest blogging, linkedin, reputation, seo

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Smart Business Things To Do On LinkedIn

Posted by Paul Holmes in business, internet, social media on June 12, 2009

Are you serious about business, and not on LinkedIn? I don’t think that’s possible. Get on it!

Once you get on, here’s what you need to do:

Upload your photo. Nothing better than a face to confirm you are the right “John Smith”.
Set up a complete profile. When setting up your profile, in the section where you define your websites, always select “Other”, then name your websites with the search keywords. So, instead of “My Blog”, I use the keywords Social Media Blog to define the link. Instead of “My Website”, I use the keywords Canadian Website Design to define the link to our website design company. This adds search engine value, not to mention a more concise description for people.
Set up a public profile. Click on “Profile” in the menu on the left, then look for “Public Profile” – it is in the second column. Click on “Edit”. Use something memorable, like your name, a common online handle, or your business name (remember, though, it is “permanent”, so if your business name is not “forever”, you should use your name). If you don’t have a personal blog, always use your LinkedIn address when posting comments on blogs and such. This will add search engine value to your LinkedIn page over time, thus raising your profile, and indirectly helping your business.
Find people in your network, and connect with them. LinkedIn has tools to search your existing e-mails to discover people in your existing “real life” network. If you find serious businesspeople who are not on LinkedIn, invite them to join – it’s not spam, it’s a good business decision you are inviting them to enjoy! (Also, they may already be on LinkedIn under a different e-mail address.)
Join Groups. Search through the groups and find some appropriate to your business. If you cannot find a quality group in your business area, make one, and invite people to join. People in Victoria, British Columbia should join the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce, Social Media Club – Victoria Chapter, and VIATeC groups.
After you have connected with people on LinkedIn, look in their networks for their contacts. Chances are you have some mutual contacts you should also connect with.
Recommend people. At least 3, and try to do at least one a month thereafter. The more people you recommend, the more they will recommend you.

business, greater victoria chamber of commerce, linkedin, networking, victoria

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Social Media Binge Article 2: Social Networks

Posted by Paul Holmes in social media on March 17, 2009

For those who missed it (most of the universe), article 1 was on micro-blogging sites. This one will be about social networks.

The idea was to see what was out there beyond FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace – of which, my opinions are published on my blog.

It is worth noting that most of these sites have something equivalent to a micro-blog called status updates, pulses or something else. If you do sign up to more than two or three social media sites, consider using Ping.fm to do your updates. They did not ask me to say so, I am volunteering this because it is really, really useful.

Caveat: If nobody uses these sites, they could be the neatest things in the world, but who cares. Ultimately this is where FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter and MySpace have a massive advantage.

Tip of the Day: If you hate any of the big four, consider joining one of these social media sites just to spite them!

For each network, I’ve listed how many friends I found out of my gmail contact list (about 600 contacts). For comparison, I have about 200 friends on FaceBook (and only add people I have actually met).

Plaxo (7 friends) – I like Plaxo. First of all, 7 of my friends were already on it (which was more than MySpace). The layout is simpler than FaceBook, and the profile page is great. Like FriendFeed, it has the ability to pull in a bunch of your other public social media content (blog entries, micro-blogging, images, etc.), and inserts it into your public profile page. I hope Plaxo catches on.

Friendster (2 friends) – Unlike most of the sites where I found an odd person who happened to have signed up years ago, on Friendster I found a friend who was very actively using this program – 164 friends in her network. I get the feeling that some people really use this network. At first glance, it seems to be a poorly designed FaceBook. But dig a little, and there are some interesting built-in features over and above the standard FaceBook offerings, including classifieds, games, blogs, reviews, and “featured” friends. I think it might actually be the most “feature intensive” social network out there.

Orkut (1 friend) – Google has an offering (experiment) in the social network space as well – shocking, huh. Their micro-blogging program – Jaiku – is way better thank the mediocre Orkut, though. I could not find anything amazingly cool, original or particularly interesting about Orkut, not even the name. (In their defense, it is Beta.) If this catches on, it will be because it is run by Google.

Bebo (0 friends) – If there is one thing in life I want to do, it is to connect with other people so we can talk about the hottest celebs. Well good for Bebo to know what demographic they are targeting (note: not me), and to go after them fairly effectively. Bebo is really pushing for me to find or invite friends, and I really can not think of a good reason to do so.

hi5 (1 friend) – In competition with Bebo for the teen market, I suppose. Features include games and giving “fives” to your friends. There is a “Stats” meter (so you can see how awesome you are compared to everyone else). I’m pretty sure I won’t be frequenting this website very much.

Xanga (0 friends) – I wasn’t entirely sure whether to include this. It is sort of a hybrid between a blog and a social network. It is pretty neat, but sort of a strange animal in the social media jungle.

Yahoo! 360° (0 friends) – One of the disadvantages of having the old search engines get into the social network business is all the legacy baggage that you seem to drag along with you to the new platform. Yahoo! is no exception. While their profile pages are, in my opinion, the best designed, Yahoo! still thinks I live in the UK. Also, Yahoo! has reserved the usernames on their social network for the eventuality of every Yahoo! user ever setting up an account there – thus, getting a decent username on their network is impossible. Hi – I am tpholmes2001, and I live in Dublin. In terms of Features, nothing special here. Ironically, even though Yahoo! owns both, I couldn’t load my Flickr images onto my 360 profile – the option was there, but it didn’t work. (Yahoo! wants you to know that this program is Beta.)

Yuku (0 friends) – You get “kudos” for doing stuff, and can compete in the “hall of fame” with other Yuku social climbers, I suppose. I don’t really get it. I don’t see much else on this site that is terribly exciting. And it appears you cannot update your profile using Ping.fm, so I suspect I won’t be updating my profile here very often. Perhaps I’m missing something.

Tagged (0 friends) – The people who started this website must have learned their trade pushing crack cocaine. I started receiving the weirdest spam right away. People checking me out. Then, finally somebody bought me – how offensive is that. I think this is a website for lonely single people with no lives. I’m not sure. But there is a pretty good (free) poker game on it – if you can wade past all the spam and juvenile nonsense. As for me, I’d rather hang out with the intellectually superior regulars at Bebo or Hi5.

bebo, facebook, friendfeed, friendster, hi5, linkedin, myspace, orkut, ping.fm, plaxo, tagged, xanga, yahoo!, yuku

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Social Media for Business – LinkedIn Wins!

Posted by Paul Holmes in business, social media on February 16, 2009

It seems some prettier graphics were done recently to graphically show a demographic study on social media from July 29, 2008.

While these stats are a little dated, they strongly reinforce what I was saying last week about LinkedIn.

Every businessperson should have a LinkedIn account!

I dug a little deeper into the numbers, and discovered:

Most notably, 10.3% of LinkedIn users are under 25. This compare to 65.5% of MySpace users and 66.3% of FaceBook users. Consider that most successful businesspeople (aggregate) are over 24.
While there are more men then women on LinkedIn (57.9%), this is also true of business (yes, this is changing, but if LinkedIn was launched in 1951, 98.3% of members would be men). But what all the editorial on this study seems to have missed is that the younger the demographic, the more on par the groups become (55% are male in the 25-34 age group; 51% in 18-24). If you consider that females are more likely not to specify their gender, the “Unspecified” column might actually put females in the majority in the budding young entrepreneur age groups (which, we are told, is the way the entrepreneur curve is actually going).

Yes, LinkedIn has far fewer users than FaceBook, MySpace, and probably even Twitter (if Twitter doesn’t have more now, they certainly will by March 3rd at 7:14pm PST).

Yes, LinkedIn is a lowly number 4 by traffic (after Twitter). (And probably destined to fall in the “stats”, I would guess, as other social media networks rise.)

All this said, I would still argue that it is and will remain the dominant force in the best social media niche, “business”. And it’s niche is not “internet business” or “geeky business” – just “business”.

This niche also means it has far more opportunities to become profitable. I doubt FaceBook and MySpace make a profit (yes, even despite the irritable number of ads on MySpace); and Twitter hasn’t even really tried to make money yet.

demographics, linkedin, social media

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Social Network Usage Stats

Posted by Paul Holmes in business, internet, personal, social media on February 11, 2009

I was “tweeted” a fantastic article about social network stats released by compete.com.

There were a few non-surprises in it, however.

First thing, FaceBook has now surpassed MySpace in the U.S. as the number one social network. This should surprise nobody. MySpace had such a terrible reputation that most adults avoided it (I know I did). Now that adults have jumped onto social networks, they have jumped on to FaceBook. I think it’s fair to say we’ve reached “critical mass” there, and FaceBook has won the “generic social network” battle (at least for now).

Non-surprise number two is that Twitter jumped from 22nd to 3rd. Twitter has caught on with lightning speed. I finally took the plunge a few weeks ago, and have quickly become a tweetaholic. First of all the micro-blogging concept is very cool, then there are some neat “viral effects” you can encounter, practically in real-time, and then there are the fancy things you can do with your feed.

Tip #1: Every company out there today should register their twitter.com/their_company_name right now!

This said, I do believe it will level off at some point. This doesn’t mean I think Twitter will completely go away – in fact, it still has tremendous growth ahead. It’s here to stay for a long time, but it will level off in a year or two as the novelty factor subsides. (Of course, who knows what other cool things are just around the corner – either with Twitter or elsewhere, which could easily change the game.)

Non-surprise number three is that LinkedIn jumped from number 9 to number 5. LinkedIn has played a shrewd game of connecting business people. If they maintain that focus, they’ll never be the “catch-all” network, but they will be the defacto “business network”, which, frankly, will give them a far better revenue model for the future than the generic advertising (or, gulp, user-pay) model that FaceBook and Twitter will struggle with for awhile.

Tip #2: Every businessperson should have a LinkedIn account.

I believe the model is already taking shape: people do their friends, family, political, club, and knitting-circle networking on FaceBook, and they do their business networking on LinkedIn. Think to the future, and ask yourself: Do you really want to bother your business associates with pictures of your kid’s graduation?

Go through the rest of the list and check out some of the other sites that are there. Mostly niche stuff, which is cool if you are interested in those niches, I suppose. I’m going to have a bit of a sniff through and report on anything I find that proves interesting.

I am curious about the ranking’s absence of “Social Bookmarking” sites (I presume they didn’t look at these in the same category, which is fair game).

Also, the inclusion of 360.yahoo.com, but no mention of Google or Microsoft (which both have their own Social Networking tools). I suppose Google and Microsoft, because they haven’t changed the URL on their tools, cannot separate out the “search traffic” from the “social networking traffic”, so didn’t quality for the list.

(Note: I would have embedded the classic SNL MySpace skit here, only NBC is so backwards that they don’t have a YouTube channel, and the only site that has it doesn’t stream outside the U.S.)

facebook, linkedin, myspace, social media, twitter

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Social Networking Primer – LinkedIn

Posted by Paul Holmes in business, internet, social media on February 5, 2009

I actually joined LinkedIn before FaceBook, in early 2007. I figured as a “professional”, I needed to join the “professional” social network, and leave FaceBook to the teenagers. I am now of the opinion that BOTH can be useful, personally and professionally.

My focus this week, however, is LinkedIn. As a long-time lingerer on LinkedIn, I was intrigued by some of the features that are now available, and started toying with them a little bit.

My Profile

First thing I did was update my LinkedIn profile. Some of the information was dated, some was poorly written, and some was just wrong.

Tip #1: When selecting your website(s), use the “Other” option. I noticed that the websites under any other categories didn’t show up on your public profile (a LinkedIn bug, perhaps). Furthermore, for search engine optimization, it’s probably better to have a real name as anchor text, versus “My Website” or “My Blog”.

LinkedIn also really pushes this “Profile Completeness” business, which they define as follows:

Your current position (easy)
Two past positions (this makes sense for people who remember you from…)
Your education (this is embarassing)
Your profile summary (write one, and write it well, think about keywords)
A profile photo (I now use the same one on FaceBook, LinkedIn and Twitter)
Your specialties (write it well, think about keywords)
At least three recommendations

Recommendations

I wrote a recommendation for one of my connections; it’s pretty easy. With 41 other connections, I shouldn’t have a problem writing a dozen more. Don’t have 41 contacts? Find them by searching (LinkedIn will mine your email account for you). Once you have a connection, check their connections. Never add people you don’t know, but I’m always surprised at how many I do know!

I also requested recommendations from others. I considered the following when requesting:

Is my contact a well-known, trusted contact?
Are they skilled at writing?
Will they do it out of the goodness of their heart?

Consider also that writing good recommendations not only gives a boost to your client or colleague, but also draws attention on their profile to your profile. Furthermore, if you write a nice recommendation, they may just be inspired enough to write one about you!

Applications and Geeky Stuff

As a computer geek, I wanted to know what sort of RSS stuff I could do. Not much, apparently. Forget about Twitter and FaceBook tie-ins (the competition, I suppose).

What I did manage to do is create a fancy link on my contact page.

Also, I managed to pull my WordPress blog (this one) into my LinkedIn profile page (the “Full Profile” only). This was one of 10 applications they list on their site. I suspect there are more cool features like this to come.

Groups

Next, it was on to “Groups”.

Every time I added a contact, I’d end up defaulting to some “easy” connection option (like “Friend”), when in fact it didn’t define them particularly well. I realized that most of my connections come from some existing group or another. But LinkedIn doesn’t let you just type the name of your group in your invitation, you actually have to select an “existing”, registered LinkedIn group.

That got me thinking. At least a dozen of my connections are contacts through the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce. But they had no group. So, I e-mailed the Chamber and asked if I could set up a group for them, and they didn’t have an issue. That was the hard part.

Tip #2: You must have image files for your group. They don’t explain what they are for, so I will. When setting up a group, make the 100×50 logo a small but complete “official” logo with name, and the 60×30 logo the image only (the name always appears next to the image file on LinkedIn, and 60×30 is way too small to read anything from). Another issue with the group logos is that LinkedIn sometimes has a blue blackground and sometimes white. We went with a white background (which means it looks bad when the blue one comes up).

Premium Membership

I had a look at the “Premium” membership options with a serious consideration of paying for extras. I discovered that they start at US$24.95 per month. I think this might be a good idea for “hard-core networkers”, but I’ll give it a pass for now.

That’s all I have on LinkedIn for now. Stay tuned for more Social Networking Primers to come.

business, facebook, greater victoria chamber of commerce, internet, linkedin, networking, search engine optimization, social media

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