SparkleTags

Jonathan Mac asked:


The Internet which is considered as the world’s largest library is also used for absolute communication. National borders aren’t even speed bumps on the information superhighway. The rapid growth of the Internet through recent years is because of the intensification of social networking websites. These social networking websites are welcomed by people from teens to businessmen.

Social Networking among Teens

The social networking websites are given a warm welcome by teens because of the easiness to get new friends online. Repots indicate that teens are using the Internet extensively to communicate with each other through the social networking websites. Social networking is booming as teens could share their ideas, post comments, upload photos, and share the information about the latest happenings in their world and so on through them. Social networking websites like myspace, friendster, and facebook has become socially acceptable among majority of teens.

Social Networking among Advertisers

Social networking websites are also welcomed by advertisers around the globe. For example, the famous social networking website, myspace generates over $1 billion as advertising revenue. There is nothing to wonder why these websites draw many advertisers. These social networking websites have the ability to draw the attention of a massive audience and hard to reach young consumers. And this is what advertisers are looking for. Moreover, social networks are able to target advertising based on the profile of the consumers.

Social Networking among Business

Nowadays, businessmen consider the social networking websites like myspace as opportunities to promote their business. As the web traffic in social networking websites are high, these businessmen have a higher chance of building web presence than the competitor who is not utilizing these methods. The next important reason why people use these social networking websites for business promotion is because of their ability to build effective backlinks. With a little patience and persistence one can utilize the social networking websites like myspace to build web traffic and sales.

Social Networking websites for all

The recent growth of social networking websites has grabbed the attention of web designers also. The professional web designers around the globe design social networking websites based on one’s need. These experienced social networking web designers are capable of creating stunning networking websites for different uses. It means that you can even own a social networking website like myspace with the help of these web designers.

However the social networking websites added to the growth of the Internet. More people spend more time in using the Internet than ever before. Communication has never been easier than at present. All these changes are seen because of the rapid growth of the social networking websites.



Content

Joseph Pratt asked:


It came up conversationally, but I believe I’m the only person at my company to have firsthand experience as a user of Facebook.com. It was kind of funny to have all these online advertising professionals asking me all about the website everybody used in college. Didn’t they get the memo? I’m new. I should be asking the questions around here. The subject of Facebook.com is an interesting one that’s worth a closer look.

Without question 2005 was the year of MySpace. Before Rupert Murdoch’s $580 million social networking venture took the interactive world by storm, it’s difficult to believe that even the most optimistic of the billionaire’s lackeys would have predicted that new acquisition would more than quadruple its reach within a matter of months. With 23.5 billion page views by February, MySpace became the second most trafficked site on the Internet.

Murdoch’s success naturally generated buying interest in anything deemed online social networking. One proposed deal in March 2006, was Viacom’s unsuccessful $750 million bid for Facebook.com, the phenomenon started by wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg. After Facebook.com declined the offer, its founders pegged Facebook.com’s worth at two billion dollars. Perhaps the brilliant sparks from MySpace’s success has blinded Facebook.com to the flipside reality of Friendster’s paradise lost. There’s a real chance Facebook won’t see an offer this generous again.

Facebook.com is essentially an online medium of communication for college students and high schoolers. For its valued reach Zuckerberg and his crew of Harvard dropouts (taking their cue from Bill Gates, no doubt) must be looking for Google-sized compensation, but the two billion dollar figure is arbitrary and difficult to justify. Perhaps Facebook is emboldened by their own wise decision in not selling to Yahoo for $15 million in 2004.

Zuckerberg was likely trying to establish a market value for his creation, not an unwise move on the face of things. However, Viacom’s offer was not by any stretch of the imagination pocket change and the number of entities that can and will double the bid Facebook already got is finite.

Facebook’s traffic numbers, as referenced on Alexa.com, during the last three months are not encouraging; that is, if the goal is to fish for more and greater buyout bids. The numbers actually have trended downward since March, anathema for enticing hyper bidding growth. These diminishing statistics can be at least partially attributed to the cyclical nature of the school year since Facebook, after all, is geared towards the college student. It doesn’t matter how great the product is, it won’t keep students from doing their own thing during summer vacation and this yearly dip is potentially damaging.

Seeing as how fast online fads can expand and contract in social networking as we’ve seen in its short time span, what if the numbers don’t come back? What if something new pops up in two months that steals Facebook’s thunder? (And, again, MySpace’s success serves as good reason why this thunder is worth stealing.)

Facebook.com’s success has also been marred with some controversy that could taint its popularity with students. At Syracuse University a flap over freedom of expression ensued when a Facebook.com group went overboard in critiquing a student teacher and ended up with expulsions from the class and social suspension before three students transferred. After Penn State’s football team beat Ohio State this year students rushed the field and made a ruckus. Overwhelmed police made only two arrests that day, but later in the week they logged onto Facebook.com and, like Canadian Mounties who always get their man, got plenty of names and faces and photos from the info posted by students about their on-field shenanigans. Kids talk and these stories spread like wildfire, which may affect Facebook.com negatively – they can’t control misuse of their product and the negative repercussions that come from it.

The future is promising for the social networking business space and I don’t believe Facebook.com is doomed. Still, given the nature of short-lived and over-hyped dotcoms, Facebook may have reached their growth climax this school year, with possibility for expansion and success only contingent on acquisition. Time may not be on their side because as the pages of the calendar turn there will doubtlessly be new fads and trends that will threaten to m



Content

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.



Content for WordPress