Tag: LinkedIn

Categories
End User online safety social networking

eTagged.me – you are a pest & @LinkedIn should know better

eTaggedmeI got an email from LinkedIn saying ‘ “xxxxx” (name withheld)  has requested to provide them with some feedback based on their personality using the short link below’.

Apparently eTagged.me, according to them, is “a new way to identify yourself to the world including ratings & reviews from your peers that shows how awesome you are”.

They look dodgy to me. A link was very handily provided for me to unsubscribe from further emails. This link seemed to be from eTagged me but I had to insert my LinkedIn password to unsubscribe. !!!!!

This is totally outrageous. I never asked them for the email in the first place and they want me to give them my LinkedIn credentials to stop them sending me any more junk.

I’ve reported them to LinkedIn. I also looked at their website. There is an email address but I’m blowed if I’m going to send them an email to complain. There needs to be a way within LinkedIn of blocking this stuff but I can’t immediately see it.

Beware of eTagged.me. We don’t need any new social media platforms thanks a lot. At the very least they need to change the way they work so that people can block them without having to enter secure credentials that are none of their business. I realise that access to the large databases that are LinkedIn et al is an attractive proposition but on this occasion they didn’t get it right.

Rant over. I must be going through an angry phase – just stay away from me for a while – okaaay 🙂

ttfn

Wasn’t so long ago that someone stole 6.5 millions LinkedIn passwords – here.

Categories
End User Regs security

your password here? oh dear! #LinkedIn

I note from the Daily Telegraph that LinkedIn has had 6.5 million passwords stolen and published on a Russian website. When did you last sort out your passwords> Have you got a password policy? Worth getting one I’d say.

This is a perfect example of why we shouldn’t let the government collect data about us. It is going to be lost or stolen or accidentally published. It’s a racing certainty. More here.

Categories
Business social networking

job churn & LinkedIn

I have, for what it is worth, 496 connections on LinkedIn. I don’t really use the platform. I used to post links to blog posts on it but it didn’t always seem to work so I figured it was a waste of time trying.

Just now I got an email from LinkedIn telling me that 117 of my connections have changed job in the past 12 months. Over 20%.  Is this high? It suggests that one average we change jobs every 5 years or so. Perhaps people that use LinkedIn are more  likely to change jobs because, from what I can see, one of the primary functions of the platform is to act as a recruiting service.

I don’t know but I thought it was worth a mention.

Categories
End User social networking

Is #Google+ going to be the answer to my social media management problems?

The Twitter stream started up this morning with a favoured few people talking about their initial reactions to Google+. This is the new Facebook competitor from Google. I am not on the Google+ trials. There is a modicum of envy in this post but not too much.

I want to play with Google+ as a new toy. Something that will allow me to drop into conversation “Oh haven’t you got it yet? I’ll see if I can get you an invite” 🙂

However there is also an element of trepidation.  “Oh no not another social networking platform”.

Clearly Google wants a competitor to Facebook that will stop any erosion of marketing money away from its own coffers. Not so far back it tried Google Wave, the new email experience. As I recall it was meant to be a step in the Facebook direction. That product was far too clunky and I dropped it very quickly. I don’t know anyone that uses it now.

The initial comments from the cognoscenti (ie those give trial accounts) seem favourable but notwithstanding this  I truly hope that it will be easy to populate a friends list.  I spent a long time tracking down old friends on Facebook and the idea of having to rebuild the list on a new platform seems daunting to the point of not wanting to do it.  Somehow though I can’t see Facebook just letting Google extract a whole data set in order to make it easier for them to compete.

My networked life is now partitioned thus:

  • Twitter is my main means of communication – to the extent that my next batch of business cards will only read “@tref”. It’s all anyone should need to find me.
  • Facebook is constrained to people I actually know and in truth I now only use it to keep in touch with my kids
  • LinkedIn – I have changed my views on LinkedIn. This site has evolved and I can see that it could be quite a useful business tool.  I don’t use it much and in fact I don’t see why a super platform that allowed me to have a single list of friends but enables me to partition them into work and play should not be possible. Might Google+ be this? Don’t know yet but it would get around the need to have too many sites to manage.

Otherwise the other communications methods available to me are Microsoft Exchange email for work and gmail for trefor.net (play!?”).  My phone integrates both these platforms including contacts. It can also do the same for Facebook and LinkedIn. I already find multiple address book entries an issue though. Using a single social networking platform would get around this.

So there you go.  I want Google+ to be Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn all in one giving me a single platform to manage everything including my emails.

Who thinks this is what Google+ is going to be? I guess we will find out soon enough. You can put a request to be a trialist here.

 

Categories
End User social networking

social media – have you got your uniform yet? #twitter #facebook #linkedin #blog

twitter,LinkedIn,Facebook,blog

I’ve been involved at first hand in a couple of revolutions. The first was VoIP which took 10 – 15 years to develop into full scale engagement. The second is social networking which has covered the same ground in about 3 years.

Today I went to a social networking master class conducted by Pirate Glenn @lesanto. People attended because this revolution is happening so quickly. Today felt like a WW1 recruiting session with volunteers standing in line to take up arms. Everyone needs to know where they fit in – it is unpatriotic not to be seen in uniform.

The biggest challenge for businesses is that social networking represents a totally new discipline to embrace. It covers sales, marketing, customer service, tech support, PR and more I’m sure. There may be some overlap in this list but it gives you an idea of the scope.

I’m not about to expound on how each of these disciplines should use social media but one of the problems for a business is deciding exactly how to go about it. This is new territory.

The skills required can be learned and in most cases will have to be because there aren’t many people around that might be called social media experts – witness the fact that Tesco is willing to pay £60k for someone with the right experience.

Most businesses can’t afford to take on more people just to handle social media. They have to reuse existing staff that are already working on something else.

For example a marketing department might have a team of people working on print media production. It takes a serious decision to change the way you work to stop doing one activity in order to concentrate on another but diverting resource from print media to social networking might be one of these.

I picked an easy one there – print media is on the way out but the same issue applies to other areas. Customer service for example. Big businesses are already known for the amount of effort they put in to engaging with customers using twitter. Dell supposedly had 50 people on their virtual social media team.

It’s all very well for a giant multinational but if you are a small business doing this from scratch there has to be an element of faith involved – you will be betting some of your scarce resource on the effort.

I think I’m going to explore this a bit more. If anyone wants to come along to a “workshop” I’ll happily host one and provide refreshments. Drop me a line or leave a comment. I think we can aim for a February get together. Look out a date/announcement next week.

Exit to the sound of “Two Tribes  – Frankie Goes To Hollywood”…

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blog