LinkedIn Tag

What Else Can Be Done with Social Networks?

When most people think about social networks, they see them as methods for keeping in touch with friends, family, and acquaintances. Social networks are frequently used for messaging, image sharing, and status updates, but there are so many more functions that social networks and applications can provide. With social media being a particularly competitive industry, most social networking companies are always looking to see what they can do for their user base that will separate them from the herd. For instance, Facebook has proven that their service can be used as a functional way to help people. Earlier this year, they launched a function that shares Amber Alerts with users in the area of a missing child, in an effort to make it easier for people to help.

There are other ways that various social networks are aiming to help people in ways that you might not expect. LinkedIn, which has functioned as a way to maintain a profile that potential employers can see, launched a standalone job search application last year, intended to help users find and apply for jobs easily. The application ensures privacy, so that users will not have to publicly declare that they are searching for a new job to their boss or co-workers. By separating these features in a dedicated application, LinkedIn hopes to make job searches easier for those in need of employment.

In addition to expansions of existing social networks, there are standalone social networking applications that are launching to provide helpful functions to users. For instance, Roomi launched in June as an application that makes it easier for people to find new roommates for their apartments and houses. This works as yet another example of how social media can work as a positive force, making tasks that once were difficult just a little bit easier. From everyday tasks like finding a roommate or a job to high-importance tasks like finding a missing child, it’s incredible to see what ways social media can benefit people.

Facebook At Work Provides Social Networking for Businesses

There have been reports appearing for a while that Facebook was working on an app that would more easily allow co-workers to communicate with one another. I talked about this briefly back in October. The rumors continued to be spread until yesterday, when Facebook finally officially unveiled their new application, known as Facebook At Work. Though it will first only be open to companies that have joined the program with Facebook, it will likely be rolled out more extensively later on.

The app allows co-workers to easily message one another, post in groups, and set up events and tasks. Some news sources believe that Facebook At Work will be making some serious waves and could change the face of corporations as we know it. Transforming the Facebook platform into a platform that can connect names with faces throughout a large company could help to keep growing corporations from feeling so inhuman. Smaller companies can suffice with other in-house messaging systems, but larger companies will truly benefit from a full-fledged social network for their company.

Facebook At Work will keep information separate from Facebook itself, and privacy settings will be treated differently, as bosses will have access to any information posted by anyone in the company. The intention is that Facebook At Work will remain professional, while still being able to bring together people in a larger company or corporation. A hurdle that some companies may have to overcome will be getting employees to view this version of Facebook as something that’s pivotal to the company, rather than the time-waster and distraction it currently is for most employees.

Not to be left behind, LinkedIn appears to be launching their own products geared towards co-worker communication. One of these products is an update to LinkedIn’s InMail service, which will allow co-workers to more easily contact one another. Another yet unnamed product is also being worked on, which will make it easier for administrators to send information to groups of employees.

The Aim to Consolidate Your Social Media

These days, many people find themselves with profiles on many different social networks: one person alone might have separate Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and Instagram accounts, on top of plenty of others. As these social networks continue to grow, some app developers have been trying to find ways to make it easier to combine all the functions of these social networks into one consolidated application. This is something that has been handled in different ways, depending on the app.

Many of these apps work directly with existing social networks. For example, Snowball is an application that allows Android users to have a universal inbox for different messaging clients. This way, users are able to view all of their messages on one simple home screen. The app includes messages from Facebook Messenger, Twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Google Hangouts, and more, as well as including basic text messages in the mix. Comparatively, on iOS, an application called Accounts has been launched, which is more of an attempt to create a universal address book. It pulls from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, and more and attempts to aggregate these accounts to make things easier for its user base.

Other new applications seek to enhance the features of your existing social media apps. For instance, Xpire is an app for iOS that’s focused on the ephemerality of all of your social networks. It aims to allow your Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr posts to effectively self-destruct in the same way that Snapchat automatically allows you to. This app also has other features, such as allowing users to determine how much inappropriate content appears on their Twitter account (which may lead users to want their tweets to be a bit more ephemeral).

Still others are trying to launch mobile apps that will work as replacements for other social media apps, by offering multiple features all in one. One notable instance of this would be Selphee, an app that has been billed as Snapchat, Instagram, and Vine combined. Even Selphee, which features all of these functions, still allows users to share photos and videos through existing social networks, however. Each new app appears to be one step closer to our social networks being nearly interchangeable and smoothly working together as cogs in a social media machine.

Deleting the Past: Teenagers and Social Networks

Social networks have long been associated with youths, as the younger generations tend to be the ones who pick up on new Internet trends and phenomena before adults fully grasp the concepts. Even though Facebook has recently seen its first decrease in teenage users, as they drift towards newer social networks and applications like Snapchat, there is still a very heavy presence of youths and teenagers using social networks. Even LinkedIn recently opened its user base up by allowing students over the age of thirteen to create their own pages.

Because of their heavy usage of social networks and their teenage mindsets, it’s unsurprising that it has become quite common for teenagers to post information that they might later regret online. Sometimes these might be pictures of themselves wearing not enough clothing or statuses referring to their partying and underage alcohol consumption. Many people believe that these mistakes and indiscretions shouldn’t follow them throughout the rest of their lives and make it more difficult for them to get a job or get into college.

For this reason, California enacted a law last year that will give children under the age of 18 the legal right to delete anything they post online. Though most mainstream social networks such as Facebook and Twitter already allow their users to delete posts, this law will require any social media websites to provide the option for minors to delete anything that they have posted. Because most major social networks already provide this, some news sources see this law as unnecessary and unrealistic considering users cannot delete posts that other people have made about them, and believe that it will need to further evolve before it can become worthwhile.

Recent Security Breaches for Social Networks

In early December, it was revealed that there had been yet another massive breach in social network security, as 2 million passwords were stolen in a hack that affected accounts for Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and more. The hackers, who are believed to have originated from the Netherlands, were using a virus that allowed them to access information for more than 93,000 websites, including many major social networks.

More recently, it appears that the security of Snapchat has also been compromised. A recent hack resulted in information regarding 4.6 million accounts getting posted on a website known as SnapchatDB.info. Though the site has since been suspended, the hackers were able to get information regarding phone numbers and passwords for all of these individual accounts.

According to the people behind Snapchat, the hole that allowed for this security breach has been sealed. However, some people believe that Snapchat’s response to the hack is evident of their existence as a very young startup company. One particular issue is that a group of ‘white hat hackers’ – people who find holes in security so that companies can prevent these kinds of breaches – had explicitly told Snapchat that there were holes that could be exploited. Yet Snapchat ignored this and didn’t even admit to their mistake in not listening when they released a brief statement regarding the breach.

Though these breaches in security have been unfortunate for a lot of people, one website is trying their hardest to help people find out whether or not their account has been compromised. The website ‘haveibeenpwned‘ allows people to enter their e-mail addresses that are used for these accounts to find out if theirs are among the accounts that have been compromised by any of these recent breaches. The website checks Adobe, Snapchat, Stratfor, Gawker, Yahoo!, Vodafone, Pixel Federation, and Sony accounts.

Social Media and the Job Market

Considering how prevalent social media and social networks now are in the average American’s day-to-day life, it is fairly unsurprising that their presence has bled over into the job market in a number of ways. For starters, social media is now a dominant way that people can seek out new jobs, through useful social networks such as LinkedIn, which focuses on building one’s professional network in the same way that Facebook is generally used to build one’s personal network. There are many ways that LinkedIn can help connect people to new jobs, as employers are encouraged to feature new job postings on the social network as well.

LinkedIn is no longer the only social network that can claim to help its users get jobs, however. Though Facebook’s purpose has never been to assist its users to seek out jobs in the way that LinkedIn does, a study recently determined that people who regularly engaged on Facebook found jobs much faster than those who did not. Additionally, this study also suggested that stress levels were increased by people who talked about a recent job loss on Facebook, due to receiving comments from friends and family members asking how the job search was going or offering unwanted advice.

The study specifically suggested that, after losing one’s job, those who spoke more than average with their ‘strong ties’ (close friends and family) were twice as likely to find a new job within three months than the average user. Comparatively, those who talked more to their ‘weak ties’ (acquaintances) were half as likely to find a new job as the average user. This is perhaps because people do not reveal their lack of employment to those they do not feel close to or instead that job openings are not mentioned by mere acquaintances the way they might be by close friends.

But using social networking websites themselves are not the only way that social media is affecting the job market. Now that social networks like Facebook and Twitter are being used by companies and corporations for advertising purposes, many jobs revolving around social media are being developed on a regular basis. It has gotten to the point where certain universities such as Newberry College in South Carolina are even beginning to develop undergraduate majors for social media. People taking these courses will learn marketing and branding techniques regarding the modern usage of social networks. Though at first glance, this may seem a little silly, the fact is that there are thousands of social media jobs out there and the industry is only growing as social networking websites continue to become more popular.

Small Business Are Using Social Media More

According to the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business, the relationship between social media and small businesses  have doubled in the past year from 12% to 24% in the United States.

The study which was released earlier this week found that roughly one in five small businesses have embraced social media and are integrating those sites into their business strategy.  Among the favored sites in the survey, Facebook and LinkedIn made the list.  45% of those surveyed businesses have said they believe that within a year or less, they saw initiatives.  (more…)

Social Media Plays Role In Policy Making

After yesterday’s blog post about the GOP using social media to educate the American public on the Health Care Reform Act, StrategyOne & Edelman, PR firms based out of Washington DC, released a the results of a survey which suggests that social media may play an integral part in policy making. 

Of the 396 senior staff members from both the U.S. and Europe whom were surveyed, 96 percent said they often use online resources for public policy research.  Fifty-four percent of the staffers had also reported learning of policy issues online for the very first time, while nearly one in five actually changed a policy position based on what they had learned online. (more…)

LinkedIn Isn’t Just ‘Pulling Your Chain’

The current job market sucks. Even the most educated and skilled workers are having a tough time finding work. The unemployment rate is the highest it’s been in five years and is expected to get even higher in the coming months.

In September, 6.1% of Americans were without jobs. This month the rate will likely top 7%. The forecast doesn’t get any better in 2009, when economists predict the rate to peak at over 10%.

Those out of work are frantic to find new employment, and those currently employed are preparing themselves for a time when they’re not so fortunate. At a time when many companies are cutting costs and axing jobs, “professional” networking sites, like LinkedIn, are cashing in.

LinkedIn, a social-networking website for the business community, has experienced a 25% increase in signups since the economy crashed late last summer. Since mid-September, the site has seen about 1 million new members every two weeks.
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