Alfred Thompson the Cyberspace People Watcher: Search

Using Social Networking Sites for Job Hunts

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 15:11:43 GMT

All of my best jobs have come from networking - from people I knew who knew about a job that was right for me. I ran across a post by Gene Babon who has just started with LinkedIn and writes about its potential as a job finding tool. I know of a recruiter/researcher, Shally Steckerl, who has a huge set of conenctions on LinkedIn. Based on the amount of time he seems to have spent building that network I assume Shally is a real believer.

Me? I'm not so sure. It's not because the connections are all electronic. I've been an Internet user for well over 20 years. I've made more than my share of friends over the Internet in that time. It's the whole notion of the jumps between one friend to another to another. Do I feel ok about recommending someone I know? Of course. But do I feel as safe recommending someone that someone I know recommends to me? That depends. And of course if you go a step beyond that it gets really scary.

I like to think that my recommendation means something solid. I am careful about who I recommend. Saying "he's a friend of a friend" just seems a bit to tenuous to me. I'm not sure how these social/business links work in practice. Perhaps they work well for posting jobs. Or perhaps they can be useful for checking references. At LinkedIn members can make endorsements for people they know. Those may be useful to view.

But are people going to forward resumes from a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend? Would you?

BTW Gene and Shally are both part of my LinkedIn network. A bit of full disclosure there.

Playing with "the man"

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 12:08:37 GMT

Robert Scoble has asked people to put "brrreeeport" into their blogs so he can play around testing blog search engines. It is actually a pretty interesting idea. Personally I don't think that blog search engines are all they are cracked up to be. That's not completely their fault as the number of blogs is growing very large very quickly. But it can be frustrating when it is your blog that doesn't show up in a search.

I've decided to play along with Robert to see how long it takes for my blog to show up in searches for "brrreeeport" in various search engines.

Of course if a lot of people do this what will it do for Robert's ego? Well at least he has Maryam to keep him humble.

Talking about Don Dodge: ATTENTION PLEASE: Who decides what gets noticed?

Sun, 22 Jan 2006 02:03:08 GMT

Don Dodge has rapidly become one of my favorite bloggers (I really need to add him to my favorites entry ok that's done. Now where was I?) He wrote an interesting blog entry called "ATTENTION PLEASE: Who decides what gets noticed" that I found pretty interesting. Some of it is quoted below. I didn't quote his list of 10 things to do to get your blog noticed because it is pretty much the same as everyone's list. Besides you should go read the whole article at his site.

One of his key points is that there are no gatekeepers; no one to tell you who can publish what and when on the Internet. OK we know that is a lot more true in some countries than in others but the point is well taken. There is no editor determining who can have an account at MSN Spaces. Almost any ISP you can sign up with will host a web page for you. Unlike radio, TV and the print news media you do not need much in the way of resources to publish your opinions on the Internet.

The down side, if you can really call it that, is that publishing is not the same as being read. That's where the best part of Don's advice comes in. Something I haven't heard anyone say quite so clearly.

There are a million things competing for our attention. We have subconsciously developed filters to screen out things we are not interested in or don't have time for. Think hard about the rules you have developed to filter things. Now optimize your site or blog for those filters...and you will attract a large audience of like minded people.

Think about that one a bit. In a few words it boils down to make sure that your site/blog is optimized so that you would find it if you were looking for people like you. The scale of the Internet means that there are people out there with similar ideas, worries, concerns, and interests. If you can find you on the Internet so can they. If they can't, well then ask yourself why they can't.

I do believe that getting a large readership takes some luck though. There are lots of talented people in lots of fields who never get "discovered." But at least on the Internet we don't have to convince some talent scout before we get a chance to produce our stuff.

Oh, one last thing. One thing that seems to help a lot towards getting a large readership is to have a reputation in the real world. It's like that old line that people who don't need a loan can borrow all the money they want. People with a reputation can get all the attention they want.

Quote

Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing: ATTENTION PLEASE: Who decides what gets noticed?
So, who are the new gatekeepers (editors) for the web? There are no gates...it is wide open. Anyone can publish anything. The web is the great magnifier of society. If you are looking for good or evil, you can find it...lots of it. If you are looking for cancer cures or support groups you can find them. If you are looking for porn or hate groups you can find them. There are no gates. There aren't even any fences on the web. That is part of the problem.
...
The traditional passive (push) media, TV and radio, have gatekeepers that decide what gets broadcast. The web is an active (pull) media where everything is available. We are our own attention filters. We decide what to subscribe to, and what to ignore. We use search engines, recommendation services, and opinion leaders to help us find what we are looking for. Optimize for these sources and you will get attention and get noticed.

Little Clues to Big Things

Wed, 11 Jan 2006 20:02:01 GMT

I read the statistics and referrers page at MSN Spaces every day. I love to see where people are coming from. One of the things I notice is search engine traffic. Most of the search engine traffic comes from Google as one might expect. Some comes from MSN Search as well. MSN Search is used very often by people who are specifically looking for a blog at MSN Spaces. No surprise there either. But the third search engine that shows up a lot (often more than MSN Search) is Baidu which is a Chinese search engine. This is big I think. Really big.

To me it suggests that there are a lot of Chinese people who are using a Chinese language search engine to look for information. If they are showing up at my little end of the long tail how much are they showing up other places. I wonder if anyone in the west is paying attention to this? Someone should be. China is a huge market and a most important part of the world.