Tech Recruiters Turn to Facebook
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Social networking sites are called 'better than print' for recruiting IT staff.
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By Stephanie Armour  As the job market heats up, interest in online business networking is starting to soar -- turning a one-time novelty into a necessity for millions of business professionals in search of jobs or business contacts.
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Many employers and search professionals now use Web journals to find potential job candidates and check for digital dirt.
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As unemployment rates dip below peak dot-com boom levels, companies are competing fiercely for the brightest new college grads.Google's strategy for hiring young talentGetting hired via social network
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Stanford students can try  to borrow a Web page from a Harvard dropout this year thanks to  a course in building software for Facebook, the wildly popular  social network.
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Social-networking site to unveil a set of developer tools for potentially converting existing Facebook applications.
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Scores of vendors are now in the &quot;white-label&quot; social networking platform business, according to a running tally by a Forrester Research analyst.Instead of a proprietary platform like LinkedIn or Facebook,&#160;such companies offer a framework to enterprises or individuals wishing to build an online community tailored to their tastes and needs. The platforms are being used for everything from marketing and branding to internal enterprise use.It&#39;s hard not to let out a low whistle when you scan this post at analyst Jeremiah Owyang&#39;s blog.&quot;Yup, I&#39;m the analyst focused on this space, and not even I can keep up with the many vendors,&quot; Owyang said via e-mail.&quot;The flood in this market is due to low barriers to entry from easy-to-deploy software, an influx of venture money wanting to get in on the &#39;so-net&#39; action and media frenzy from existing social networks like Facebook, MySpace and others,&quot; he said.This particular bubble could soon contract, Owyang suggested. &quot;Like the [content management system] industry in the late &#39;90s, expect to see some major acquisitions from major [enterprise resource planning], media, and Web companies ... traditional CMS vendors are currently adding &#39;social features&#39; to their products -- most without success -- and will resort to acquiring vendors to fill their suites.&quot;Surviving companies will become marketing partners for enterprises, not just software providers, he predicted. &quot;Let&#39;s not discount technology completely, it can be an edge, but the ones that will stand out will have a full solution,&quot; he said.Alex Blum, CEO of KickApps, said Owyang has a point.A successful social-networking site &quot;has very little to do with technology,&quot; he said, and &quot;more to do with how you program and nurture a successful community.&quot;The company wrote a white paper, &quot;Nine Steps to a Successful Online Community,&quot; that spends only a limited amount of time talking about technology.Like other companies, KickApps&#39; hosted platform is set up to let customers handle customizations. &quot;We need to have a scalable business on a self-service basis,&quot; Blum said. &quot;If we relied on going out and talking to every one of our customers, it wouldn&#39;t work. It doesn&#39;t scale.&quot;However, KickApps offers tools that run the gamut from a simple-to-use editor for adjusting look and feel, to more robust developer APIs. The company claims that about 14,000 sites have been built with its platform.In contrast to the relatively new KickApps, which started up in 2005, Sparta Social Networks is a veteran in the space, having formed in 1999.That seasoning will help the company as the category contracts, said its CEO, Jerry Sheer. &quot;We&#39;ve got eight years behind us. We understand the space more than these new players.&quot;The company is also banking on its J2EE-based platform, which is ideal for large enterprises, Sheer said.Sparta will apply advanced analytics and metrics to derive meaning from social networking data. &quot;We&#39;re going to do some very interesting things,&quot; Sheer said, adding that a social network is essentially a &quot;focus group on steroids.&quot;That strategy ties into a trend Owyang sees: companies offering &quot;insight, intelligence and data&quot; about online communities. There&#39;s yet another related category as well, the analyst notes: firms pushing Web collaboration offerings.From the wide range of choices, G-Unit Records picked Ning, a company formed by Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen. Ning targets both consumers and businesses with its hosted offering.Chris &quot;Broadway&quot; Romero, who oversees digital media at G-Unit Records, said Ning was the right platform for rap star 50 Cent&#39;s social networking site, citing its ability to &quot;stand in the background.&quot;&quot;Unless you&#39;re an administrator, you don&#39;t have to see their name too much,&quot; he said.Romero said Ning &quot;could run a little faster,&quot; but mused, &quot;Every time you add someone with the power of 50 Cent, it&#39;s going to bend the walls of any system out there.&quot;Seventy-five thousand people are members of the site, according to Romero. That growth was driven by person-to-person referrals, not traditional advertising, he said. &quot;It&#39;s definitely the way of the future,&quot; he said of social networking as a marketing tool. &quot;Everyone should do it.&quot;It may not matter much if enterprises find themselves with fewer offerings to choose from down the road, he suggested: &quot;It&#39;s more about the person&#39;s vision than the tools, most of the time.&quot;
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An impending update from Facebook will make it possible for you to make your profile look a whole lot neater by hiding excess applications.
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The success of Facebook's Web-app building tools hasn't gone unnoticed by Salesforce.com, which on Friday announced a new platform for building on-demand business software that it hopes will lead to an "explosion" of applications.
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Social networking sites have changed the game for political candidates.
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To be, or not to be: Now Facebook users can decide.
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A Silicon Valley start-up is gearing up to embed free, Web-based telephone services on a variety of popular social networking and blogging services, including MySpace, Friendster and Blogger.
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Facebook, the social-network site  that has enjoyed explosive growth in new members over the past  three months, said it plans to let users tell the rest of the  world how to find them on the site.
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TechWeb - Company founders point to the rising valuations of start-ups riding fast-growing Facebook's wave of popularity.
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With the Facebook phenomenon continuing to capture the imagination of consumers, broadcast television networks, and a number of ISVs, SuccessFactors, a talent-management SaaS (software as a service) provider, unveiled ULTRA, the latest version of its performance and talent management suite, which now links to Facebook profiles.At the end of last year, WorkLight, a Web 2.0 software developer, launched WorkBook, the actual Facebook application that will be used by WorkLight to facilitate corporate communications and knowledge sharing in a secure environment.Last week, many television viewers watched as the ABC network partnered with Facebook in its coverage of the New Hampshire primary.Now it is SuccessFactors' turn. The company is a SaaS powerhouse in talent management, and it has more than 2 million subscribers in 156 countries.SuccessFactors is using Facebook to allow a richer employee profile that goes beyond the structured data that is typically captured in a HCM (human capital management) service, according to Jim Holinchek, a senior analyst with Gartner.Rob Bernstein, global vice president of product marketing and product management at SuccessFactors, agrees with Holinchek?s assessment. ?It also blurs the line between enterprise and consumer by linking between employee profiles and Facebook profiles,? added Bernstein.From a management perspective, the biggest change in SuccessFactors? service probably comes from ULTRA?s new integrated capabilities. No matter where in the suite an HR or department manager is working, he or she can switch to other suite components.?In the past, managers would have to switch between applicant tracking systems, learning management and performance management, for example; now ULTRA has a single footprint,? said Bernstein.The ULTRA release also includes a new drag-and-drop UI, as well as the ability for users to generate their own content such as to-do lists. It also allows HR or facilities managers to plot and move locations of employees and equipment on a floor plan.Tagging will allow users to add to their own profile, said Bernstein,. For example, if an employee speaks a foreign language, they can be tagged with that information to enhance collaboration and, ultimately, company productivity.The integration of Facebook into ULTRA is a relatively new phenomenon, said Holinchek, and while it is true that the formal organizational structure does not necessarily reflect how work gets done, Holincheck said customers and vendors are still working to understand cases where this type of integration makes sense.?Customers are trying to understand what the ROI is from the investment,? said Holinchek.The Ultra release is compatible with Flex, Flash, and AJAX.ULTRA is shipping now.
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Many Web developers these days feel a sleep-depriving mix of unbridled enthusiasm and nagging concern over Facebook's social-network platform.
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Apple&#39;s iPhone may be big  news, but in Silicon Valley all eyes are on Facebook. The  all-ages private Internet club that began as a college student  hangout has become the tech industry&#39;s hottest ticket.