LinkedIn

IT job seekers tapping into social media

Like a lot of job seekers, IT pros are using social media sites to network and market themselves. But many are concerned about content on their profiles hurting their job searches.

Among the IT professionals surveyed for Technisource's "August 2010 Social Media Use Report," 41 percent said they've used social media sites as part of their search for work. Out of those, 85 percent have mainly used LinkedIn. Further, 32 percent received a career opportunity through a social network, with most of those offers coming through LinkedIn.

Thirty-five percent of the people surveyed said most of … Read more

Add-ons make Firefox a social-network powerhouse

It's easy to fall behind the activities of your social-network connections. Before you know it, you've got dozens or even hundreds of your friends' status updates, new photo albums, and site and video suggestions stacked in your network home page. Yoono, the Facebook Toolbar, and TwitterBar are three Firefox add-ons that keep you a little bit closer to the people in your online social circles.

Integrate your social networks with Yoono If you find yourself jumping between Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and other social networks, you can view all your network alerts in a single window by adding … Read more

Microsoft Outlook makes friends with MySpace

If you use both Outlook and MySpace, you are part of an interesting demographic. But you are also in luck.

Microsoft and MySpace said on Wednesday that they are ready with the beta version of a tool that lets Outlook users see their MySpace connections within the e-mail and calendaring program. A new "social connector" feature for Outlook lets users connect to social networks, including MySpace, LinkedIn, and soon Facebook, too.

In a blog posting, Microsoft said the connector for MySpace is now ready.

"MySpace for Outlook enables you to view activity updates for friends and colleagues … Read more

Networking on your iPhone

LinkedIn is an iPhone and iPod Touch front-end app for the popular, business-oriented social-networking site. This app got off to a rocky start in early versions, but it's gotten much better in later iterations.

The interface will look instantly familiar to fans of other popular social-networking apps, with a home screen that gives you a search bar, an invite button, and a gird of buttons for All Updates, Status, Profiles, Discussions, Connections, Favorites, Inbox, Invitations, Recents, Reconnect, In Person, and Themes. Most of these will be familiar to LinkedIn users, and innovative touches like Recents, Favorites (for profiles you … Read more

SimplyHired brings LinkedIn to job-search process

Job-search site SimplyHired announced Tuesday that it has launched a new tool to help job searchers use their connections to land their next job.

SimplyHired is calling itself the "first job search engine to "socialize" job search." Users can connect their LinkedIn network to SimplyHired to find any contacts they might know within a respective organization. The company contends that through those networks, users might gain an upper hand in their job search.

Aside from LinkedIn, users will also be able to integrate other personal social networks like Twitter and Facebook into the site. Upon doing … Read more

Five free tech PR tools you need to know about

Getting great publicity in the tech industry isn't as simple as following the right breadcrumbs. Based on feedback from some tech PR folks who I deal with at companies of varying sizes--publicly traded, VC-funded start-ups, and bootstrapped DIYers--here are five free tech industry PR resources that I would recommend. (If any tech PR folks out there have additional free resources they'd recommend, please comment.)

IT Memos It can be incredibly painful to keep track of the thousands of tech events and speaking submission due dates each year. (Some--like RSA, Interop, CES, etc.--have lead times up to seven months in advance).

Keeping tabs on all the tech awards (like Webware 100, the Webbies, the Crunchies, etc.) and submission deadlines is no picnic either. And it's also dreadful to manually track "editorial calendars" (where tech publications often tip their hands on upcoming stories they are writing).

ITMemos is a free new e-mail alert from the team at IT Database that simply nudges subscribers about important upcoming opportunities in these areas. If you're not subscribed to this free alert, hundreds of tech PR people are finding out about/acting on these opportunities before you are, so GL.

(Disclosure: I am an advisor to IT Database.)

Help a Reporter Out Many tech PR folks are familiar with the journalist/source-matching service called Profnet that used to charge an annual subscription fee leading a guy named Peter Shankman to do the end-around and start giving away the same service for free, while increasing the number of opportunities.

Sign up for the HARO newsletter and receive three daily digest e-mails that list out opportunities where reporters are searching for sources/comments for stories they are writing.

While "Tech" is just one section in the e-mail, and often you will open it without finding a relevant opportunity--it's totally worth it to subscribe for the times where you do come across a journalists' story that matches your company's tech category. … Read more

LinkedIn's platform loosens up

Professional networking site LinkedIn's platform, previously a closed offering for select partners, has opened up to developers at large, according to an announcement Monday on the company blog.

Well, sort of. Building an embeddable widget on LinkedIn, unlike Facebook's, still requires a stringent application process. But LinkedIn's own code has now been opened up so that developers can integrate it into their own sites. It's launched a developer site for those interested in features that let site users access their LinkedIn profile and contacts externally. They still have to request a key to get into the … Read more

Twitter, LinkedIn team up for self-promotion free-for-all

Chalk one up for the cringe-worthy marketing term "personal branding": there is a new partnership between Twitter, hub for informing the world exactly what you're doing and thinking at all moments of the day, and LinkedIn, the business-networking tool on steroids. In an announcement Monday, the two companies explained that LinkedIn status messages can sync with Twitter.

"The business use case of Twitter is turning out to be very important, and more and more people are finding that the persona they create for themselves on the Web is part of their resume in many ways," … Read more

Study: Twitter users young, wireless, on other social sites

A new study released on Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project has found some rather interesting tidbits of information about social network users.

According to the study, 19 percent of Web surfers use "Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others." According to the organization, its earlier findings in April 2009 found that just 11 percent of Internet users were using a status-update service.

But the reason why there has been such an uptick in status updates has much to do with the users themselves, Pew found. According to the organization, the growth is being driven by "social network Web site users, those who connect to the Internet via mobile devices, and younger Internet users--those under age 44."

The study found that 33 percent of those who are updating their status range in age between 18 and 29. Those aged between 30 and 49 make up 22 percent of the group. Just 13 percent of those who update their status are 50 years of age or older.

Pew determined that the Twitter user's median age is 31. MySpace's median age is now 26, down from 27 in May 2008. LinkedIn has also gotten younger by a year, featuring a median age of 39. But Facebook is one of the few social networks to buck the youth trend, upping its median age to 33, from 26 in May 2008.… Read more