Yammering

Yammer the TC50 winner is a microblogging tool for companies. It perfectly quick broadcasting of knowledge resources across the organization. For more detailed discussions, it will need something else (wiki, forum, blog) integrated so as to seamlessly break into a topic instead of just giving tiny urls.

The key thing lacking is grouping and having a user as part of relevant groups. Integration with file sharing ability could well make it extremely useful and justify its pricing.

Careerbuilder and Video resumes

Colleen Aylward has an interesting post on Cheezhead about Careerbuilder's failed video resumes experiment. She elaborates further in response to comments

When a major market share player such as Careerbuilder makes a statement about a product or type of product, the market is apt to believe them. When they say that the use of video technology doesn’t work or that people don’t want to use that technology (even though their earlier surveys concluded that the majority of people they surveyed ARE interested in this technology), then people might actually believe them… especially when it SEEMS like Careerbuilder tried the technology out themselves and would therefore be an expert.

She further highlights the key points including a differentiation between Video resumes and Video interviews

1. Putting up a page on your website for candidates to upload a video that they have created elsewhere is NOT a test of video technology
2. Next, “Video Resumes” are simply talking heads, or a candidate talking their text into a webcam. This use of video technology is not useful as a stand-alone delineator of talent or job match.
3. “Video Interviews” are an entirely different animal and have a lot of value to hiring managers and recruiters if done correctly.

Most importantly
Careerbuilder blamed the market for not being ready … which isn’t true… instead of accepting blame for 1) implementing what they erroneously thought was going to be the “demand” use of video technology 2) implementing it poorly and 3) failing to place any significant marketing or support efforts around something so new.

We agree with Colleen that video as a recruitment tool has a role to play. Today, it is a phase of trying out new ideas to come up with the best model.

This also shows that Careerbuilder has become the complete corporate beast when it refuses to acknowledge its mistakes but blames the market as too stupid to understand their great idea.

Oops! Forgot to attach that important file

Google has come up with a new improvement for its gmail (google mail) service in labs. Turn on the Forgotten Attachment Detector in Labs and if we fail to attach a file to the email with files attached mentioned. More details and comments at the Google Operating System blog.

Backtype - Search People and Comments

Backtype is a tool which tracks comments of registered users across their various websites.
The comments need to be claimed for them to display against your name. The tool acts as a centralized database for all your comments.

The tool allows search by comments or people names. The comments section can be used to find people by keywords. Comments can be tracked by following the commenters.

The 'Search People' feature comes with 'Advanced Search'. This allows filtering the results by keywords and for a particular period.

Linkedin Groups adds Discussions, more

Linkedin has expanded the Groups section to allow for discussions, and allows inviting/messaging members directly from a list. More details at http://blog.linkedin.com/blog/2008/08/post.html

Google Knol launched

Google Knol has been officially launched today. Each Knol is defined as a 'Unit of Knowledge'. Each topic has an author who has exclusive ownership of the topic and it is associated with the author.

The author can allow suggestions, changes, etc. but unlike Wikipedia, the author cannot be challenged. Long term there might be 'authority' associated with an author just as there is for websites. This will probably decide the rank where there are multiple knolls for a topic.

Wink People Search - Part 1 Introduction

This is the first in a series of posts on Wink the 'People Search' website. Later posts will look at the search features in more detail.

Wink People Search is the perfect tool if you want to carry out a quick profile search using a few simple keywords or tags.

Wink has a large collection of profiles from various networks such as Linkedin, Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo360, Friendster, Microsoft Live spaces, etc. including links to profiles at these specific networks.

Wink has some impressive profile numbers (> 1 mill) for a number of countries which makes it an important tool in a sourcer's arsenal.

United States - 72.7 mill
United Kingdom - 6.8 mill
Indonesia - 6.0 mill
Canada - 5.2 mill
Malaysia - 4.1 mill
Australia - 3.0 mill
France - 1.8 mill
India - 1.4 mill
Germany - 1.4 mill
Turkey - 1.3 mill
Singapore - 1.2 mill
Italy - 1.0 mill

The search facility is simple as can be seen below. Wink does not need the user to log in to use this facility or access the results.



The basic search can be carried out by name, location, keywords or a combination of these. The search can be further refined using keywords, tags, distance from a given location, etc.

In part 2 we will have a look at the search facility in more detail.

Twitter acquires Summize

As had been speculated across the major tech blogs, Twitter has finally acquired Summize. This was easily the best search tool to come out for Twitter and it was almost inevitable that they would be integrated into Twitter. More details on the Twitter blog here

Sourcing Twitter Candidates with Summize

The recruitment domain has a significant stake in the rise of social networking tools. These tools have added a new dimension to sourcing and networking with potential candidates. The major players include Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin and Twitter. What most lack is a great search function, Linkedin being the notable exception.

A new tool by a tiny startup Summize is making waves for its excellent search functionality for Twitter. Today we will take a look at Summize and see how to use it for sourcing candidates.

The Tool | The Search

The Summize user interface is simple like Google. It does what it says, searches conversations (twits) on Twitter.

The advanced search option helps refine our searches further.


Advanced search can be done quickly using operators directly in our search strings. Some key operators which will help us in our search are described below.

near is a location operator to fix the target search location.

examples
near:atlanta
near:boston,lincolnshire,uk
near:10001 (post/zip code worked fine for the US though not for the UK)

within restricts the distance from a target location to search for posts.

examples
within:15mi
within:25km

The date operators since and until help restrict results based on their date of posting.

examples
since:2007-10-01 (This gives twits posted from this day onwards)
until:2008-07-01 (This gives twits posted before this day)

Summize auto updates the search results as new twits come in after your search.

Note: Exception when we use the until operator

The Search | The Tool

Our goal is to find PHP Developers based within 100 miles of Boston in Lincolnshire, UK. To avoid Boston in the US, we need to enter the county and country details.

Step 1: Our initial string is for the target location.

near:boston,lincolnshire,uk

Step 2: The next step is to refine results for users based within 100 miles.

near:boston,lincolnshire,uk within:100mi

Step 3: Here we further refine results to restricts posts to the last 6 months.

near:boston,lincolnshire,uk within:100mi since:2008-01-15

Step 4: Next we add our target keywords, in this case php.

php near:boston,lincolnshire,uk within:100mi since:2008-01-15

This gives 6 results overall. Of these, the 5th result looks promising. Here one user is discussing php code with another.


Once we are convinced this is a good candidate to target, we can open their twitter details.

matt5409 has a link to http://www.space-clothing.co.uk which is based in Hull 68.5 miles away on google maps. Now you can twit directly using @username or call using the phone no.

geekant has his web address and iphone no. on twitter. His details are at http://www.geekant.co.uk/geek/ Andy Whitlock, a php, mysql web developer based in Lincolnshire.