DASH - The Real-time Career Management Tool

Twitter has been a revolution in many aspects. Not just a new mean of communication between friends, it is also a way to follow influential individuals or companies and stay up to date with industry news. As I've written in a past article, Twitter has somehow replaced RSS feeds in many ways for many people. One of these ways is to stay up to date with job opportunities matching your criteria of search. With the release of Twitter lists, people organise their contacts in different groups and online recruiters have widely benefited from this update.

Desktop clients such as Seesmic desktop or Tweetdeck let you organise the different feeds of updates from Twitter and Facebook in one single user friendly interface. However, there is a new player on the market, and it is called DASH. In this battle for status updates, it seems like Linkedin has stepped in a couple months ago letting everyone post a status easily to all of its professional network, including an option to "tweet" it. With DASH, you can easily stay up to date with all job related statuses on both Linkedin and Twitter. Using Adobe Air technology as well as the Linkedin API, DASH ressembles other Twitter desktop clients but focuses on career opportunities. You can use it to follow industry related news, recruiter twitter accounts, as well as a real-time Twitter job search (with filters). If you are looking for a job, especially in the digital industry, then you should definitely give it a try!

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The (never ending) Battle of Status Updates!

MSN Messenger and other chat programs probably didn't know at the time they would initiate such a massive trend when letting people add a short personal message next to their nickname. Yes, I do believe they're at the origins of this.
And now, it just seems like every major website is releasing an "Update your Status" option! The battle for the What's on your mind? between Facebook and Twitter has been going for a while now, but it has now expanded to nearly every social/networking site. Although I have been using several of them for different purposes, the concept remains the same: Telling something to people around you. Wow, what a revolution! I don't want to be critical. Mostly because I have been using them myself for a long time and find them very useful. I use Facebook updates to tell my (real) friends what's going on in my life. I used to do the same on Twitter but now I mostly use it to share interesting links with people (that I know in real life or not) with the same interests.
But beyond Twitter and Facebook, are other status updates really useful?

Facebook Status Updates

Twitter Status updates

As far as I'm concerned, I rarely use the Linkedin updates service but I can still see why this could be a good thing. We're in 2009 and the way people approach each other, even professionally, has drastically changed. I see people update their status to tell their network they're looking for a job while others might be looking for someone. Yes, it does make it easier. (Linkedin also introduced the "Update Twitter at the same time" option as you can see on the screenshot below)

Linkedin Status updates

Another example, Google Latitude's status updates. There again, I can still see the concept of letting people around you know exactly where you are and what you are doing. But this is definitely too intrusive for me and I don't want people to know where I am all the time, especially if I forgot to switch off my Latitude automatic location updates. This definitely raises privacy and security issues. Moreover, I don't think I know A-N-Y-O-N-E who actually uses Latitude on a regular basis, if ever! If you are a regular user, let me know, I'd be interested!

Google Latitude Status updates

Some of you might not even have heard about Yahoo! meme. The difference with Twitter is that you can easily post not only text, but audio, video and photo files. As much as I like Yahoo! and the simple/easy-to-use aspect of this website, I still think it is nothing more than a copy of Twitter and sadly, I don't like copycats! I therefore ask the same question, does any of you actually use Twitter memes or know anyone who does? I have tried once, wrote two updates, and never signed in again! I just don't know anyone and don't feel like building a 3,819th network.

Yahoo! Meme Status updates

In conclusion, I think Facebook/Linkedin/Twitter might stay for a while as they are the most popular and bring the most value to the online users. But I personally think Yahoo memes have no space in the new online world and will never take off, a bit like friendfeed which, to my eyes, won't succeed in the medium/long term. As for Google Latitude, I think this service might work, but in a couple of years from now. It is too soon and even though more and more people have smartphones with GPS antennas, they still represent a minority in the population.

I have only showed you a few examples and I am certain there are many more out there. But honestly, who has the time to manage all these different channels?
Do you think this is just a trend that has been going on for a couple of years now, but that will end within that same date range from now? Read the full post

Facebook introduces the "Gross National Happiness Index"

This week, Facebook introduced the "Gross National Happiness Index" or GNH. This index is meant to track the overall feelings and moods of the Facebook users.

Facebook has, obviously, access to all the status updates of its users. With over 300 million users worldwide, these private or public testimonials can be considered as a pretty accurate index of what people feel, as a whole.

You are probably wandering how this tool works? Facebook probably set up a list of positive and negative keywords. Positive keywords can be expressions such as happy, nice, great, sweet and so on while negative keywords could be sad, annoyed, disappointed or angry. Every day, this tool counts the number of status updates containing positive keywords, as well as the number of updates with negative keywords. The GNH index is the difference between the happy and "unhappy" counts.



This is represented in a timeline graph with a daily update of the index. Little labels can also show national holidays or other events that might explain why there is a positive or negative peak on a particular day. Unlike the Google Insights for Search tool, the Facebook GNH graph does not show news headlines that might affect people's news. For example, I remember when Michael Jackson's death was announced, a massive number of people posted sad comments on their Facebook status. But when I look at the graph on that particular day, I cannot observe any negative peak. I can only ask myself if this tool is very accurate.

However, the purpose and utility of this index can be quite interesting for sociodemographic studies. It is only limited to the United States at the moment but will hopefully be expanded to other regions in the future.
Perhaps in the future we will be able to play around with filters to see how that index evolves depending on the geographic region, the age, nationality, language, gender, etc of the users.

In conclusion, I would say that it was natural for Facebook to start publishing tools such as this one. With the amount of data collected by the company, there are so many things they can share with the world. Although this new tool is interesting, it is not a new concept. I strongly suggest that you have a look at the two videos from Jonathan Harris that I have embedded in this previous post. The first one dates back from 2007 but is exactly the same concept and shown in a MUCH better way and design! Read the full post

Media facts and figures: New video

Following my post a month ago that featured a couple of videos about Social Media and other web facts, here is a new version of the now famous Did you know? video. This new video features updated statistics and new figures illustrating what the digital world has become in 2009.


Enjoy the video!

Did you know? 4.0

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Is Twitter killing RSS feeds?

This is a question I have been asking myself for quite a while now:

With Twitter becoming a major way of sharing content and becoming one of the main tools to drive traffic to your website, are RSS feeds meant to disappear?

I have been using RSS feeds for years, maybe even for a decade now. I've always loved it, for its simplicity of use and for staying in touch/up to date with many websites. I have used it for news, for blog updates, ranging from SEO/SEM to photography or entertainment. I know many people are big fans of Google Reader, but I have always used Netvibes especially for its large collection of widgets and tab browsing. In fact, Netvibes has been my default browser homepage for years.

However, since I have been using Twitter, I barely look at my RSS feeds anymore. I log in Netvibes perhaps once a week and that's it. Most websites whose RSS feed I used to be a subscriber of, now offer a parallel Twitter account to follow.
And for this exact reason, what's the point of following the same content on two different feeds?

I will still keep my RSS subscriptions though, for the simple reason that it makes it easier for me to know what has been read already... or not. In Twitter, as soon as you start following a good number of people, the feed quickly becomes messy, over populated or even over polluted.
So yes, applications such as Tweetdeck or Seesmic Desktop let you organise your Twitter feeds into different groups such as News or Sports but if you haven't been online for a couple days, it's very hard to check what's been shared in the last 48 hours, and that you haven't read yet.

With other services such as RSStoTwitter or Twitterfeed helping you automate your Twitter posting using your RSS feed, it seems like we are currently witnessing a transition from one communication tool to another. In 2009, real-time search and communication has become a major innovation in the online world, Twitter and smartphones being the main reasons of this change.

I am aware everyone has different ways of using Internet so don't hesitate to let me know what yours is!

• Do you think Twitter is a RSS killer?
• Which of those two do you follow the most closely: your number of RSS subscribers or Twitter followers?
• Do you believe both RSS and Twitter can live side by side?
• Which one is currently driving the most traffic to your website: RSS feed or Twitter?

Thanks for sharing your impressions! Read the full post

Publishing a story online

Here's an interesting video created by thumb, a "digital media design" company for the RealWire web portal.

This animation video will show you why and how a story should be published in the online world, taking into account all the different social aspects of what Internet has become. Worth a look for all the sceptics out there :)

Other animation videos from RealWire are available here.
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Social Media in numbers

Statistics are usually boring. All these percentages, numbers and equations usually don't really appeal to people. However, the following video is quite interesting. It gives an overview of how the Internet has evolved and how social media came to be, and all in numbers!

Have a look at the following video, I'm certain you will be quite surprised at some of the figures presented to you!

The Social Media Revolution

The above video reminded me of the Did you know animation video that similarly showed statistics and figures about random facts. I've included it below for your own pleasure!

Did you know?

And finally, here's one last video. This one is from the researcher Hans Rosling exposing some very VERY interesting statistics during a TED talk back in 2006. I know it's old but most of the figures presented here would still be valid today. You can read more information here.

Hans Rosling presentation

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Some thoughts about Real-time Search Engines

The currently Google dominated search engine industry constantly evolves. We have seen new search engines appear, but have they really caused any impact on the industry? Let's take the example of the new and "revolutionary" search engine Cuil which had a huge buzz when launched over a year ago. Cuil was co-founded by several former employees of Google itself and was announced as THE search engine that will "destroy" Google. Well it seems that only a few months after the launch, Cuil was completely forgotten as you can see on the graph below taken from Google Insights for Search.

However, the biggest evolution to come, which has already started in fact, are real-time search engines. In this field, Twitter has taken a step ahead from all other networks. With over 10,000 tweets per minute (24/7), it is probably the best source to find what's being said "out there". From the beginning, Twitter Search allowed anyone to search all public messages written by its users. More recently, Twitter redesigned its homepage to fully integrate a search engine for visitors who aren't logged in, putting real-time search as one of its main services. Twitter APIs such as Tweetdeck and Seesmic Desktop have also integrated these search features letting users be constantly fed with the latest tweets.
The Facebook "What's on your mind?" status is very similar and brings the social network as an important and threatening competitor to Twitter. Last week, Facebook acquired Friendfeed in an unpredictable move meant to rival even more Twitter. For your information, Bing has already integrated real time results in its searches, Google will soon improve that as well (without mentioning the Google Wave meant to come out soon).

Real-time search engines, and at a broader level social media optimization, are undoubtedly great ways for brands to listen and watch what's being said about them or their products/services. Now if I've been writing this article, it's actually to introduce you to a video I had seen a couple years back on the TED website. This video is a presentation from Jonathan Haris about secret stories on the web. "Stories", because he was analyzing what people were saying, what feelings they were expressing and sharing on the Internet. "Secret", because his role is limited to observation. He is not interacting with those people; random people that he doesn't know. And yet, he is somehow entering their privacy and intimacy by reading their life.

Now you might wander what the relation between his work and real-time search engines are so I'll just leave you to watch the following video. That video struck me because what he was doing as an experiment and part of his work, is exactly what the web has become like, especially the battle between Twitter and Facebook and the related search engines. Also, don't forget his presentation dates back to 2007!

Enjoy the video and don't hesitate to comment below on your thoughts about real-time search engines and the way they will become (or not) a major aspect of the web. In my opinion, it will if not already.

Jonathan Harris: the Web's secret stories
TED talk posted in July 2007
Source

And for the curious ones out there, here's another more recent presentation from Jonathan Harris about stories collected on the Internet including his "We feel Fine".

Jonathan Harris collects stories

TED talk posted in July 2008
Source

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Is social media polluting the web?

2008 and 2009 have been incredible years in terms of social media evolution. Twitter is just one of the numerous examples that show how people need to feel more present and connected on the web.

What started as a micro-blogging website in order to show other people what's on your mind -a bit like the Facebook status- has now become an amazing way to share links, pictures or any other type of content on the web. In fact, I don't know many people who actually use Twitter to say "I just made a warm soup, it's nice" or "It's sunny outside, might go for a walk".


I myself started using Twitter so that my friends and family back in France could read some sort of "flash news" about what I was doing. I didn't have the time to send out emails all the time so I thought this was a cool way to share this. But with time and with my number of followers growing, I didn't feel like sharing these things anymore and started using Twitter in a totally different way.
Now, and like 90% of the people I follow, simply send out links of my findings on the Internet: interesting articles, funny videos, my thoughts on some topic, etc...

Sites such as Digg, delicious, stumbleupon and so on are great for this matter. It also helps people index their site pages, UGC or blog articles and drive targeted traffic to their website.
A website who does not contain small links for its readers to share the content is a (huge) mistake in 2009 where everything happens online and in real time. If you want to be out there, then help the buzz create itself naturally. It sure will if your content is valuable.

As you can see below this article, I have a little sharethis button which lets anyone share this article if they want to. There's also a digg and retweet buttons at the top left corner of the article. I haven't really included this for personal branding reasons but I want to offer my readers a good, simple and easy way to share the article if ever they believe it's worth it. I use those quite often on other websites and let authors of interesting content get the credit they deserve, when they're worth it.

However, I was very surprised at the number of social media bookmarks/sharing websites...
One of the best examples could be the addtoany. This button which I included just after this paragraph, looks just like the sharethis one I am using already. The only difference is that it offers, well... quite a few extra sites! Yes, you're not dreaming, that's a total of 123 websites plus email and browser bookmark..! (There's even a search bar on the widget in order to find the site you may be looking for...)


I personally don't know half those sites and yet, I consider myself pretty "aware" of what's available out there!So, do people need that many? Is there enough space for these hundreds of websites or only a few have any promising future?
I am really wandering if that's not just the trend of the moment. But I'm afraid this "social" dimension of the web is slowly starting to become polluted. Too many is sometimes too much!

I guess we'll just have to wait and see how all this will naturally evolve but as far as I'm concerned, I'm sticking to only a few popular ones.
If you have any thoughts about all this, please share! Read the full post

FREE SEO e-Book!

If anyone of you is interested in learning more about Search Engine Optimisation, then you should definitely have a look at the following book.

This book, entitled SEO Secrets, is the work of Glenn Murray, a SEO Copywriter from Australia.

Although some parts of it might seem like basic knowledge to some of you, it also goes into more details and reviews all the different aspects of search engine optimisation.

This 213 pages ebook discusses in clear words:

• what SEO is
• what are the different methods of optimising your site or blog in order to increase its page rank in search engines
• what are the do's and dont's of search engine optimisation
• how to optimise the content of your blog/site
• how to use social media
• how to monitor your progress... etc

Read more about this great book or buy the printed version at Divine Write. You can also download the PDF version found on Divine Write.

{Post edit: The PDF version is not available anymore. However, I still recommend you buy the printed version.}

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Why any company should use social media

Here's an interesting presentation my good friend Brian has done recently.
It highlights in simple words why any company should consider using social media as a way to advertise or simply connect with their audience/customers.

Enjoy the slideshare presentation below.

You can also visit his blog and/or twitter.

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What the hell is #moonfruit ?!

I won't write an essay about Moonfruit as most of you probably heard about it already.

Moonfruit is a website that lets you design your own great looking site in a few easy steps. They have different types of templates (journal, video blog, business, travel blog, etc.) that you can use and customise.

In order to celebrate their 10 year anniversary, they've decided to give away 10 Macbook Pro laptops.Now in order to enter the draw, you simply need to tweet a message with the #moonfruit hash tag. Knowing the popularity of Apple laptops, having a chance to get one for free obviously got the attention of the Twitter community.
The problem lies there. This online contest drew so much attention that at some point, around 20,000 tweets (Twitter messages) were sent every hour using that tag (still around that rate at the moment I'm writing this post).

I searched the #moonfruit tag on Twitter search and within about 5 minutes, there were already over 1,600 results and counting (see below).


Three main issues could be raised:

1. This kind of contest using Twitter was surely launched in order to profit from the popularity of Twitter. Although this could be very true, it can also lead to an opposite undesired effect. This huge amount of tweets using one similar tag may quickly be seen as some sort of spamming. The Moonfruit will probably benefit from this craze in the end, but many people can have a bad image associated to the website name, and that's one thing you might want to avoid.
   
   
2. Secondly, I have noticed that a lot of people use these commercial hash tags for completely unrelated purposes. Most of which simply want to benefit from the popularity of this keyword with this easy rule: The more popular a keyword is, the more it will be searched and therefore the more people might read your tweet. Hash tags were created in order to discuss a particular topic. But if so many messages become "off-topic", then the whole point of the hash tag is debatable. For example, out of the last 4 tweets containing the #moonfruit tag, 2 persons make a joke, 1 person obviously has no clue what it is, and the last one makes a pointless tweet that doesn't have much sense (to me at least) using multiple tags.
   
   
3. And last but certainly not least, some people have written articles about how these kind of tags could "break" or "kill" Twitter. Don't hesitate to read the article on Mashable concerning the #gorillapenis hash tag attack on Twitter. Personally, I'm not so sure it would actually kill it. However, it definitely does have a negative impact.

In conclusion, brands should definitely be careful on how to use Twitter. In this particular case, the Moonfruit website probably increased their brand awareness by a million but with success rise problems and let's not forget what Newton taught us: "With every action comes an equal and opposite reaction."!

So much said about #moonfruit in this post when the initial purpose of it was to simply give you guys the link :)

Moonfruit

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ihaveanidea.org - The community of the international advertising industry

You've read it in the title, ihaveanidea.org is an online community designed to bring advertising agencies, professionals or fans together. After signing up, everyone can then discuss any idea via articles or forums and learn from others by sharing their point of view about a particular topic.

On top of this, ihaveanidea organises events including a "portfolio night" where advertisers can meet and review other advertiser's portfolios. These events, organised around 35 cities in 22 countries, continue to grow in popularity and size.

Registration is free and only takes a few minutes.
ihaveanidea.org Read the full post