LinkedIn Petition - Please sign it as it seems its the only way LinkedIn may possibly listen

All of us have been complaining but nobody seems to be listening.
The concerns here are only the tip of the iceberg but its a start.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/LinkedIn/index.html

Hope you will sign it and LinkedIn will respond.

Social Media and Selling Records

It seems Radiohead has opened a can of worms but in a good way. Other artists are now getting on board with it.

Niggytardust followed the Radiohead approach of donations for the album.

http://niggytardust.com/

You can Download The Charlatans' New Album For Free at:

http://www.xfm.co.uk/news/2008/download-charlatans-new-album-for-free

REM is doing similar but with a social networking spin. You have to go to Facebook and use the iLike plugin to download their new album for free.

http://www.ilike.com/artist/R.E.M.


I think this is an amazing feat. Artists are starting to meet the fans where they live. I hope this is just the start of the new wave of things to come. Keep it coming.

Social Networking Home Edition

We are all so gung ho on growning our networks in business, with friends, but what about your home social network. Especially that with your spouse. Communication with your spose especially in the bedroom is something a lot of people struggle with. That is why I am recommending an 8 part web tv show called "How to make love to your wife" Here is the show synopsis I ripped from their website:

Join us every week as our trusty (and brave) host, Greg, seeks various
solutions to spice up his humdrum sex life in this daring new reality web
series. And his (brave) wife Kathy gets to test out all his new moves and
let us
know what she thinks.

I have watched the first clip and its both funny and informative. Be sure to watch every week at http://www.slice.ca/love

Discovery Magazine says "If Osama's Only 6 Degrees Away Why Can't We Find Him?

On the weekend I watched the Hunting Party and it makes you wonder about the whole searching for Osama. Discovery Network worded it well.

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/feb/if-osama.s-only-6-degrees-away-why-can.t-we-find-him/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C

Could it be that the United States made a deal with him to go hiding and produce tapes here and there to raise Bush's popularity. You never really know. For those who have not watched the Hunting Party yet, I highly recommend it. I don't usually like his movies but I have to say very good movie and very informative as well as entertaining.

Susan Fischer and IdaJournal

Susan Fischer has recently started publishing excerpts from her grandmother's journal to
her blog. She is starting to work through reading it. Its hard material for her to handle so
she would appreciate it if you would comment on her blog to help her through this.

You can view her blog at http://idajournal.blogspot.com/

Cheers

Chris Williams

Has anyone used SkypeCast?

I came across this last week and I had someone ask me a question about networking groups over the phone and sugggested this resource.

https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/home

If you have any comments on what you think of it or any over the phone or voip networking groups email them to me at chrisw_88@hotmail.com or susan@clinchportal.com or add a comment here and I will post them.

LinkedIn Backstabs Its Users Again By Forcing Them To Stop Using LICM

This is yet another example of how linkedin used the early adopters to empower linkedin and make it usable. The lions created their tools and Arnnei Speiser spent endless hours working with people to make it easier for people to use linkedin. If it were not for people like Arnnei then linkedin would not have the millions of users.

I was already pretty frustrated with linkedin with all the minor decisions over the years like not showing the full number of connections.

Opening it up to google search then forcing us to edit our profiles to turn it off.

My guess is this pressure now has a lot to do with opensocial. Basically they want people to use it with linkedin and having a competitor like licm is a bee in their bonnet. But instead of shooting randomly at people it would be better if they would listen to those on the groups that use the tool all the time.

Also, I agree with Arnnei, I entered that info on linkedin. I added those connections I know. That data is mine not just linkedin's.

I would also like to say that a lot of data outside of our profiles is available on google as well. So someone typing in www.linkedin.com/in/ will find a lot of peoples info

As well, I think the issue is with linkedin security not third party apps. Think about it this way. If the bank leaves a file open with your credit card info would you blame the person who takes the open file or the bank for leaving the door open. I would personally blame the bank.

In turn, linkedin is housing a large data warehouse and leaving the keys in the mailbox so someone can scape it is a fault of linkedin. The fact that someone took it

would not be an issue if linkedin was doing its job. Its just linkedin is too lazy to fix the bug and would rather leave it up to us.

If you agree with what I have stated here or have additional comments. I will be glad to publish them here. You can also email them to me at susan@clinchportal.com or chrisw_88@hotmail.com and I will post your comments here as well.

I for one am very excited about OpenSocial

We all knew it was coming and we all knew it would take someone big to get the ball rolling. It looks like now Google is doing it. The Google Social Stream project gave us some insight into it. I signed up for my spot in the Orkut sandbox. Once I get approved I will let you know more about my findings.

If you get in first please email me your feedback and I will post it here. You can contact us by emailing susan@clinchportal.com or chris@clinchportal.com or chrisw_88@hotmail.com I look forward to your comments and possibly tips and tricks.

Social Media and Television

A while back I wrote an article on Social Media and Television. At that time there were a few dabblers in some areas.

foodtv.ca had its mealplanner. More and more sites are blog integrated. Slice.ca is entirely blog based in fact. BlogTV is growing strong in the area of allowing people to be their own broadcaster.

Over the past few months I have been seeing a growing trend in this area. There is a lot more inline video content, user profile pages and more chances for interaction of users with each other.

Recently I came across these sites:

http://mynbc.com/ - This is still kind of raw and not that pretty but its getting there and hey its still in beta. I can see great things coming here.

http://ifood.tv/ - This site allows people to swap recipes, connect with each other on the topics of food.

If you come across more of these television/broadcast sites that are becoming more social pass them on to me at chris@clinchportal.com or susan@clinchportal.com or chrisw_88@hotmail.com and I will add them to this list.

Wellocities.com

I thought I would introduce a website I came across. This is an interesting spin on social networking so I thought I would introduce it to the group. Basically it will allow people with
similar health conditions to connect with others in similar situations, find info on drugs. There are tools up there too. Here is the website if you are interested in checking it out.

http://www.wellocities.com/

If you come across interesting social networking sites please email them to Susan Fischer at susan@clinchportal.com or Chris Williams at chrisw_88@hotmail.com and we will post them.

Wright Hand Recruiting

The purpose of Wright Hand Recruiting is to help those involved in
recruiting to MAXIMIZE their recruiting opportunities - the RIGHT way!

The right way is the PROFESSIONAL way!

Whether you're looking to recruit, be recruited, or work with
Recruiters who recruit the right way, we invite you to to join us on
Wright Hand Recruiting:

I have a lot of respect for Vincent Wright who truly deserves the title of Chief Encouragement Officer. He had been an encouragement for me and many others over the years. That is why I am so happy to be introducing you with the many ways to connect with the group.

The group is located on Linkedin.com at:
http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/36234/00C00365C4C9

The associated discussion group is located at:
http://www.WrightHandRecruiting.com

If you would like to get in touch with Vincent Wright his email address is Linkedin@mylinkedinpowerforum.com

Speaking of mylinkedinpowerforum.com if you have not connected with that group yet you should. Its my main source for social networking help and direction.

John Horsley welcomes you to Marzar with open arms.

It seems LinkedIn is continuing down the road of Lion hunting. At the same time people like John Horsley are embracing us. They realize that we are valuable resources that Social Networking is about Paying it forward and that we need to be supportive of each other and encourage meeting new people, encourage networking.

I have checked out Marzar and there are a lot of good features here. Its still in beta but is very stable. There is a lot of work to be done but that is where we come in. We can really help John out a lot by using his application and telling him where it could be improved and would help make it easier for us to use. It works to our benefit too as we will help build the application we need to help us network better.

I look forward to networking with you on Marzar. I have kept my contact set to open so anyone can connect with me. This falls into my belief that everyone has to opportunity to help everyone else its all in the timing so connect with everyone and eventually the opportunity will present itself.

Happy Networking. If you have any questions as always email me at chris@clinchportal.com or chrisw_88@hotmail.com

Facebook's $10 million giveaway

I have heard this name around in a few places about Parkey, but their website is a simple one pager. Recently I heard that Facebook bought them.

Parakey is the brainchild of Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt who created the
hugely popular Mozilla FireFox web browser. The two men have agreed to join
Facebook to work on that site. Given the impressive resumes, it seems that the
deal was as much about acquiring 2 minds as it was about the Parakey site.

Now it makes more sense that in recent news, the FB Fund. These guys are programmers and understand the spaces and the battles that they went through with powerhouses in the market. This initiative is a huge deal. Being a developer it means a lot when a company comes out and give grants like this. Especially when they are not asking for equity.

My prediction is still that last quarter 2008 will be the next big Social Networking GoldRush. Everyone is predicting resession, the public is already prepared, using Facebook and LinkedIn, and in Down times is when people really focus on network, network, network. This happened in 2000 after the dot com crash and it will happen again now.

Recommended LinkedIn Resources For Lambs and Lions alike

A good pal of mine sent me a list of resources that every social networker should be connected to.

1. http://www.mylinkedinpowerforum.com/ (Original Linkedin-centric group on Yahoo – 6,100 members)
2. http://www.mylinkedinpowerforum.net/ (On Facebook.com)
3. http://www.mylinkedinpowerforum.ning.com/ (Powerhouse for developing your own social network Ning.com )
4. https://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/1304/10BE4F71AFD0/ (Add MLPF logo to your Linkedin profile. 4,300 members have the logo on their profiles.)
5. http://www.directoryoflinkedingroups.com/ (Large variety of discussion groups which may be just right for your professional needs.)
6. http://www.directoryoflinkedinmoderators.com/ (Good list of Linkedin Moderators with whom you may want to network.)
7. http://www.thelinkedincrowd.com/ (Music and instructional videos on YouTube.com)

I highly recommend all these to my network because I use them all myself a lot.

Keeping Up With Facebook!!!

I have seen many articles about people having trouble keeping up with all the things in Facebook. Here is one such article:

http://www.calacanis.com/2007/07/27/facebook-bankruptcy/

I agree, I think a lot of people are missing the point on Social Networking Applications. Instead of taking "real world" social networking to the next level we are simply expanding the number of people that people have access to for networking. Being a LinkedIn Lion, I do believe that this quantity is a good thing, but the problem is that nobody is really helping people manage their network properly. I am working on a solution to this an if you are interested in finding out more as it unfolds then email me at chris.williams@clinchportal.com and I will be sure to keep you in the loop as the early versions.

Facebook News

As a follower of social networking trends, there are a couple of interesting stories I would like to share with my network.

Firstly, I came across this article below. It looks like people are starting to tire of LinkedIn not offereing some of the features of facebook and are starting to jump and use this tool for both personal and business networks. Although facebook is not there and from the looks of things is not really in that demographic, I am sure someone could spin a new social networking engine based on facebook called business book.

http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/07/the-collision-of-social-and-professional-worlds/

Secondly, I came across this other article on the new article on facebook hiring a new finance boss and are possible looking to IPO. This is going to be a hot stock to have especially if google does what I am predicting and buys them.
http://www.itpro.co.uk/news/120941/facebook-hires-new-finance-boss-in-possible-ipo-move.html

There is a lot happening in this space finally. The thing I find interesting with this space is that the customers are well advanced of the applications out there. The need to catch up is staggering. I think this is the year it will hit big so the big players need to get their act together or someone else is going to come up and steal the show. Its all an open race right now and anyone can win.

No wonder Google is not buying Facebook yet!!!

A friend of mine sent me this article and possibly this is why nobody is buying Facebook yet.
Did Facebook chief steal the idea?

Its an interesting story. Once resolved its my guess whomever wins Google will buy, that is still my prediction as it makes the most business sense.

QuelchUp and Spamming

I had posted the following:

I signed up for an account with QuelchUp and then it asked me to check if anyone else in my hotmail was on QuelchUp but it didn't show me any contacts so I could choose who to invite it just sent them to my address book. If QuelchUp wants to be more than a doostang then it will need to fix this.

I look forward to hearing more from people on their Quelch experiences and if they had similar or to let me know that Quelch has fixed this bug.

I heard back from QuelchUp in this matter, basically they say this is by design and its not spamming. They have lost my possible endorsement. I don't want to send emails to everyone I know I just want to send them to a select few from my contact list. I thought I would update you below is the response I got and you can make your own informed decision on whether you will continue to use them:

Dear Member

Checking your contact lists finds matches on Quechup for you and sends an invite to non Quechup members to join. By inviting contacts you confirm you have consent from them to send an invitation. Quechup will not spam or sell addresses from your contacts. See our privacy policy"

Regards

Bettina Samain
Member Support
quechup.com

Social Network Agregators

I came across this article on Social Network Agregators at:

http://mashable.com/2007/07/17/social-network-aggregators/

I took a look at some of the tools they refer to and gave my thoughts on them.
I have not checked them all out either due to them being down, having to download some tool, or simply not enough hours in a day. I am hoping to get through the rest of them this week.

RECOMMENDED

SpokeoInteresting touch being one letter off from spoke. This is so far my favorite. I have just started using it but I like the way it brought in all my content from the other systems. I only added a couple and wish to add more but I am having trouble finding that option again. If you know how to do this email me at chris.williams@clinchportal.com

SocialURL : I have not checked it out a lot but allowing me to put the links to my profiles in one spot was a nice touch.


OTHER AGREGATORS

profilactic : This one shows the percent like me, which is an interesting addition. The new 2.0 version just got released on July 13.

iStalkr : This would be a good site for stalkers to find people I guess. I went there this morning to check it out again but its getting php/apache errors. Will have to try later. If you have any opinions on this one please let me know.

Correlate.us : The facebook integration is a nice touch.

explode.us : Its cool that you can search by name but it would be good if it offered region or other ways to reduce the number of search items

Naymz : Its interesting how they tie in reputation.


STILL NEED TO CHECK OUT

minggl : Unfortunately with this one you have to install a toolbar and I don't really want another toolbar on my system.

PeopleAggregator : Seems to be down

8hands : Unfortunately you have to download this one so I have not checked it out.

Second Brain : Still in pilot mode. I have not received my invitation yet but I am waiting.

UpScoop

ProfileOMat

MyLifeBrand

ProfileLinker

snag

Socialnetwork.in

MyMashable

Social Networking Search Engines

I saw a posting on one of the mailing lists I am on asking about various Social Networking Search Engine and Profile Collaboration Tools. Below are some of the ones mentioned. I checked them out and commented on them below:

Streakr - This is an interesting search tool as it searches myspace and other networking tools.
I found that what is missing is a public link to my profile like you get on facebook or linkedin.
I like to place these links on my sites so people can find me. But overall I was impressed.

ProfileLinker - This tool looks like they are trying to allow you to link all your
profiles in one place. I have added my linkedin and facebook profiles here.
You can access my profile linker profile at: http://www.profilelinker.com/chrisw_88

Wink - This is a search engine for people but you don't have to register to use it.
I did a search for men and found me quickly which is pretty good considering how many chris williams there are in Toronto.

UpScoop - I am always leary of giving social networking engines my email address on various sources and allowing them to grab all my contacts. If anyone knows if this one is good please let me know.

If you have any more you would like me to check out or you recommend please email them to me at chris.williams@clinchportal.com or chrisw_88@hotmail.com