Social Media and #Job hunting

We’re hiring new staff….woohoo! This means I’m in business for checking out all those fresh candidates online!
How does your online life match with your curriculum vitae? I found it very important to make shure that the on-line matches the off-line. This way I get a complete 360°view on the candidate.

So where do you/we start?
Off course the curriculum vitae (CV)…where a fresh candidate shows his life, status, education, experience, ….
Next up checking the online versions….are they corresponding? Depending on the job opening I found it very interesting to see how the candidates interact and present themselves online.  If you’re hiring a social media manager (f.i.), he can present you a great resume, but when his own private social media plan is the opposite of what your company wants, you might want to think again about hiring this guy! A conversation manager should be about open, positive and professional communication…So when the candidate’s profile is completely sealed with the highest privacy levels, I don’t think he’s matching the profile. He isn’t able of being a social media manager for is own account, let alone for a business account!

So huge tip: make shure your online profile is matching your off-line, and use social media to your advantage.
LinkedIn and Facebook are cool tools to build an online CV. Use the correct privacy settings on Facebook, to show you can manage a Facebook profile professionally. Make shure to show and hide the right pictures to your future employe. If you claim to be sportive, make shure your Facebook profile shows a few pictures. Education, working experience need to be shared not hidden…show it, build references through those channels!

Second tip: add online content to your off-line CV. Please exist online, don’t play dead in the flat world!
Use Slideshare uploads, YouTube movies, own website, blog, QR codes to pimp your off-line CV! It’s important to share knowledge these days, so why not share your knowledge…creative commons, you know?! Add more content and insights to your 4 page resume! Make shure your future employer gets to know you!

When I’m hiring, I’m looking for an online profile which matches the off-line CV and has knowledge to share, and doesn’t hold back on information. If you’re hiding information, or falsely pimping your CV, we’ll probably track it down through the on-line channels…always awkard when this happens!
Hopefully I inspired you to build a viral on/off-line CV for your next job!

#Socialnomics 2011

We know how it all started…
“Did you know?” movies on YouTube, and then the big breakthrough of the Erik Qualman vid on Socialnomics in addition to his to be published book. Since then numbers have changed…for instance if Facebook would be a country it would be the 3th largest on this planet. The web evolves so fast that every number in a movie is already outdated even on the publishing date…but then again it’s a nice visualisation of the socialnomics world!

Now here’s an updated version for 2011 with new interesting numbers enclosed!

It’s a pity that the music of the first vid isn’t re-used. Fat boy Slim really gave the movie a drive and feel…the new music doesn’t push it so much!
But then again it’s about the content, not the music!

 

The Cost of Social Media

The social media fad is gone, social media is here to stay…but if you look around and ask who is using it business wise, few will raise their hand. Reasons differ: I don’t know how to use it (properly), I don’t need social media presence (shame to even think this in 2011), … and what does this cost me and what are my net benefits?

Off course I don’t have an accurate answer, but I can tell you social media doesn’t come for free (at little cost, or little time). The next infograph (click it to see it in full!) shows different costs and generated benefits!

Always keep in mind: staff costs, external costs (building stuff you can’t do in-house), advertising (as part of the social media campaign) and others!
While main benefits often don’t mention a sales increase….but in my opinion still worth while since consumer satisfaction and engagement will probably mean more sales (as a second wave!)

Interesting Times – Skype, Cloud, AVOS

Again 2011 is an exiting year for online (social) media…roumours of a new bubble, take-overs, new players, ….

You probably read it, heard it, … tweeted about it…but Microsoft has taken over Skype for a staggering $8.5 Bio. Giving the former owner eBay a huge return on investment. But why did Microsoft want to buy Skype? Microsoft needed a glue between his different components regarding video, voice and sharing technologies. Skype will probably be embedded and integrated in different Microsoft applications like Hotmail, outlook, live, … but will also enter the living room through the kinetic and Xbox. This means that online communication, video conferencing, phone calls, .. just entered millions of living rooms, and become accessible for a whole new audience. (And off course Google did get it….yes competition is always around in the flat world.)

The huge amount, $8.5 bio, again starts discussion about a possible (social media) internet bubble.  LinkedIn also is hoping to collect $3.3 bio through an IPO later this month.  If you know LinkedIn has only got 1/13 or $250 mio on revenues…you just wonder. How and why would they want to collect so much money? But with this IPO out, LinkedIn is the first social media company who officially (over)values his assets, technology, …. I’m not investing, since Facebook is aiming at the professional market as well, and therefore LinkedIn will get into troubled times.

Avos is a completely different story…2 of the original entrepreneurs of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, are again entering the social media world. First with the acquisition of Delicious from yahoo, and just yesterday with the take over of Tap11 an analytics platform…and what’s next! It’s for shure that the sky is again the limit for those boys…intergrating bookmarks and analytics is probably the first step into an integrated service they want to offer their customer. There will probably be a good insight on customer added value to be reached through a combination of this services. As they write in their press-release: “create the world’s best platform for users to save, share, and discover new content” Which content is a bit flew right now, but wait and see….to be continued!

After Amazon Google launched it’s cloud player this week….we all know cloud is the future of storage and access, but I didn’t Amazon and Google to be the first companies offering this services… I was convinced Apple would be the first mover, but Amazon has first mover advantage, and even had a back door open to integrate the Amazon Cloud on iOS devices today. I’m looking out for the Apple move on this…will they be able to beat the first mover?

Interesting Times, and for sure to be continued !

The Future of Business = media content

I found a cool presentation on the future of business. Gerd Leonhard, a media futurist and author, gives an insight on how business will develop in the near future. His knowledge and insights on the incorporation of new media is sparkling.

He talks about the network society where people are empowerment of the people. In the network society DATA are the new OIL, and business will need to develop interconnected business models. We are therefore in search for the future of digital content.I’ll share this slide with you….the rest is for you to find out during his presentation!

This Youtube link show the supporting presentation from Gerd Leonhard at ictQATAR.

Inspired by Gerd Leonhard.

Time for a new flat statement: Data is the new oil

Digital Europe in numbers – Trends are confirmed!

Comscore launched it annual report on digital and online Europe.  Free to download at their website!

But for those who are only interested in the hard facts and figures, I made a summary of the most important numbers.

• Europe is becoming more and more engaged in social media
  87,7% of the Europeans is engaged in social media (+10,9% over 1 year time!). 
  When Europeans are online they spend most of their time on social media, and mostly on Facebook (11,7% of the online time is Facebook time). Facebook mostly suppresses local social media initiatives like Hi5 (Portugal) and StudiVZ (Germany). When we look at online usage we see less instant chatting and e-mailing in the 15-34 category, while 35+ keeps on using e-mail (there is even +6% growth in this age category regarding mail use).

• Coupon sales are rising rapidly
  Not as big as in the US, but the hype is comming…As already posted!
  We see Groupon taking a large market share on coupon sales, but this is the trend to follow for 2011!

• Advertising on/through social network is booming business
  We see a significant rise in online advertising through social media.  This will also keep on growing through the next years

Besides these hard facts, the reports shows that 2011 will be the year were Mobile will step in and play a more important role into our society. And it’s important to see, which online tool young people are using (15-34 ), they are making the future trends!
In combination with the social media growth, this is and will be the challenge for business to deal with!

(graphics taken from the Comscore report)

Previously…updated

Check out the flat world education section!
The previously section has recieved a big update. The 10 flatteners are updated with all kind of video and there’s a section added in which I try to get a bird’s eye on defining Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0!

Most certainly in the last section I need you’re help! Please add more sources on with definitions on Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0!
If you have examples of sites for each of these Web – Forms, please add them to in your comments!

(For the students at FHV this is a task! More about that in the assignments – still to come – !)