Social Networks Galore
Social networks have come and gone, i was an early adopter of a few of them, including Orkut which ended up being hijacked by brazilians, but after a while i got tired of them because they didn't really provide much value.
Over the last month, I've jumped back onto the social networking band wagon to see how things have changed over the last couple years. I chose two social networking sites which many of my ex-coworkers were on: LinkedIn and Facebook.
LinkedIn, the social network for professionals was a challenge to get started. I found the system of linking up with old friends (who i hadn't kept email contact with) quite time consuming (and not very intuitive): ask a friend to introduce person X, hassle your friend to forward it on (some people are better at forwarding than others), person X approves and sends back their email address, copy the email address and add a new contact with the email, request is then approved by person X. Do this for 30 people (only 5 at a time unless you upgrade your account) and you'll understand the pain. But after all the setup, i think it's been worth it. Other people write reviews of your work, which im sure will be read by future employers and you get to keep all your contacts in one place receiving updates about their careers even though you're not working together anymore. They also have a nifty 'Answers' feature which allows you to ask questions via the social graph. Recently I asked a question about hosting providers in the US and got a stream of high quality answers...ended up choosing Slicehost in the end (very cool btw). Overall i'm pretty pleased with LinkedIn.
Facebook, a 'web 2.0' social networking site that i've been hearing about for years has been quite a bit easier to setup. Literally in one evening, I had upload pictures, found university/highschool/elementry school friends, added a map of places i've been to around the world and even poked someone! But seriously, the main reason I actually got onto Facebook was due to them opening up with platform to third-party development...it's a great idea and seems like a win-win for almost everyone involved, but still very early to tell. Thumbs up regardless.
Over the last month, I've jumped back onto the social networking band wagon to see how things have changed over the last couple years. I chose two social networking sites which many of my ex-coworkers were on: LinkedIn and Facebook.
LinkedIn, the social network for professionals was a challenge to get started. I found the system of linking up with old friends (who i hadn't kept email contact with) quite time consuming (and not very intuitive): ask a friend to introduce person X, hassle your friend to forward it on (some people are better at forwarding than others), person X approves and sends back their email address, copy the email address and add a new contact with the email, request is then approved by person X. Do this for 30 people (only 5 at a time unless you upgrade your account) and you'll understand the pain. But after all the setup, i think it's been worth it. Other people write reviews of your work, which im sure will be read by future employers and you get to keep all your contacts in one place receiving updates about their careers even though you're not working together anymore. They also have a nifty 'Answers' feature which allows you to ask questions via the social graph. Recently I asked a question about hosting providers in the US and got a stream of high quality answers...ended up choosing Slicehost in the end (very cool btw). Overall i'm pretty pleased with LinkedIn.
Facebook, a 'web 2.0' social networking site that i've been hearing about for years has been quite a bit easier to setup. Literally in one evening, I had upload pictures, found university/highschool/elementry school friends, added a map of places i've been to around the world and even poked someone! But seriously, the main reason I actually got onto Facebook was due to them opening up with platform to third-party development...it's a great idea and seems like a win-win for almost everyone involved, but still very early to tell. Thumbs up regardless.
posted by Bartek Kunowski @ 2:17 PM
1 Comments:
At 3:30 PM,
MrKunst said…
Bartek, you forgot the amazing german networking platform called XING -> www.xing.com
this is my favourite one
best wishes my dear
Soeren :)
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