JOBMATCHBOX

We don’t usually plug corporate YouTube videos, but the Terry Tate, Corporate Linebacker series is too much fun not to share. This series reminds us yet again why startup culture appeals.

A few months ago my biggest concern was over whether or not it was a good idea for someone to create a social network aggregator.  I spent some time looking at social network aggregators and even more time considering the implications for user privacy involved with them.  I also considered the subject of OpenID, a possible alternative.  But since then it seems like the need for a social network aggregator has been resolved by efforts of competing companies to replicate each other’s services and also each other’s hubs.  In other words, if you have a list of contacts in one place you can a) interact with them elsewhere without re-creating the wheel or b) import them wherever you go or c) interact with them up to a certain point without re-creating the wheel. 

The problem with all of these is generally the same - if one company allows you to pack up your contacts and all of the data associated with them and all of the data involved with your activity inside of their universe then you can leave them behind and not look back.  Companies have a vested interest in preventing this.  In a company’s early stages it may be advantageous to allow data to play well elsewhere, but over time this becomes a problem.  And with this problem social networks become much more like traditional service providers - think big telco’s that have learned to make it extremely difficult for you to leave them for another carrier.  

In the mean time, we all have to deal with the service and feed pluralism while the major players battle it out for our already short attention span.  Take Plaxo - they have re-introduced the “USERNAME is …” status indicator to us.  I guess they didn’t get the memo about the “is”.  Plaxo is suggesting people who I might know just like Facebook now too.  And then there are Linkedin and MySpace - both of them are working hard to replicate features and the UI of Facebook.

We all have to make personal choices about how we interact with the social graph, but with all of these different companies offering similar services it is getting increasingly difficult to do so.  In this increasingly competitive market the winners will be the established players, not the newcomers.  Google and Facebook will continue to dominate, but Yahoo might be in a position to re-gain some ground if they can work on improving their ui and product/content integration. 

If you’ve used Twitter then you’ve probably noticed the noise has been increasing as more people jump on the bandwagon.  And what would the web be without spam, right?  The good news is that Twitter is working to put a stop to spam.  Want to know if someone connected with you is a spammer?  Check The Twitter Blacklist.

This video interview of the Twitter team, done by Shel Israel for Fast Company, provides some great insights about the people behind the company. At least three of the people there worked for Odeo previously.

Today I found out that Orkut has apps now, just like everyone else, but somehow I don’t really care. What I do care about is finding ways to get the most out of Twitter. Here are a few tools that you should know about:

Alpha Twitter is tracks which links are most popular on Twitter.

#hastags provides realtime tracking of Twitter hastags

TweetAhead lets you schedule Twitter posts ahead of time. Not quite ready for primetime.

Stammy Script allows you to push your RSS feeds out across Twitter. I’ve seen a lot of people doing this, but I’m not sure whether I like it or not. If too many people start doing it then Twitter will die.

Tweetburner lets you share what happens with the links you share on Twitter.

Twhirl is a great IM like program that allows you to use Twitter without being in a browser window.

TwitBox lets you view and submit tweets, see replies, direct messages, delete your own tweets, and also offers multiple account support. Also had Second Life support. Great idea, but the developer has stopped working on it.

Twitterholic is for people who want to track the top accounts on Twitter.

TwitterSnooze is for people who want to put the breaks on Twitter friends.

Visit the Twitter Fan Wiki for more.

Our jobs are really part of our identity. If you don’t believe me then just do a search on Twitter for the word “jobs” and then scan through the 36 pages of Twitter profiles that are returned. It isn’t even that people are Twittering about their jobs and their pursuit of better ones, they are very frequently making their jobs out to be a central part of who they are via their Twitter bio.

I have included some of the Twitter bios that I found while perusing Twitter user bios (these are not excerpts, but the full bios for people) below.

The first group could easily be called I work-life-job:
Birth. TV. Peanut butter. School. Movies. Me. You. Books. Family. Jobs. Computers. The Internet. Gadgets. Clutter. EBay. Websites. Twitter.

Full-Time College Student with a Full-Time Job

Blogger who has a wonderful family and works a full time job.

My family, my job in technology, and Nike shoes are just some of my biggest passions.

Life’s nice, and much nicer with a job

one each: husband, baby, car, job, brain, left eye, heart

I got’s me a job.

I’m so into my job it’s my nickname.

I work for Warner Music Group and I’m married to my job.

I… am… job

Married to a wonderful woman. Have 2 kids - 1boy & 1girl. I’m a chemist. Hate my job. Stressful, no time for play. Turning 40 soon. Where do I go from here?

I struggle with writing, with marriage, with my hated job and with getting my ass in shape. I guess it’s fair to say, I struggle

Here is what I’ll call the wanterlust crowd:
Aussie guy on a quest to quit his job.

I have grand fantasies that involve apartment & job postings in far away cities on craigslist.

Choose a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life

A hopeless romantic from Washington, desparately in need of a job.

Engineer + man space flight = love my job

These Twitterers represent the geek community well:
I’ve been tinkering with web dev since i was 12, I’ve started a Web Dev company now. Sadly, my real job has nothing to do with the web. That will change soon.

Tech Dude who just wants to get his web sites productive so he can quit his day job and just do the web stuff.

me = (kids * wife) + soccer + bike + sailing + job (google product mgr)

I enjoy my Macs, iPhone, Jack Russell Terriers, cat, Kawasaki motorcycle, my job & Twitter!

The World Wide Web is my full-time job AND I love it :-)

Job: Linux and network administrator; Hobbies: Writing music, COD4, WoW, Writing VB apps, crypto

Code monkey get up get coffee, code monkey go to job…

I’m a Tech and Net addict, that has a job testing music apps.

Well, Mikey likes beer. He also like video games and web stuff. He does freelance web jobs. He has one kid (at the moment) and one dog. Oh, and he likes beer.

This group is interesting and intense…I could not help but laugh when I read the one about being abducted by aliens. Not sure if that person should become a writer or a stand up comic.
Web Developer with a day job… Don’t tell me how much that sucks cuz I already know :)

Twentysomething whose job is making television shows for the Man.

Soldier serving in the US Army. Its a thankless job but someones got to do it!

One guy, 8 jobs, all tech. Chained to the Ivory Tower. Thank goodness for geocaching, prevents office=home.

26, and I hate my job. :D

Hi, I come from [location] and I am a [pointless will-destroying job title] who likes [ridiculous personal habits].

At sea in a soul-suck of a job while i wait to be rescued by aliens

Here are some assorted bios:
This group could be called Job=Transitions:
I left a really good job to pursue my dream of starting my very own brewery

I’m a Mom of 3 boys, I am a runner, my job is as a virtual assistant.

Married, 2 kids, I have a J.O.B. Just Over Broke!

Tech recruiter turned Acupuncturist… Does that mean I have a hollistic approach to job searching?

RADIO AND VOICE OVERS..EVERYTHING ELSE IS A JOB

Music kid w/ a web job dwelling in an apartment in Northern California

just about to graduate from flagler, looking for a good design job. i read way too many books.

Looking for a programming job in London, UK. What I can offer: geekness, code quality and team spirit.

Creative specialist and aspiring entrepreneur and job seeker looking for the right opportunity.

I am 19 years old, was born and raised in Billings Montana, I am currently going to college at Devry University and I have a part time job at Trader Joe’s.

I run an independant label, sing in a metal band, live 75 miles away from my job in the social media and am rarely static. I dance EXCEPTIONALLY well……

I like music, dancing, crème brûlée, and scooping on postbyME!. Quit my day job & co-founded [company name] Inc.

A redheaded PR and International Business major at the University of Georgia…looking for a job (wink-wink)

I used to be a Poker Player. Now I have a M-F 9-5 Data Entry Job. Things are looking great…

Im just a regular guy tryin to make it in this messed up world. I have a regular jobby job, a house, a car and a kid. Whoo Hoo!! I would rather be DJ’ing.

My names Michelle! I live in Pittsburgh, PA. I’m 25 years old…I have no real social life between Working my 2 jobs, school & volunteering at the Humane Society

I’m a man of many interests. Love my job but love my life outside the job more.

i write. then, i work jobs to support that. then, i write about those jobs. it never ends.

These bios just go on and on. One thing that is different about Twitter, at least in my experience, is that people use it with the expectation that others are listening. And the reality is that people are listening, and talking back. This is so much different than Facebook and other apps that are as deep and wide as the ocean when it comes to content. There is so much noise that listening takes a back seat to poking. People use Facebook like a news weekly, not like CNN, Twitter is more like CNN local edition - breaking news that impacts you. Linkedin is going to become irrelevant if they don’t catch the social conversation wave soon.

There has a been a quiet wave moving across the ocean of social media lately. If you weren’t paying attention, or attending SXSW, then you may have missed it. It is called Twitter, but given the buzz that it has been receiving lately you would not assume that a startup with such an unassuming name was about to challenge big name web properties like Facebook and Linkedin. Twitter has gone viral and is poised to go to the next level. In laymen’s terms for today’s market this means that they are a moving up the web charts rapidly. If you prefer statistics then consider the fact that Facebook has experienced a 119.9% increase in users this year, linkedin has had 417.6% increase; both compared with Twitter’s 1216.8% increase. Still not convinced? Check out this velocity chart from Compete.

“So what does this mean for me,” you ask? It means that Twitter is going to be a household brand in your social circles within a few months — in tech and hipster circles it already is. And that means that everyone from brand marketers to recruiters will be looking at Twitter as a big opportunity. And like any other VC backed company they have investors who want to see a return on their investment. I’m betting that Twitter starts expanding user social profiles and thereby challenges Facebook and Linkedin officially in the very near future. Did I mention that you can use it on your iPhone?

Update:

Someone forwarded this article titled ‘Word of Tweet Marketing’ that some of you may enjoy.

This post titled ‘How to be Popular: Overheard on Twitter #5‘ is worth reading.

A former colleague mentioned an article written about careers in social media. The article talks about how difficult it is to objectify the sort of person required for a “community manager” role or for any sort of social media role. Why is this worth writing about? I question why most organizations would want to hire a dedicated social media person. I’m all for organizations being forward thinking, but the people who run around looking for gurus who spew their insights about social media for the sake of social media for the sake of being at the top of everyone’s RSS feeds need to get a grip. Truth be told, the social media pundits do too. Social media is code for “have you been paying attention to what is going on (online) for the last 12-24 months?”, despite the efforts of the Stanford faculty.

Let me back up here for a moment. An organization that is seriously pushing the envelope of social media, like ClearSpring, needs a community manager like my friend Justin Thorp. A company like a hotel probably does not. The difference is that a company like ClearSpring is expanding into markets that haven’t been charted yet, and they need people who can get others excited about those uncharted territories. A hotel needs someone who can do marketing, PR, and who happens to have been paying attention.

These are two entirely different people. The second might have attended a training class on how to leverage Facebook while the first probably organized a Facebook developer garage. One might have an iPhone, the other has had an iPhone and probably organized a group to take their iPhones apart and then re-Program them. They both have a place, but they have different places. If you don’t understand the difference then I recommend reading iWoz, or asking someone who has heard of a blue box. I guess the bottom line here is that it takes one to know one. If reading this makes you want to say “I’m not an engineer” then you should consult experts in this field.

The bottom line is that there are people who set trends and people who follow others who set trends in a one sized fits all manner. Every company needs to hire people who are paying attention, but not every company needs to follow every trend.

Update - I thought that a few links that are tangential to this post might be of interest to some of you. Here they are:

The Hard Pill

The Social Media Expert Plague