social networking
9 Social Media Aggregators to Simplify Your Online Life
“Out of clutter, find Simplicity. From discord, find Harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” — Albert Einstein, scientist
At times Social Networking can be a bit confusing, it seems like every day there is a hot new site popping up. For those of you who use Social Media as a way to leverage your job search and professional networking it is easy to get lost in the sea of social media. If your Internet browser looks anything like mine you have at least 20 open tabs, most of them pointing to different social networking sites. This makes it extremely difficult to keep an organized job search or manage your career.
As a job seeker or someone looking to stay active in your career development, staying busy on the many social networking sites is a key part in your daily activities. Social Media Aggregators allow you to do this in an organized and simple way.
For job seekers or those who are just looking to have a networked career, social media aggregators:
- Provide one entry point to connect with all your contacts
- Allow you to run custom searches on all your social network sites and have them feed into one place
- Give you the ability to filter your contacts – separate professional contacts and personal contacts into specific groups
- Expand your reach
- Provide convenience to you network – Many of these applications give you a single URL to use in your networking. It saves those looking at your profiles time because they just have to go to one site to get all your information
- Keep you in contact and allow you to make new contacts with those in your field
- Are a one-stop shops for letting all your professional contacts know what you are up to, if you are looking for a job it makes it easier for you to broadcast it out to your networks.
- Allow you to find and get involved in meaningful conversation that might lead you to your next job
Here is a list of some programs that will aide you as job seeker or someone looking to maintain your career networking through social media:
1. Seesmic – A well-known and commonly used application, Seesmic offers users the comfort of combining their
Facebook and Twitter accounts into one simple desktop application. If you use your social media accounts to network both professionally and personally, you can create groups and filter your contacts by business and personal. You can also run custom Twitter searches for topics of your choice. Say you want to get information on a company that interests you, if you type in the company name in the custom search you will be able to see a live feed that is updated every time that company name is mentioned on Twitter.
2. Tweetdeck – Is another popular application that mashes up your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Similar to
Seesmic, Tweetdeck can be downloaded to your desktop and will allow you to:
- Tweet directly from TweetDeck and share photos or web links
- Manage conversations with @replies and direct messages
- Create Groups to easily follow friends, colleagues or other interest groups
- Follow topics in real-time with saved searches
- Update Facebook and view your friends’ status updates
3. Swimwire - Swimwire is an online social media aggregator that brings all of your networking sites together. By 
creating a free account it saves you the time and energy of having to visit multiple sites to get updates and protects you against missing out on career opportunities. You can connect and send messaged to all your Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, Classmates, Bebo, Twitter, etc., accounts all in one place. One key benefit to Swimwire is that you can search for contacts right from their site, see all the sites those contacts are on and connect with them without having to do a search on each different social media site.
4. FriendFeed – Recently purchased by Facebook for $50 Million, Friendfeed is a great tool for combining all your 
social media accounts together. A social networking site in its own, you can subscribe and connect with other FriendFeed users. It’s fast and easy to start a conversation around shared items or topics of interest. FriendFeed allows you to:
- Subscribe to updates from individuals and groups, such as a team of people you work with or wish to work with.
- Contribute to a shared stream of public information for all FriendFeed users to see. Allowing you to get your name out there for others to see.
- Add most of the popular social media sites to your feed. FriendFeed combines all of your different social networks into a single feed, making yourself easier to follow, or make it easier to follow others.c
5. Lifestream.fm – Lifestream.fm is a media and social aggregator that will keep you and your professional contacts
informed about what you’re doing. Lifestream.fm allows you to put your profiles and online activity, making it easy for your friends to see your newest bookmarks, your favorite videos, your tweets, photos you’ve uploaded, your newest blog posts, and more. Rather than listing all your different social media accounts on your resume or online profiles you can just list your Lifestream.fm URL. It saves those you are networking with the trouble of having to visit all those sites to find out about you. Here are some of the sites they support:
6. Digsby – Digsby is a social networking tool that works through instant messaging. It alerts you of events like ne
w email messages and gives you live constant newsfeeds from your social networking sites. These updates are shown as a popup message on your desktop. Digsby is also a multiprotocol IM client that lets you chat with all your connections on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber.
7. Ping.fm – Ping.fm allows you to post updates to your social media accounts from your mobile phone, IMs, email,
and third party apps. It accepts text and images and soon will even accept videos. Supporting over 40 social networking sites Ping.fm makes it easy to update your accounts through their straight forward posting methods and advanced custom triggers.
8. Chi.mp – Chi.mp is a content hub and identity management platform that gives you your own domain and Web 
site – your social hub. With chi.mp, you can bring together the many pieces of your digital life – your content, your contacts – to create Centralized You, and you control “who sees what”. By using Chi.mp you can:
- Create a free domain name, OpenID and Website to share in your daily networking
- Create a rich profile with tiered privacy settings, allowing you to choose who gets to see what
- Manage all of your contacts with the Ultimate Black Book
- Import content and services from the Web
- Publish and push your content
- Export your contacts and content at any time
12 Reputation Management Tools to Track Your Name
As a professional, building and keeping up a good reputation could bring you those career opportunities and advancements you have always dreamed of. Unfortunately, over the last 10 years the skyrocketing success of the Internet and social media means you need to monitor your reputation more closely. You can spend your whole life building up that notoriety and in 5 minutes it could be lost. Negative comments and information can show up in search results, in forums, in blogs, in online videos and in your social networking profiles.
There are hundreds of tools out there that allow you to track and monitor your reputation. These are some of the top programs I found that monitor all your general Internet coverage. Come back the rest of this week to see programs specific to Twitter, Facebook and Linkedn.
- TrackUR – Trackur is a social media-monitoring tool. It is a paid service that tracks what is said about you on
the internet by scanning millions of web pages–including news, blogs, video, images, and forums. It will then let you know if it discovers anything that matches the keywords that interest you. 
- Reputation Defender – For $14.95 per month Reputation Defender allows you to review everything that’s available about you online, on both the open Internet and the ‘Invisible Web’. If there is unwanted content about you on the Internet, their team works to remove it. You receive a monthly report that defines your up to date online reputation.
BuzzDing – BuzzDing offers a free trial to try out its services and then you are charged a monthly fee. By entering keywords you are able to track and find potentially embarrassing social media content. From the results of your keyword search you can filter mentions, organize into projects, flag items, and add notes to keep track of what’s been said and who said it. - Trendrr – Trendrr offers a free or paid membership, that allows you to track real-time social media mentions.
You can choose from over 40 top social media and online services for keywords that you input. - Social Mention – Social Mention is a free tracking tool that allows you to easily track what
people are saying about you across the web and social media landscape in real-time. It monitors 80+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google and sends you a daily email update. - Yacktrack Chatter - YackTrack is Chatter is a keyword search for social media sites. This allows you to see
“chatter” on various sites that talk about a specific keyword. So if you are looking for mentions of your name, you just enter it in the Chatter search box and click the “Find Chatter” button. 
- Filtrbox – Filtrbox allows you to see what others are saying about you on Twitter, social networks, blogs and thousands of online news outlets. By signing up for their service and setting up a search you will receive daily email updates
- Rapleaf.com – By creating an account with Rapleaf you can discover the information about yourself that is available on the internet and manage your internet footprint.
- Google Alerts – Google Alerts allows you to put in a keyword and receive an email every time those keywords are discovered
- Yahoo Alerts – Similar to Google Alerts, Yahoo Alerts sends you an alert whenever your keyword pops up in
a search. It gives you’re the option of receiving alerts by Yahoo Messenger or even via SMS.
- Windows Live Alerts – Live Alerts is Microsoft’s alerts service that is similar to Google and Yahoo. Like Yahoo you can receive your alerts through Email, Instant Messenger or SMS text.
- TinEye - TinEye is a reverse image search engine. You can submit an image to TinEye
to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions. TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks. You can upload an image of yourself and make sure it is not being used anywhere else.
Sr. Product Manager – Social Technology Group
Job ID: BE226635
Job Title: Sr. Product Manager – Social Technology Group
Salary: Open DOE
Location: Northern California
Job Description:
Our client is looking for a bright, passionate product manager to help them develop next generation TV and unified communications applications that will be used by millions of consumers. This role offers the best of both worlds: the agility of a small company and the deep resources and broad market reach of a large company.
Responsibilities:
- will champion products from conception to launch
- will produce detailed product requirements and user flows
- will present product proposals and influence others on product direction
- will balance user experience, technical feasibility, and schedule requirements
- will deliver and evolve products through aggressive, iterative releases
- will define, track, and improve key product metrics
- will assist executive team on strategic direction and prioritization
Qualifications:
- must have 4+ years product management experience in the consumer web space (video experience is a plus)
- must have advanced usage of social networking products
- must have a diplomatic and persuasive style of communication
- must have a proven track record of leadership, teamwork, and quantifiable results
- must have experience working in a dynamic, agile development environment
- must have a BS/BA degree in a technical field
To apply for this position please click here to send your resume
Diggin for Dirt – 10 Employer Rating/Review Sites
Did you know Tommy Flanagan invented Rock and Roll? Or at least that’s what he wanted everyone to believe. Incase you aren’t familiar with old Saturday Night Live skits, Tommy Flanagan a.k.a. “The Pathological Liar” was a character played by John Lovitz, who told lies about his achievements and accomplishments in life as a way to make himself seem more important.
If you are a hiring manager you know how exhausting and tedious the interview process can be. First your inbox gets flooded with resumes that you have to mine through and find the ones that might be a match for your open position, and then you have to call all those candidates and either give them a phone screen or invite them in for an interview. Depending on your hiring process you go through 2-3 rounds of interviews to find the one who will be your next rockstar. Before you make the offer you call up their references and run a background check. It turns out your so-called “rockstar” created a fake resume and lied about his or her experience.
Click to continue reading “Diggin for Dirt – 10 Employer Rating/Review Sites”
Conduct Your Job Search With TwitterJobSearch
As you probably know by now, Social Networking and Social Media sites are an absolute must when conducting a job search, but how to fully utilize these sites to meet your specific search needs is completely up to the features of that site. Third party applications are created as a way to assist you and make the sites easier to navigate and find information. TwitterJobSearch is an example of one of these applications.
There is so much information and knowledge flowing through Twitter, and if you are following a good amount of people you may miss an important post about a job that is just what you are looking for. TwitterJobSearch goes beyond the normal Twitter search engine and mines the site for actual context, not just words.
To better understand how the site works for jobseekers, here is some information on the process that goes on in the back-end:
- Software tools and algorithms are used to identify Tweets that mention job vacancies with posting links embedded in them
- The software then visits the link that is included in the Twitter post
- Another layer is added to the context of the tweet so jobseekers have an easier way of finding it
Sound like gibberish to you? Don’t worry about it, all the work that goes on behind the scene creates a very easy to navigate application.
In order to view Tweet streams in Twitter, you have to create an account. TwitterJobSearch eliminates that. If you go to TwitterJobSearch.com you will see a page that looks like this:
Click to continue reading “Conduct Your Job Search With TwitterJobSearch”
College students HAVE to use Twitter
So unless you’ve been completely separated from the media lately, you’ve probably heard of Twitter. You might not be a user. You might not even understand what it means or what’s the point of it. But you’ve heard of it. For those of you that don’t know, Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging tool where you can communicate with others through a maximum of 140-characters. The basic premise of Twitter is to tell your friends (followers) what you are doing, but as anyone that’s a user knows, it’s much more than that. Twitter gives you the ability to connect and chat with people that you otherwise would have never been in touch with. For example, the other day, Newt Gingrich actually replied to a question that I had asked him, and famous people like Shaq, Ashton Kutcher, and Lance Armstrong (just to name a few) are active users that have conversations and reply to people all the time. But this is just the beginning.
The thing about Twitter is that it’s a great example of the saying “the more you put in, the more you’ll get out”. If you sign up for a Twitter account and never update your status, and don’t follow people that interest you, then it becomes a useless service for you. But if you take an active approach to constantly update your status, if you follow people that seem genuinely interesting, and you start and maintain conversations with other Tweeters then you will find that Twitter is a great service. And the best part is that it will only get better as more and more people create accounts, thereby creating more value for the entire user base.
Now that’s all great, but how will this benefit a college student? I’ve included a list of a number of different reasons for why I think every college student should create an account on Twitter.
Click to continue reading “College students HAVE to use Twitter”
Not All is Grim – Hot Companies That Are Still Hiring
Clearly this is a very difficult time in our economy, but contrary to what the media might have you believe, not all is grim. BINC is working with a number of forward-thinking companies that are still innovating and hiring and we wanted to make sure to share these opportunities with you.
If you are interested in talking with us about any of the below opportunities or if you’re working for a company that is actively looking to grow please contact boris at bincsearch dot com with a little blurb about what you are ideally interested in and we will do everything in our power to help out.
Of course if timing isn’t right for you, please do what you can to help make the world go round by forwarding this post to your network of friends and colleagues. You never know who you may be helping out with this one small gesture. Thanks in advance and we look forward to hearing from you!!
Bay Area
Search
- Innovative Search Giant is looking for Sr. Scientists/Engineers to join their world-renowned Search Lab in Mid-Peninsula.
- Next-generation Search Startup with over 50MM in funding is looking for a Sr. Relevance Engineer and a Web Engineer to join their near-profitable organization.
- Vertical Search Startup with strong management team and cash position is looking for a UI Engineer and UI Designer to improve their site’s overall user experience.
- San Francisco based startup with impressive management team provides social search services that help companies gain insight about their consumers and improve their consumer’s experience. Looking for a Master of Product Management to be a holistic owner of all the company products, work closely with engineers, and define product requirements and produce successful products. Also looking to add Sr. Software Engineers to their team who are proficient in java, C/C++ and/or Ruby, passionate about a startup environment and excellent communicator
Next-generation Advertising Networks
- Next-generation Advertising Network startup is looking for a Web Application Developer to own the building of Facebook and other Social-networking-esque web applications. This is a ground-floor startup so major equity is being offered along with competitive salary.
- Company is the Market leader in web analytics and performance management solutions. Looking to add engineers to their ad director division working on optimizing campaigns for web advertising. Proficiency in python, C++ or Java and experience with major ad network API’s preferred.
Social networking
- Largest social utility, very financially stable with over 500 million in funding. Looking for hands-on coders who are extremely capable and interested in development. Experience with systems that are written in PHP, C/C++, JavaScript/Java, python, Perl, erlang, and LAMP stack, the role is open to people that need/want to ramp up on any of these languages.
- Successful Social Networking company wants a Sr. Product Manager to build features to make the experience more engaging.
- User Experience Director wanted for social networking product in the south bay.
Next-generation Media
- Ex-Google and Stanford founded start up in Palo Alto that is transforming your browser into an interactive, full screen, cinematic experience for web media is looking for client/Server side engineers who know C/C++, Java and hadoop, web engineers who are familiar with java and the entire stack of front end technologies, and a Dir/Sr Product Manager who can be both inbound and out, as well as work closely with the engineers so technical enough to do so.
Enterprise Software
- Successful enterprise software company on the peninsula wants crazy smart Java Developers to work in an agile environment.
Gaming
- Gaming company in San Francisco wants a Creative Director responsible for making the games fun and a UI Lead (JavaScript expert) responsible for making the distribution channels intuitive and easy to use.
- LikeVirtual Worlds? This start up wants a Product Manager who understands how to build a product for young women. Mid peninsula, easy caltrain access.
- Have you heard of Facebook? How about Online Games like World of Warcraft? Well this company is merging social networking with online gaming to creat a unique experience, that will change the way we look at online gaming. Simply put, they are looking for a guru in Ruby. Someone with experience working for a start-up who is ready to come in and help prepare the companies product for their public launch.
SaaS
- Funded start up enterprise SaaS Company on peninsula wants Web Engineers and Dir of Product Management.
- Web 2.0 SaaS VOIP provider targeting small businesses wants a Sr. Product Manager to drive a new product. On the Peninsula, great opportunity to own product line.
Seattle
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World-class Web Labs SDE – Want the chance to work on a brand new v1.0 product never before released in the world of search technology? Our client is working on blending the worlds of core and semantic search technology into a single consumer friendly application. They’re looking for a rockstar web services developer with experience building crazy-scalable systems to round out their 8-man team in a world class applied research facility.
- World-class Web Labs SDET – Tired of working over the same testing problems week after week – feel like your constantly just re-creating the same test tools for the same product over and over? The same applied research team building cutting edge search technology is looking for a Sr./Lead SDET to join their team and build their test infrastructure from the ground up. You’ll be responsible for test planning, test cases, and the hands on test development.
- Development Manager – One of Seattle’s most high profile startups is seeks a highly technical Engineering Manager to lead the development of a one-of-a-kind e-commerce product. You’ll work to revolutionize a centuries old industry – your team could literally turn the industry on its head overnight! They’re seeking an experienced energetic dev manager who knows when to manage/delegate and when to roll up the sleeves and jump into the code head first! Love Java and embrace open source whole-hearted!
- Test Manager – Top to bottom own a high profile – well funded startups testing efforts. Your team will have exposure to technology ranging from search, to cutting edge maps technology, commerce and data aggregation. You will be responsible for managing a team and playing QA Architect, in every way defining and steering the companies test strategy.
- Networking/Storage Engineer – If you are excited by the bleeding edge of virtualization and cloud computing technology and are looking to throw in with an exciting startup – our client is looking for a low level software engineer with exceptional file systems, storage, network protocol, and overall low level dev skills to work in their highly talented 20-person company.
- An industry pioneer utilizing the power of GPS to make games and mobile applications. Looking for a 2D Animator / UI Designer to help define and build the next generation of mobile entertainment applications. Looking for someone ideally with Mobile or Gaming experience as well as knowledge of preparing art and animation assets for use in mobile applications and games.
- An independent game studio working on next generation AAA titles. Looking for a Lead Engineer to lead a team of about a dozen engineers to work on a new M-Rated IP, for the next generation consoles. Experience leading a team of engineers working on a console title and experience with the Unreal Engine are highly preferred.
If Obama Can Do It So Can You
That is, building a strong brand. President Barack Obama was able to stand out from all the other candidates because he created an image that appealed to all ages. Unlike other candidates who were in the running for presidency, Obama and his campaign thought outside the box and used social networking tools to get his name out.
Facebook – Keep it Professional
If you have an account on a social networking site like Facebook or Myspace, your life is an open book. When it comes to a career standpoint, what you put on those sites can effect how you are portrayed as a professional. I read an interesting fact on the Facebook blog, posted by Mark Zuckerberg:
“150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using Facebook every day. This includes people in every continent—even Antarctica. If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria.”
With the growth and popularity of these sites do you need to separate your personal from professional life or can they all be combined as one? BINC TV discusses why you should keep your profiles professional to a certain limit.
I have read stories of potential employers and colleges looking at Facebook profiles of their applicants as a way to check their background. Companies have even fired employees for having posted inappropriate things on their profiles. It actually does happen; Virgin Atlantic fired 13 flight attendants for criticizing the airline’s flight safety standards and degrading their passengers.
Heidi Sullivan of the Cision Blog offered 10 tips on how to avoid a professional embarrassment on Facebook:
- Keep an eye on tagged photos. Both MySpace and Facebook give you the ability to untag yourself in photos -- even if someone else posted the photo. Though the photo may still be out there, employers will not be able to search for those photos of you.
- Keep private comments private. MySpace, Facebook and Twitter all have the option to send private messages to your friends (on MySpace, use Messages, on Facebook, use your Inbox, and on Twitter, use Direct Messages). Don’t leave Comments on MySpace, Write on a Wall on Facebook or send a Tweet on Twitter if you don’t want others to see it.
- If necessary, keep your page private. All of the sites mentioned above also have options for keeping your entire profile private, so if you can’t help but broadcast your latest exploits to all of your friends, isolate it to that: your friends.
- Watch what others are saying. If someone leaves a comment that you wouldn’t want everyone to see, delete it. They won’t be offended, and if they are, just explain that you are keeping your page clean.
- Check social networking sites often. If you neglect one of these sites, friends might be tagging you in photos that everyone shouldn’t see, writing about your nights out on the town or worse. Keep up-to-date on what they are saying and doing by logging in regularly. You can also set up email notifications to inform you when there’s activity on the page.
- Don’t drunk network. In the days when all a partier had to worry about was drunk dialing, the embarrassment was isolated to those in your phone book. Signing on to social networking sites after a night of drinking can result in embarrassment in front of the whole world.
- Don’t say anything negative about your employer, your company, your product or service. We all need to vent about our jobs sometime -- but keep those complaints private. Nothing will turn an employer off quicker than negative or insulting comments about the company.
- Job seekers should have a professional email address. If you have a ‘fun’ email address tied to your social networking page (like sexyguy23@gmail.com), don’t use that email address on your resume. In fact, don’t EVER use an email address like that on a resume. Create a professional email address for your job search. That way, if your potential employer searches for your MySpace or Facebook page by your email address, they won’t find it.
- Remember who your friends are. Many times we add friends to social networking sites who are coworkers, supervisors or others we have professional relationships with. Don’t forget that you’ve added those friends when you post comments or photos that you don’t want people at work to see.
- Continue to be yourself. Employers understand that your personal page on a social networking site is just that: your personal page. While you don’t want photos or comments that would be unacceptable in the workplace, it is totally fine to have content that may be outside of how you normally behave at work.
So overall to avoid problems, do as Grant said in the video blog: follow the general rule of dinner table etiquette -- don’t talk about religion, politics, or sex. Staying away from these topics will not give potential employers bait to judge you. Since companies do use social networking as a background check method many times you make a first impression long before you even show up for the interview. Why not make it a good one.
I would like to know what the readers views are on the use of Social Networking sites?
- Is it ethical for universities or employers to view your profile and make decisions about you before you ever meet in person?
- Should users keep two profiles, one for personal friends and one for professional purposes?
- What is appropriate and inappropriate material to keep on your profile?
Post to Techzulu
MySpace adding a developer platform, What does this mean for Facebook?
The hot news today is that MySpace is adding yet another option on their popular social networking site allowing developers to create applications for users. What does this mean for Facebook who already has these applications implemented into their growing social networking 
site? Probably nothing because Facebook will continue to be a viable ecosystem for third-parties to develop and promote their applications. The good part about MySpace opening up a developer platform is that it will keep instill some competitive energy into a social networking market that seems to have stagnated over the past year.
As of today, Facebook is one of the few companies that has actually been able to recruit top talent out of Google. This makes for an interesting comparison because to date, MySpace is not even close to being able to recruit people out of Google. I think it has to do with several issues. Facebook is an technology-centric company with business as a secondary focus, whereas MySpace seems to be more a business-centric company with innovative technology as a secondary focus. The second reason that Facebook can draw more attractive talent is that MySpace has already materialized an exit and therefore anybody who joins MySapace has no shot at hitting it big with equity. On the other hand, Facebook stock is very appealing to top engineers because at this time, Facebook has the best shot at being the next big technology IPO since Google (I predicted this and am sticking to my claim).
For sure even if MySpace begins offering equity , it won’t matter because I can’t imagine anybody caring about owning stock in Fox. But maybe this developer platform will be the first step in MySpace’s attempt to become more engineering-centric and actually try to give facebook a run for its money when it comes to releasing innovative and compelling products to the market.
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