Rockmelt Social Browser

LinkedIn makes its second acquisition: Choice Vendor

Yesterday, LinkedIn acquired ChoiceVendor, a start-up that provides real-world ratings and reviews of business-to-business service providers in more than 70 categories across the United States.

Here's what they had to say on the ChoiceVendor website:

"Today, LinkedIn announced that it has completed its acquisition of ChoiceVendor.

The ChoiceVendor and LinkedIn teams are equally passionate about helping professionals make the best decisions. As part of LinkedIn, we’ll contribute our knowledge and ideas to the products and services that reach LinkedIn’s network of more than 75 million professionals.

Effective immediately, we’ll be ceasing operations at choicevendor.com. We’re very grateful for your support, and we look forward to connecting with you on LinkedIn!"

ChoiceVendor is a San Francisco Bay-based startup company that launched just months ago, in May of 2010. They are described as a Yelp-like review service aimed at the B2B space.

In addition, Garret Kearney of GKR wanted me to let you know he is looking for an internal recruitment manager: http://www.gkr.ie/JobDetails.aspx?JobID=36024 garretk@gkr.ie

Facebook Places

I really dig Flipboard...definitely one of my favourite apps

If any of you have an iPad and your tired of looking at static feeds that come into your RSS reader all looking the same size and dimensions the folk at Flipboard have come out with a brillant idea that is catching a lot of people's attention. The software allows you build your own magazine which allows you to flip through it with a simple swipe of a finger. This is a revolutionary new UI Reader that already has brought down the company's servers with the demand it has seen in the last 3 days. It's free from the iTunes app store and for the moment only available for the iPad. I really love this app and looking forward to a version 2 that allows me a lot more customisation and also allows me bring in my LinkedIn feeds as well as the standard Twitter and Facebook ones it currently is set up for.


Check out their video:

LinkedIn Groups have additional functionality

Following on from the recent video posted by LinkedIn below here is a little more detail on the changes:

LinkedIn Groups allow you to:

* Quickly discover the most popular discussions in your professional groups.
* Have an active part in determining the top discussions by liking and commenting.
* Follow the most influential people in your groups by checking the Top Influencers board or clicking their profile image to see all their group activity.
* See both member-generated discussions and news in one setting.
* Easily browse previews of the last three comments in a discussion.
* Find interesting discussions by seeing who liked a discussion and how many people commented.

Group Managers

Manage your Group with new moderation tools.

LinkedIn’s new moderation toolkit helps you keep the quality level high within group discussions.

* Managers and moderators can now delete inappropriate posts right from their email box using the new option “Send me an email for each new discussion” in More > My Settings.
* Managers and moderators can now delete inappropriate comments right from their email box by clicking “Delete” within any followed-discussion email alert.
* We are introducing the ability for members to flag items as inappropriate – initially this is a way for us to gather important data and in a few weeks, this capability will enable members to flag items into the moderation queue or, if you choose, delete the content outright after an adjustable number of flags.
* The moderation queue will allow group managers to decide how many member flags can delete a thread or a comment.
* Managers can now restrict the move-to-Jobs capability to themselves. Users still will be able to “Flag-as-job” to move an item into the moderation queue.
* Very-low-connection users will now be flagged as such in groups’ request-to-join queues.
* Very-low-connection users will no longer be admitted directly to open-access groups but routed to the groups’ request-to-join queues.

Featured Discussions

Feature your top discussions as a Manager’s Choice

LinkedIn’s new Groups introduces the first of several changes to featured discussions:

* “Featured Discussions” are now called “Manager’s Choice” in response to user confusion about whether group managers or LinkedIn featured the discussion.
* Original user discussions, user-submitted articles, and RSS items can all be featured by clicking “Add to Manager’s Choice” from the top of any item’s detail page.
* The top Manager’s Choice will be visible in a module on the right side of the most visited page within groups: the discussion detail page.
* The top Manager’s Choice, rather than the top five, appears on the group homepage in a module on the right side of the page.
* Managers can re-order up to 10 Manager’s Choice discussions from the “See All” link in the Manager’s Choice module.
* Manager’s Choice discussions will soon see top billing in the group digest email.

Google buys Bump Top

Glove Mouse Recruiting?

A letter from Mark Zuckerberg

Interesting article, here, on privacy in Facebook. Great to see some admission around not providing proper privacy which was a big problem for a lot of people, for a long time. Great to hear Facebook taking feedback and worked hard to improve their platform. In this new world of social profiles, real time aggregation and location based GPS advances expect the public to demand far more secure networks with huge levels of tailorisation in their privacy settings. Also, expect governments and the EU to follow suit.

"Somehow we missed this point with News Feed and Mini-Feed and we didn't build in the proper privacy controls right away. This was a big mistake on our part, and I'm sorry for it. But apologizing isn't enough. I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. This new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends' News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about. If you have more comments, please send them over."

Google deal with Twitter too!

Just out on their blog a few hours after the Microsoft announcement:

“Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.”

Interestingly, with two large partnerships in place this probably proves that Twitter are in it for the long haul and won't be selling anytime soon!

Shaping Ireland's Future - Does the Irish Recruitment Industry have a part to play?

Today I took some time out to study Chris Horn's (CEO of Iona) excellent presentation "Shaping Ireland's Future - Communication for a Smart Economy" that he posted on his blog this Saturday. You can find it here. It's an excellent report and one of the things that caught my eye was on slide 24 bullet point 2 he calls out as one of the country's basic challenges as the "need to attract overseas innovators to add to our own". I couldn't agree more. Not only do we need to grow, foster and cultivate our own indigenous innovators but we also need to be able to find the best talent the world has to offer and bring them to these shores. I believe the Irish HR and Recrutiment industry has its part to play in this particular piece of the economic rebuilding jigsaw. We need to learn how to raise the level of recruitment sophistication in particular so that we can identify where talent globally exists. It is the "identification" and "sourcing" of this talent that I think we can have a tangible impact in as an industry. By creating and supporting a culture of recruitment innovation we can try improve ourselves. Just as Google have Google Labs and Microsoft have Live Labs we should have our own "recruitment labs" in Ireland to fine tune our skills, get better at what we do as a collective, and help bring innovators and talent to this country not just to take jobs which we are predominately focused on but also to create jobs. I sometimes wonder with the recent TCD and UCD R&D Innovation Academy (launched last March) do they have a centre of sourcing excellence in their HR departments focused on these issues. Likewise what is the capability of the enterprise Ireland or the department of enterprise and trade to do likewise. I hope we have people in both "experimenting" with technology to understand how best to leverage it to help us source Phd students in gaming, bi-technology, green technology, ecetra. Likewise have any of our employment related government bodies developed their social media recruitment strategy to let the world know we want to tell them about some of the excellent innovation that is already taken place using the latest and most leading edge channels and tools available. -?-

Coke, recruitment and Seattle!

Just had a great week of learning and brainstorming in Seattle. It's always a worthwhile trip to Redmond but always a little strange to see Microsoft's huge campuses with over 140 buildings housing approx 35,000 employees! It's like UCD campus multiplied by 5. This week I took part in some great discussion around where Microsoft is going to place some bets on their social media recruitment strategy. Exciting, innovative stuff! And big bold challenges ahead. Scalability, globalisation and localisation are all meaty topics that bring with them real challenges that we will need to think through carefully. More about all that in the future.

I'm now sitting in the British Airways lounge on the way home, sipping a coke, stairing at rain, reading some feeds, thinking about microchips being embedded in contact lenses, pondering on the "experience economy"  and burning some time. Here's some of the latest that has caught my attention.

Twitter about to hit 5bn tweets, here

Layar’s Reality Browser for the iPhone is finally available, here

Monster a bit late to the game but building social media presence, hiring using twitter @monsterhires

 Tweetdeck releases new functionality

Vodaphone joins the War of the App Stores

At the Future of Recruitment Conference on the 7th I'll be giving my thoughts on the frantic rise of the app wars. There has been a huge amount happening. Since July 08, mobile apps have become a huge business and I'm not at all suprised to see that Vodafone has decided to enter the market with a huge partnership with China Mobile and Verizon. Learn more here. Will be interesting to see how long it takes for them to bring our their own jobs app to recruit for their own company's roles.

Sonru to sponsor Irish Recruiters conference and Fergal O'Byrne to present!

Unfortunately, Flexitimers will not be giving a presentation at October's Future of Recruitment conference but I'm very glad to say that one of Ireland's most respected IT professionals, Fergal O'Byrne will be replacing them and giving his views on the future of recruitment and also talking about the new venture Sonru he recently jointed as CEO.

Here's Fergal's bio and very much looking forward to his presentation:

Fergal joined Sonru, as Chairman in 2008, having previously been a business mentor to the company. He subsequently became CEO in September 2009, after serving as CEO of the Irish Internet Association for 4 years. He is an internet industry entrepreneur and founded Interactive Return (formerly webBusters) back in 1998. He is on the Board of Directors of IGOpeople.com, WINC, and CCD Ltd. He is also Chair of the Project Advisory Group for Fáilte Ireland's eBusiness Support Initiative.

He regularly mentors start up and seed capital companies in Ireland and Denmark. In 2004 he was awarded the Microsoft/IIA Net Visionary Internet Marketer of the Year Award. Fergal is a member of the Irish Internet Association, Marketing Institute of Ireland and Engineers Ireland.

Fergal's most recent book - 10 Online Marketing and Search Engine Essentials was published by Thompson Books. He has been a guest lecturer on the MBA course at the Smurfit School of Business, Dublin. He was part of the original team that helped to set up eircom.net and was Content Development Manager in charge of such projects as the Doras Directory. He holds an Honours Degree in Electronic Engineering from DIT, Kevin Street.

I'm also glad to say that Sonru will be also one of the sponsors for the event!

Cloud Recruitment, the Ovi App Store and LiveCasting!

I'm looking forward to the Irish Recruiters future of recruitment conference-part 2 on the 7th of October. I'm currently researching my 2nd presentation on what cloud recruitment is and what is happening in the current app war that is raging on smart phones. I'm learning loads of new exciting stuff! Some of which I couldn't wait until the conference for and wanted to share now!

For examples, as part of my presentation I'll be mentioning some of the very futuristic concepts that Nokia are working on to catch up with iPhone and Android. Interestingly, with the scale of their business and the number of customers they currently have on the long tail of the scaling curve for apps on smart phones Nokia could be a serious competitor in the market place if Ovi takes off.

Check out the following video to see some of the exciting functionality they are planning that will allow you connect with employers and potential job seekers even easier in the cloud.

Is social media a revolution or evolution - let me know what you think at @irishrecruiters

We'll be discussing a lot more about this at Part 2 of the Future of Recruitment conference on the 7th of October. I'm looking forward to hear what some of Ireland's brightest recruitment thought leaders have to say.

Social Media 1 Year On - Is the Irish Recruitment Industy rebooting itself or f*cking what!!!

For those of you still trying to understand what Social Media is all about this is one of the better presentations currently out there with some great messaging that hits the sweet spot. Unfortunately, there still is a paucity of strong case study material in Ireland to compare a lot of the concepts in this presentation with, especially amongst the SME sector. Expect 1 year from now all that to change in Ireland.

More and more recruiters in Ireland are now making a paradigm shift towards sourcing and branding themselves using the Internet. Clearly a dichotomy has formed: traditional recruitment techniques versus, let's call it, "innovative internet and social" techniques. The tide is rising in the sophistication of the recruitment sea in Ireland and I for one am delighted to see it. But as ever with a rising tide, everything is not plain sailing and recruiters need to understand how to build innovative, content rich social media strategies in tandem with their colleagues and in line with their local PR and Marketing team. Yes, by all means dive in and get your toes wet. Even do some fishing of your own. But don't neglect simple marketing concepts and basic project management processes if you want to truly stand out. And make sure for God's sake to make your content diverse, interesting and innovative.

Expect recruitment agencies and in-house recruitment departments in the not so distant future to have a social media recruitment departments with very structured social media policies, group forum moderators and Twitter content managers. Expect the recruiters of the near future in Ireland being expected to have at least a fundamental understand of how the Internet works and how to leverage social media if they are to impress their ever increasingly technical savy hiring managers. We are now living in the world of the advanced internet recruiter and the future of recruitment is in the cloud!

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more documents from Marta Kagan.

Interview with Marissa Mayer, Google VP of Search and how early we are on search

Not sure if many of you follow Digg's Dialogg but there was a great interview on it recently with Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP Search Products & User Experience, who took some fairly direct questions on cloud computing, Google Wave and how Google feels about Microsoft Bing and Wolfram Alpha, and the biggest threats to Google’s survival which she calls ”complacency”.

Mayer, on the topic of Twitter makes an insightful response: “Things show up there first. And so we definitely think that including that in the world’s information, hopefully being able to search that and surface that for our users, with all those realtime updates coming in, is something that could complement our search engine for those types of queries.” She also asks the question which I like to dream about a little myself "What does the search engine or experience look like in 2020?"

New Twitter Front Page Arrives - It's no longer just about you

Twitter has a new homepage. If you are a user of Twitter already you're not going to see a lot of it as you'll be already logged in but for all those people around the world who still have not logged into Twitter they will be greeted by this new home page which now has 23 topics covering the collective discussions of what is  happening on Google at any given time.  It's now the world's most powerful breaking news aggregator in real time. Contrasting the old page and the new page gives us some hints of the company's ambition.

Here’s the old description text:

“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

And here’s the new text:

“Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world”

They have moved away from the focus on your personal network and have now started focusing on real time news and discovery for world events.  Effectively for me anyway this is almost a step towards a more hybrid social networking/Google news type real-time platform.

This is an evolutionary change.  Twitter was first conceived as a place to update your friends and interested parties on your life. It was focused and very much about you. Now in its place the focus is now about the entire world.

iCloud is what Google Chrome OS wants to be - but when will we see a recrutiment O/S

Following up from my blog post on Google Chrome's OS annuncement I decided today to go searching for small start ups that maybe already have created a OS in their browser. Often when companies are building innovative software they are faced with the classic "build or buy" scenario when deciding what to do. I was sure I’d unearth something or someone who had already build an O/S in a browser and low and behold iCloud appeared! Check out the video introduction:



Expect Google Chrome's OS to look something a long the same lines as this but with an even cleaner UI. The question for recruiters will be how to use it to benefit their cloud recruitment strategy? Well with a cloud drive as part of the offering synchronisation with your office hard drive will be important so you can work on the go. It will be interesting to see what other portability will be on offer to see if you can build ATS integration into the browser. Some of the open source ATS out there might be able to integrate with the platform which will make it easier for recruiters to work off their browsers which would be a nice piece of functionality to have if the security was tight enough when working from an airport for example.

The real question for me though is when will we see a recruitment O/S?

Aggregation is already becoming important as we head into the start of FY10. Expect a lot more desktop aggregation and clever desktop search tools popping up like Xobni, in the coming months as well as a continuing explosing of mobile apps. What I would be delighted to see would be a browser which allows me merge my RSS feeds, my facebook updates, my tweets and my hotmail, gmail and work emails in one place. Let me check my ATS feeds, have Skype imbedded and allow IMs from both Gmail and Messenger that would be great. Besides that integrations with a news aggregator like Newsgator would deserve a tip of the hat. Google Wave, meets iGoogle, meets Google Chrome OS, plus Google docs, plus Google News, plus Tweet deck, plus Messenger, plus LinkedIn integration and multiple utilities like Firefox have on offer would be a start.

TwittAround and Augmented Reality (AR)

A lot of people are calling Augmented Reality AR) the new mobile killer app. Certainly there has been a lot of debate about it of late and how it will revolutionising the way we live. Even Twitterland has caught onto this new emerging field and now there is a new beta augmented reality out for the new iPhone called TwittAround. Interessting to see that Apple has not opened up there full SDK for augmented reality yet, but there is plenty of folk petitioning them to do so. When this happens expect a flood of new AR apps on the market.