Archive for category social media
It’s been a little while…
Posted by Dan Hall in social media on December 11, 2008
since my last post. I needed a little motivation, so I took advantage of a great plug-in app on LinkedIn that shows my recent WordPress blog posts. It also shows when they were posted. I am quite ashamed of myself, but I am a big believer of transparency as motivation.
Is there any doubt Social Media is changing the world – how we do business, how we interact, how learn, how we live?
I just embedded a presentation about Visible Technologies on LinkedIn. It was created with Microsoft PowerPoint and uploaded from Google Docs (signed in with my Yahoo! email). I shared this presentation with one of my (much smarter than me) co-workers so he could edit it as a collaborator – just in case.
And now you might be reading this post on my profile. Wow.
Dan Hall
Seattle Human Resources Manager
Mark Zuckerberg Says Facebook Connect Is the Future
Posted by Dan Hall in Open Social, social media on July 28, 2008
Read an interesting article where the CEO of Facebook discusses their take on the future of the social web ( a direct competitor to Google’s OpenSocial platform). OpenSocial has had some challenges out of the gate including it’s first application being quickly hacked in just 45 minutes.
Mark Zuckerberg discussed the evolution of the social network through Connect and, presumably, similar services such as Google Friend Connect and MySpace Data Availability.The goal of all these initiatives is to make the Web more open and social. Check out Zuckerberg’s response:
“Social applications are going to start [to] decentralize a bit more. Instead of just having a few big social networks like we’ve had over the last five or six years that are basically just these large communities that have a few applications that they’ve built themselves inside, what we’re going to see is that they are going to split up into more, different types of social applications. “
Without a doubt social advertising and network portability will be a certainity of the web in the near future. It will be interesting to see who comes out on top. From a personal standpoint the social networking sites most appealing to me have adopted the OpenSocial platform. Facebook does have the Monolithic Microsoft on their side, but unfortunately I am not sure if that is help or hinderance nowadays.
Dan Hall
Seattle’s Social Human Resources Manager
What is OpenSocial All About?
Posted by Dan Hall in Open Social, social media on July 27, 2008
Joseph Smarr from Plaxo does a great job describing out how it all works in one presentation:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SYnlH5FXz0&eurl=http://sites.google.com/site/io/opensocial-openid-and-oauth-oh-my]
You can view the slides used in the presentation here.
The future of the web is social, there will be no differentiation between the web and the social web. Facebook is working on a social web application platform as well in direct competition to Google’s OpenSocial, more on this tomorrow.
Dan Hall
Seattle’s Social Human Resources Manager
Re: When recruiters tell you the opposite of what you are looking for
Posted by Dan Hall in Startups, recruiting, social media on July 5, 2008
A friend of mine who is connected within the Seattle Startup community, sent me this post by Marcelo Calbucci on the Seattle 2.0 blog discussing the frustrations and shortcomings that Startup Managers have of recruiting agencies in general.
I felt compelled to respond, having gone through a similar process, while recruiting for my Company as an internal Seattle HR Manager.
My response is below:
I am the Recruiting and HR Manager for a Social Media startup in Seattle. In the past six months I have personally recruited dozens of employees.
Being in-house, I have a distinct advantage because:
1. I passionately care about the future and well-being of my Company.
2. I recognize that I am the first person a potential candidate hears outlining my Company and our products. I take that responsibility very seriously. If I am not passionate to be here why would a candidate? People want to work at a Company people are passionate about; this gives me a huge advantage over some of those Companies you listed in your post.
3. A lot of candidates don’t use recruiters, nor care to. I work with contingent recruiters and recruiting agencies at times. There are some good recruiting agencies out there but most only try to fill the req and don’t have a large stake in the fit.
4. Recruiting agencies rarely (and I mean rarely) go below 20% placement fee structures. Their candidates better be 20% better than anyone I can source (which is not a normal occurrence – again I know the culture and fit of my Company and evangelize it passionately).
If you plan on hiring more than 5 or 6 employees in a year, do yourself a favor and hire a good fulltime HR and
Recruiting Manager, not only you will get better candidates, but you will also reduce liability (which there is, and don’t kid yourself, a lot from a HR standpoint), and save money.
Plus every candidate who doesn’t get a job, now knows our Company from someone who loves it and they have a positive lasting, impression, which has cascading effects in the long term.
Dan Hall
Seattle Human Resources Manager
Confessions of an Open Networker
Posted by Dan Hall in Adding Value, Open Networking, social media on April 9, 2008
I read a good post by Scott Allen labelled Confessions of an Open Networker that included some musings and thoughts from a self-professed “notorious” Open Networker.
I think it does a good job summarizing the diminishing value that this practice can return while providing some tips on how to maximize the utility of your social network.
Using Social Media in Human Resources Management
Posted by Dan Hall in Human Resource Practices, social media on April 8, 2008
Read an article that discusses Blocking Social Media Sites at the Workplace .
My company is probably one of the few that will never block social media websites, primarily because we provide social media monitoring, analysis, and engagement tools for Fortune 500 companies.
Being a Human Resources Manager, these are are also important sites when conducting employee reference and background checks. I also use LinkedIn extensively not only for recruiting but also for professional social networking. LinkedIn has established itself as the premier professional social networking site. I don’t find much professional use for YouTube, Myspace, or Facebook although I have seen an increasing number of companies creating MySpace profiles especially if they are targeting a young adult / teen demographic.
There is increasing discussion around the legality of using social media websites when conducting background checks. You need to be very careful about disqualifying candidates because of what they posted on these types of sites. More on this topic to follow.
Hey! I didn’t know Open Networking Groups had Fine Print…
Posted by Dan Hall in Adding Value, Open Networking, social media on April 7, 2008
Imagine my surprise when I learned that Open Networking Groups actually have fine print. Once again, someone I don’t know sent an invitation to join their network on LinkedIn, which is fine. I don’t have anything personally against Open Networking. From a professional standpoint, I don’t believe this practice adds much value to my personal brand or my social network and therefore don’t participate in such behavior.
However, I am ever curious about people’s online social networking behavior so I studied the requestor’s profile and followed a link or two.
Here is a snipped of what I stumbled across from TopLinked.Com:
Did you receive an “I Don’t Know”?
Everyone who participates in TopLinked.com has agreed to never mark a LinkedIn connection invitation as “I Don’t Know” or “Flag as Spam” – if they do not wish to accept an invitation, they should instead just simply click the “Archive” button (or ask to be removed from TopLinked.com via an email sent to: toplinked@gmail.com)
If you come across someone who violates this agreement, please first contact them directly, remind them of this rule, and see if they are willing to remedy the situation.
If they are then unresponsive or unwilling to resolve the problem, please be sure to let us know via email: toplinked@gmail.com (thanks!)
Tips: To stay safe, only invite people by clicking over from the listings on this site and then look for BOTH the TopLinked.com group logo (the same as the logo of this site) AND the TopLinked.com wording displayed properly on their profile. That provides three levels of assurance that they are active TopLinked.com networkers who understand and play by the rules. It is also a good idea to mention TopLinked.com in your connection invitations to TopLinked.com people and remind them of the TopLinked.com rules.
We cannot help you if you receive an invitation from someone who is not officially part of TopLinked.com – and someone is officially part of TopLinked.com ONLY if they are linked to from this site or are part of the TopLinked.com group on LinkedIn.”
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Whodahthunkit. They have fine print afterall.
Adding Value to Social Media Sites and Your Network
Posted by Dan Hall in Adding Value, Open Social, social media on March 31, 2008
Why are current Social Network sites’ accessibility controlled a simple switch – an on and off switch of permissibility if you will? The major players in the field MySpace, Facebook, even LinkedIn – all have a common theme in whether or not you deem this person a connection / friend or not. If you do they have access to you – your information, pictures, posts in some cases or in others just communicating or networking with you (adding value to the network).
Is that old acquaintance from high school that you haven’t talked to in 5 years on par with your boss at work? Should they be given the same accessibility into your social network, your social media life as it is.
What about business partners who are at odds with each other, do you want them to see each other as mutual connections? What about the functionality of sharing more personal photos – such as your wedding pictures to your close friends but not to your co-workers?
Why do we use professional social networking sites for your professional connections but Facebook for your more peronably friend and why do they not overlap at all – it is your life and network isn’t it?
There should be an overarching social networking platform that address these issues. The Economist had a good article addressing the closed social media worlds based on proprietary standards and their historical precedents of AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy (is history doomed to repeat itself?).
Social media websites should be as easy to setup as blogs and they continuing will exist if there is enough of a demographic who is passionate about the space to add enough value to warrant its existence. Social Media is a digital world shaping movement. The monetary prize in online ads which have fueled many of the big buyouts may be debatable in terms of future viability also discussed in the Economist, but the utility of Social Media is undeniable.
It is our networks, our lives that add value to Social Media not the proprietary systems that give us the platforms to connect. Sooner or later open social and digital portability will gain enough movement to achieve this and Social Media and the Internet will never be seperate again.
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