Since the survey last year, the number of employers using social media profiles rose from twenty-two percent to the reported forty-five percent. Even more frightening is that another eleven percent plan to take up the practice in the next year.
So what caused potential employees to be rules out after their profiles were looked at? Well, it isn’t pretty:
– Candidate posted provocative or inappropriate photographs or information - 53 percent
– Candidate posted content about them drinking or using drugs – 44 percent
– Candidate bad-mouthed their previous employer, co-workers or clients - 35 percent
– Candidate showed poor communication skills – 29 percent
– Candidate made discriminatory comments – 26 percent
– Candidate lied about qualifications – 24 percent– Candidate shared confidential information from previous employer – 20 percent
Social media can be all fun and games, but unfortunately you’re going to have to start having a little less fun online if you want to look for a new job. There are worst situations of social networking profile pictures actually sending you to jail, but not getting the job you want can be pretty bad in and of itself.
For all the fabulous features Google has put in to Gmail over the years, there has been one that has been missing that seemed like a no-brainer to most: importing mail and contacts from your old account.
When I switched to Gmail, one of the biggest issues for me, and just about everyone else that took up with the service, was that there was no easy way for us to bring our old email with us from other accounts we had used previous to it. Some time in the recent past, people who were signing up for Gmail were given the choice to import from their old accounts, but those of us where had been around for a while were still left out in the cold.
Well, Google has ginally taken pity on us. Simply go in to your account, click on “Settings” and then to “Accounts and Import” and start entering the information about the old email account you wish to import. Just be careful with the number of contacts you decided to import… as I am not spending my evening deleting hundreds of useless contacts.
FINALLY! I can at long last get rid of my AOL account. (no, I’m not joking, I still have one)
The best policy for any public relations firm trying to promote a client’s new book about working with social media is to not annoy the living heck out of the press.
Due to all of the blogs I work for, I get a tremendous amount of press releases in my email every day. Due to this fact, I thought nothing of the email I got from Brody Public Relations at 7:42 AM on Thursday to promote a book called Guide to Social Media For Small Business. Just your standard release about a book about how a small business can use services like Twitter, LinkedIn and so on to get their business name out there.
The weirdness started at 8:00 AM when I got another email about it. This time it was someone wanting to write about it. Odd, but not anything to get worked up over.
Then another email came in at 8:37 AM…
… and 8:40 AM
… another arrived at 8:43 AM
Now they were turning in to emails from various members of the press saying they didn’t want to receive any more emails from this list. All told I got 45 emails through out the day from this email disaster. I especially enjoyed when I started getting support ticket emails from tech support because people couldn’t get the list to unsubscribe them.
Normally this might not have bothered me, but I was driving several hundred miles yesterday, and all my emails were set to go to my BlackBerry. So all day long my phone sat in the passenger seat of my car, just vibrating away as each email came in.
It wasn’t even so much Brody Public Relations that annoyed me as the people who kept replying to the list even after they saw what was happening. People kept saying that they need to do something to get off the list yada yada. Did you ever think about composing a new email since Ms. Brody’s email address was in the press release? How about calling her on the phone since she also listed her number to let her know? No, instead people just kept hitting “reply”, and it just kept spinning further and further out of control.
So, not only was I annoyed by the original situation, but I get annoyed at my fellow bloggers who just kept spinning this thing further out of control.
Folks, if you see something isn’t working, don’t just keep hitting the button!
After nearly three years in the market place, the Sony Playstation 3 is not only getting a price drop, but a smaller version of itself.
In what is possibly the worst kept secret in video game history, the long-rumored PS3 Slim has been announced at a game show in Germany. Priced at $299 in the USA, with a September 1st release date, the new version of the system is not only physically smaller, but it also is 34 percent lighter and draws 34 percent less power.
The new system will come with a 120 GB hard drive and all of the features of the original version such as Wi-Fi, Blu-ray player. One new feature is if you hook the PS3 in to your Sony Bravia via an HDMI cable, they will operate together, and you will be able to control the PS3 from your TV remote, and if you turn off your TV, the Playstation will turn off at the same time.
As we said, the price in the USA will be $299, elsehwere in the world it will be 299 Euros, $499 AUD, $629 NZD and 29,980 yen. Releases around the world are either Sept. 1st or Sept. 3rd.
This could be just what the doctor ordered for Sony as the PS3 has been lagging very far behind in this iteration of the console war. One of the things consumers always noted was the pricing, so not only do you finally get a price cut, but you get a better version.
Depending on the location, Google is switching to a tricycle bike system to shoot the images as opposed to the usual cars they use. Who knows what other locations they will be hitting, but it almost makes you wonder if you’ll ever need to leave your home again to go on a “vacation”.
Popular GPS manufacturer TomTom has launched applications for the iPhone, but we’re not sure how in the world they came up with their pricing.
TomTom has been one of the leading names in GPS navigation systems for some years now. When the iPhone came out with its application platform, it was fairly well known that the company would be releasing turn-by-turn apps for it, but it just wasn’t clear when that would happen.
Well, the day is now, and… we’ll pass, thanks.
The applications are available for four different regions and are priced at $95 for New Zeland, $80 for Australia, $100 for US and Canada and $140 for Western Europe. Seeing as stand-alone TomTom units start at $120, well, to be blunt, you’re pretty much getting ripped off here. You’ve already paid for the iPhone and then you get to pay for the privladge of putting TomTom software on your device… for nearly the same price you would have paid for it in the first place.
When you are out of your office or house, usually the first place you think to visit for Internet connectivity is a coffee shop. However, are you sure they really want you there?
Back on August 6th, The Wall Street Journal ran a story on how smaller coffee shops have begun placing all sorts of new rules on laptop users in their establishments. Some are banning users during certain hours, others won’t allow you to plug in your powers cord and some others are just banning them all together unless you are eating at the same type you are typing.
In short, it appears that coffee shops are no longer going to throw their doors open to the legions of computer users who like to stay mobile. While it has been a mutually beneficial relationship between customers and coffee shops for years, but it seems that may be destined to go the way of the dinosaurs.
Well, CNET News is reporting that Starbucks wants to remind their customers that laptop users are still welcome in their locations and that they can stay as long as they like. The official statement from the company makes this very clear:
We strive to create a welcoming environment for all of our customers. We do not have any time limits for being in our stores, and continue to focus on making the Third Place experience for every Starbucks customer.
While it is easy to see both sides to this situation, I have personally been a big believer that Wi-Fi is going to become mandatory in all bars, coffee shops, restaurants and so on if the business wishes to stay competitive. Whenever I am going on the road, I will not stay in a hotel if they do not at least offer me some sort of Internet option.
Will this extend to coffee shops? Well… you can have a latte with Wi-Fi or a latte without Wi-Fi, which are you going to go for?
Have you ever wondered how you stack up against other Twitter users? Well, Yahoo is going to help you find out… yes, I said “Yahoo”.
Yahoo has launched a new service called “Know Your Mojo” which allows you to enter any Twitter user name and see a resulting image and title for just what type of Twitter user you are.
Headliner – You’ve got all of the followers
Crowd Pleaser – You’re great at passing on the retweets
Name Dropper – You use lots of @names when you tweet
Novelist – You have a lot to say and tweet with a lot of characters to prove it
Scenester – If there’s a hashtag conversation happening, you’re there
Cheerleader – Retweeting is how you roll
Private Eye – Like any good investigator, you’re following a lots of people
Concierge – You seem to be great at showing people the best URLs around
Shadow – You follow lots of people like a good shadow should
B.F.F. – Your high volume of @replies makes you everybody’s best bud
Word Whiz – You have a way with words, and tweets with a lot of characters in them
Matchmaker – You pass along lots of URLs to make sure everyone’s connected
Tweethead – Your high number of retweets make you quite a fan
Party Animal – With so many followers, you’re the life of the party
Lone Wolf – Based on your low number of tweets, you must like to keep a low-profile
Wall Flower – It seems like you don’t tweet much but you’re still in on the party
What exactly the service uses to measure all of this is unclear, but to be honest, it’s pretty much useless. It looks like Yahoo found a way to cash in on the Twitter brand name and ran with it. Is it fun? Eh. Will lots of people use it? Probably, and that’s the point. It’ll receive heavy use for a few days and then be forgotten by next weekend.
I will say this, the animations are cute. Click the image below for a larger view.
Oh no, the government might make you treat all information that same? That’s a good reason to turn down stimulus money!
The other day we wrote how the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was questioning ISPs about what moves they had made to deliver broadband to all of the citizens of the country. The next stage is for the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to submit their requests for portions of the $4.7 billion in grants earmarked to help them expand their infrastructure by August 20th, but some of the bigger companies are saying. “no thanks.”
According to The Washington Post (free subscription required) people close to companies such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast are saying that the ISPs will pass on the funds due to Net Neutrality requirements attached to the money.
For those of you unfamiliar with the term, Net Neutrality refers to the concept that all ISPs must treat all data that crosses their network equally, no matter what type of information it is. In other words, if you are making what the ISP would consider excessive Voice 0ver Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls, they could throttle down your connection to downgrade your connectivity, but under Net Neutrality they would not be allowed to do this.
The FCC does have some rules already in place in regards to this, but they are well-known to be weak and lacking in teeth. The new rules will be more stringent, and that is causing the larger companies to pass on the funds. They say it is also partially because the providers are currently flush with cash of their own, but it is also well known that companies would rather avoid Net Neutrality at all costs so that they can continue to turn down your speed when they feel like you are transferring too much data.
Luckily this won’t kill the project, but it is certainly disappointing to those of us who support the concept of Net Neutrality. If it’s illegal, fine, but you don’t know that until it’s downloaded. Up until then it is just packets of information and it should all be treated equally, but it’s good for the consumers, so of course the companies want to avoid it.
Hopefully this will all get sorted out soon and the companies will get past their pride, but I won’t be holding my breath for that to happen any time soon.
Is there anything sadder than when a giant corporation has to be a sour puss over another business doing well?
In an interview with The Guardian, Amy Barzdukas, a general manager at Microsoft in charge of the company’s Internet Explorer browser, said that the recent announcement that Firefox has reached a billion downloads was “interesting math”. She went on to say:
As with any marketing statement, I’d encourage people to be somewhat sceptical about large number claims. It’s an interesting number and I have not seen the math [but] how many Internet connected users are there? 1.1 billion, 1.5 billion, something in that area.
Of course the implication here is that Mozilla is lying, but as I even said in my original post on this subject:
The number obviously represents total downloads and not unique users. Heck, I alone have probably downloaded 30 or more copies of those one billion.
Do I really need to explain this any further? The one billion downloads is quite plausible, Mozilla never said it represented the number of users.
Of course, Ms. Barzdukus had some things to say about the company continuing to support Internet Explorer 6:
Asked if IE6 provided a good experience for web browsing, Barzdukas said that “I don’t think anybody would argue that”.
Oh, really? So, the IE 6 No More movement is a figment of my imagination? Even I have said the browser must die, but apparently I would say using IE 6 is “a good experience”. All that said, she said that Microsoft planned to support the product through 2014.
Still think we are overstating the need to have your Facebook profile of embarrassing items?
For all the fabulous features Google has put in to Gmail over the years, there has been one that has been missing that seemed like a no-brainer to most: importing mail and contacts from your old account.
The best policy for any public relations firm trying to promote a client’s new book about working with social media is to not annoy the living heck out of the press.
After nearly three years in the market place, the Sony Playstation 3 is not only getting a price drop, but a smaller version of itself.
Google is continuing its quest to map every corner of the Earth, and now that includes going inside attractions such as amusement parks.
Popular GPS manufacturer TomTom has launched applications for the iPhone, but we’re not sure how in the world they came up with their pricing.
When you are out of your office or house, usually the first place you think to visit for Internet connectivity is a coffee shop. However, are you sure they really want you there?
Have you ever wondered how you stack up against other Twitter users? Well, Yahoo is going to help you find out… yes, I said “Yahoo”.
Oh no, the government might make you treat all information that same? That’s a good reason to turn down stimulus money!
Is there anything sadder than when a giant corporation has to be a sour puss over another business doing well?
