The aim of the course and blog is also to introduce and discuss how business students can find suitable virtual networking tools and build up cross-border communities of practice to support their business and career.
Student homeworks describing international networks that are useful for business students for knowledge sharing, for identifying international career paths and international business opportunities are posted to this site. Homework should be1000 -1500 characters (not words!). 4000 is in this weblog max limit for the comment format but be shorter! It should be very informative text.
I recommend that each network overview could be structured in the following way:
1.Name of the network,how to access it (URL of internet-based networking tools)
2.Aims and functions of the network and/or the community in this network
3.Added value for business students
4.Some example, how the author of the posting or his/her friends have used or can use the network or community inside a larger network for business transactions, developing a new business or for acquiring business-related knowledge.
Please send your homework as a comment to this post following the deadline specified in the Canvas assigment. Be prepared in the second class to demonstrate the network you have described and to comment briefly (5-7 minutes) your homework. If you do not see your comment, the automatic spam detection for comments that has been enabled by Google Blogger.com software has sent you message to spam. But do not worry, I shall publish your homework in this blog if it is not spam :-) . Do not upload the same text again. But you can still think what are the words in your text that Google considers to be spam ....These authors of homeworks that do not log in to www.blogger.com and send comments as Anonymous face higher probability that Google smam filter will direct you contribution to spam.
414 comments:
1 – 200 of 414 Newer› Newest»WAYN - Where Are You Now? www.wayn.com
The site is aimed at active people who travels a lot and has many friends around the world. Its functions are to plan trips, see who from your friends are there, find new people of the same area of activity in given location, and share experience with the others. What is more, there are many different possibilities to entertain with the others: upload photos and videos, create blogs, and chat about anything you like at forums. People can get some advices for travelling in different areas.
For business students it is a good way to find someone helpful to provide information about any country the students need to go to, to find out what to expect if you go there, where to stay, what to do, where to go, and where to get more information.
I am using WAYN quite often. I travel a lot because of my sport activities, as I am in Estonian national team the federation sends me all around the world to play different competitions, to participate in training programs, and take part in sport conferences. When I need to go abroad, I start gathering information about the place where I go. I upload my trips where I write the date of the trip, city which I am going to visit, trip’s name and aims. Then I find people who are living in the given location. I contact few of them, asking questions about, where I should stay, what sights should I visit, what problems might occur during my trip. What is more I am finding a person who has similar interest with me who can be my guide there. It is really helpful and easy. I just need some time to write letters to the most suitable people that I have found.
The use of the site is very easy and everyone can quickly get used to it. I can find people by the location, by the name and by their nationality, and by the trip they are going to have. It is comfortable to find anyone who knows everything about the place you are going to, and who can help you. It is much easier and takes less time then if you went to the place you are not familiar with and started discover location by yourself. The users of this web/site are really helpful and friendly. There are so-called ethics within the member, that everyone who needs information will get feedback for sure.
I like this web-site a lot. However it is helpful, easy and comfortable, accessible everywhere where the internet is, and even through the mobile phone, it has both plusses and minuses.
To start with plusses, one of the positive things about WAYN is that there is an age-limit. If a person is younger then 18, he/she cannot be a member of WAYN. It provides the security that the people you speak to are serious adults who have joined the network in some practical interests. To continue, communication is very easy, because there are no limits on the number of letters that can be sent during the day. Members can exchange letters in every time they want that. Also there are possibilities to write comments to members’ blogs, and reply to the forum topics a member interested of. Members can easily discuss topics and get many advices.
But there is also a negative side. One of WAYN’s biggest minuses is that there you cannot easily find people of same interest group, because the site do not provide search for business activities, interest groups etc. It only gives the location and it takes time to check the contacts and find out who has same interests with you. Another minus is that WAYN is a web-site for people who speak English. There is no possibility to choose in what language you would like to see the details of the page. The knowledge of English is one of the main criteria for using the site. What is more, WAYN do not enable users to join communities, so that the members of it had same interest and could have conversation and discuss the topics they like inside the community only. And of course one minus is that it is not very popular website and you might not find any of your foreign friends among the users.
To sum up, for some people WAYN is an opportunity to broaden their networks and find new acquaintances all over the world, as well as plan their trips properly to make everything well organised. Some people can be of opinion that it is not comfortable to spend time to look through profiles to find people of same interest. For me this site is a good possibility to find new friends who can help you and enlarge the network of acquaintances.
Name of the network: studiVZ (German, short for student directory)
URL: www.studivz.net
StudiVZ is a virtual network, similar to Facebook. The service is relatively young; however there are now already 4.9 million registered users. Facebook is surely more known overall. The number of users alone is not the only important element. Important is what kind of people are there and where are they from. StudiVZ is a site originating in the German speaking regions – Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Coming from Switzerland, this site is for me the one, where I, personally, can find the most friends.
One of the biggest downsides right at the beginning: The site has no translation to English (yet). It is at the moment available in German, French, Italian, Polish and Spanish. However, since the community is still in the beta-stadium and since it is growing so rapidly, it is probably a question of time until it is translated to English.
As the name of the community tells, this site is especially made for students – current students, or alumni. In the database of the site, there are numerous universities all over the world, including three universities from Estonia (unfortunately not EBS – yet). Users can find so other students from the same school, or from the other side of the world. There is even the possibility to select faculty and courses, which makes it even easier to find other contacts.
The main goal of the community is to find old and new friends and to communicate with them. This can be used for private purpose – sharing experiences, pictures, etc. – or also for business purposes. Once graduated, students go different paths and they can stay in contact over the community. If one needs later on information about another company, jobs, countries, s/he can only look up contacts in a certain area or job and ask them for help.
StudiVZ offers many of the usual community tools to contact other members. One can post a message to the pin board of the other contact or send an e-mail. In addition, one can post in the profile other contact possibilities like e-mail address, Skype contact or others. It is also easy to find new contacts. If I click for example on a site of a friend, I have several options to find people with several interests. I can see my friend’s friends. Further, for every person there are listed links between other people; it is always shown if me and a friend have other friends in common. The site also shows all the people who have visited my site.
A user can also join groups (communities) within studiVZ, i.e. persons with certain interests join the same groups. These groups can be for fun, but also for topics like school or work. So, one can use this community just for fun, but also for work reasons. Overall, how the site is built up, it is probably more for fun, leisure and flirting than business. However, like mentioned above, the possibilities are there if one wants/needs to build up a network for school or business reasons.
A good help for that is the well structured search option which gives plenty possibilities to look for contacts. There is for example the chance to filter the search for country of living, country of current location, university, faculty, age, gender, etc.
Another important issue is security. And studiVZ gives plenty opportunities to choose the level of anonymity or transparency of the own profile. Every user can choose who can see how much of ones profile. For example, I can select that only my friends can see my whole profile, but everybody can see my pictures and so on. It is possible to choose for almost every single entry of the profile the level of security. One can also choose, whom to accept as a friend or not.
In general it is possible that I don’t know with whom I am speaking there. Somebody can actually make up a fake identity and present him-/herself as someone else. Therefore, one must take into account certain common ground rules when sharing information over the internet – but this is the same in almost every other virtual community.
Another tool is very useful and shows that the site is especially designed for students and that it has also a professional purpose. The user has the possibility to search for job offers on this site. By choosing sector and place, the site gives a list of current job offers from different databases.
StudiVZ is a relatively new community in the beta stadium and it has certainly potential for improvement. It is aimed at students, mainly in central Europe (at the moment). It is, however, fast growing and counts almost 5 million users already. The community is a place where to hang out, meet friends, chat, and flirt and have fun with friends from school, or meet new friends. Those who seek for contacts to exchange knowledge also have the chance to do so, thanks to the search engine. The entry barriers are low; basically everybody can join the community. At the same time, security measures are high and every user can choose how anonym or transparent to be. The site is free of charge (and will stay so according to studiVZ). On the site is minor advertisement, which is kept in a very decent manner.
Network: www.hotmail.com
Hotmail
This site is focused on creating account on hotmail service to receive and sending e-mails. The functions of this network are to create a list of contacts with their profiles to send them and receive from them e-mails. You also can send photos and files. Once you have created anaccount, you are willing to get a live messenger programm. Then, students get an opportunity to communicate with each other and with their friends. With the help of live messenger they can share photos, have a conversation with more than two students and play online games.
Today the hotmail is the most popular networking. Almost everyone has e-mail on hotmail.
I myself use this everyday for checking my messages and to send e-mails if needed. Mostly I communicate with my friends in messenger. It is convinient for me.
I would like to recomment to create an account on hotmail, if you don't have yet.
I am a member of FACEBOOK, www.facebook.com. It is a virtual community. So I will explain you what is facebook, why a lot of people are members, why it is a good or not social network.
What is FACEBOOK?
Facebook is a social network. You can find a lot of your friends on Facebook. You can stay in contact with all people in the world by Facebook. Facebook is in English and in Spanish. The creator is an American. In first he wanted only a network for his friends, but his friends wanted their friends….And now everywhere in the world the people know Facebook.
In France the people use Facebook only since 2 years but it’s now that it has a very good success.
To become a Facebook member, you need to create an account. You need to give your name, your date of birth, an email address, create a password, and you need to tell where are you like at the college, in a company.
With facebook you can upload photos or publish notes, get the latest news from your friends, post videos on your profile, tag your friends, use privacy settings to control who sees your info, join a network to see people who live, study, or work around you.
Why is good?
When you meet the people, you can find them on Facebook. You can send them an email or a message, video, picture…. You stay in a contact with your community even if you move in the world.
For me it’s a very good network because I’m an exchange student in Tallinn and by Facebook I stay in contact with my friends in France, they can look what I do here and they send me the emails…. But I have too my new friends who I met them in Tallinn the last semester and they come back in their country now. And I found my friends who are in the same school and it is so funny because now we know what the others did during all these years where we had lost the contact.
What is a negative point?
Facebook can have a few problems. The people write their address, their phone number, their network, they write what they do in this moment….. If you give more information, everybody can see your information and there are people who can be dangerous for the community. So it is very important to don’t put everything on Facebook and on every virtual community.
Facebook ask the first name and the last name, the email address and all things about yourself. But few things are not compulsory.
In the business, a lot of company use Facebook to look the profile of their employees or to look the profile of their future employees.
To conclude, I can say that Facebook is a good to keep in touch with contacts. But it’s not totally enough to create a real relationship. In fact, we have a lot of friends but we stay in contact with a few people. In the business, the people use Facebook to keep in touch contacts and it’s a social virtual community for the business.
Benedikt
Social Network Studivz http://www.studivz.net
Studivz is a social network like Facebook sometimes it is called the ‘german facebook’. It was founded 11.05 and was sold for approximately 85 million € to the Holzbrinck publishing company. At the moment they have 5,5 million members. This network is made for students in Germany, Swiss and Austria. There are two other social networks called Schülervz and MeinVz.
You have the opportunity to connect Studivz with MeinVz witch is made for people that are no students or alumi. Schülervz ist a stand alone network.
The design of Studivz looks like the ‘old Facebook’. The main language is German but also french, italian and spanish are available. But the idea to become more international failed.
The main goal of this network is to get in contact with my colleagues. Who is the person next to me in this course? Another point is to stay in contact with your friends or find the old one from school. There is a special search engine so that I can decide to search only for persons at my school and they must students of Business Administration.
The first step is to create your own profile by telling your school, date of birth, interests, music… and upload a user pic.
You can also show your lectures and you can see who else is in this course. This is a really good feature because you can share information or ask someone by learning for the exams. I used this options several times.
There is also the feature to set up or join different groups. This is very often used and shows also a style of personality. Groups are set up for a party to invite and discuss witch beer should be there. You can make a closed group to discuss only with your friends. So this social network is made nit directly for business networking. But several companies use this network for advertising campaigns or for offering different internship.
The construction of this site is very easy and you will understand it after the first visit. There are no flash animation at the personal profile like at myspace. You can upload some pictures and link your friends on them or write a comment. You can choose who can see your pics, only myself, friends, friends+ their friends or all user.
Now we come to the ‘security problem’ of Studivz. There were several discussions in German newspapers and television about this fact. The user data was not save so everyone could use them. Because of that you can now made some decide between some personal security options. You can hide your profile that only your friends could see the profile and your pictures. All the other member can only see my name and my pic. Several companies used studivz to get more information about their employees. Maybe it is not so good if your boss can see that you had 10 beers at the weekend. But now the security is on a high level.
The way to communicate with other user is to write a comment on the wall, made a comment to a pic, write something in a group or write a personal message. The other user will get an email that something is new at his profile but he has to login into studivz to see what happend.
I use studivz as my favourite social network because 95% of my friends are members. It is easy to stay in contact with them and I can see what is going on in there life. It is easy to use but the only problem that studivz has is that it is a closed network. It is not useful for someone from another country to join. But on the international market for social network facebook is to strong for them.
Unfortunatelly I do not have any straight connection with business networking sites. I would like to write about social sites like facebook, friendster and orkut.
Because I am closely related with orkut site, I will talk about that.
Orkut itself says that through this site a member can:
Connect with friends and family using scraps and instant messaging
Discover new people through friends of friends and communities
Share your videos, pictures, and passions all in one place.
Orkut is a social networking service which is run by Google and named after its creator, an employee of Google - Orkut Büyükkökten. The service states that it was designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. Orkut is similar to other social networking sites. Since October 2006, Orkut has permitted users to create accounts without an invitation.
Orkut is located in the following URL http://www.orkut.com
I am the member of orkut networking site since February of 2006. I think that the main aims and functions of this site is to enlarge people connections and to relate different type people interests with others. I really like that I can see and find almost any young people that I imagine, at least from Estonia.
Orkut.com are constantly growing bigger and developing. Almost every new month there is some new feature on that site. Lately the moderators added opportunity to play some games.
I find, even this site is mainly for people who want new friends and just to communicate with others, that members can easily have a business partners also through this community site. Off course this demands a great risk if you trust somebody totally stranger, but we can not say that it is impossible to find new and successful business partners and ideas through orkut.com.
Katri Vahenurm KBE41
Analysis of an internet forum.
Wikipedia
To be honest I am not eager to involve some weblogs or virtual community. May bei n the future but I have not had any experiences regarding being membership of any of them. I prefere to read information and articles about subjects I am interested in. If lackin any information or subject I’d like to know about I usually use www.google.com or www.yahoo.com . Very often interesting articles or facts cite to Wikipedia encyclopedia.
Wikipedia exists to provide a globally available, free (as in freedom, as well as money), encyclopedic resource to everyone in their own language. ikipedia's goal is to create an encyclopedia. This encyclopedia has multiple languages because they are such a decentralized organization. Different cultures tend to evolve different organizational structures and policies.
They have different language Wikipedias, because languages matter to their people. Language is prior to experience and thinking.
It turns out that the great advantage of the Wikipedia, which allows everybody to add/edit everything, is also its greatest disadvantage. A few topics change over the few months.
Some topics are researched, or not researched at all. Facts are just copied from one website and articles contain information that might be incorrect. There is no editorial selection. Some entries just grow and grow because some enthusiast who has no sense for what's important and what's not keeps adding pointless information to some entries.
Due to extensive linkage within Wikipedia itself, a growing number of badly researched, incorrect Wikipedia articles is pushing down well-researched specialist websites in Google rankings.Text and concepts for Wikipedia entries are often copied from other websites. To avoid instant recognition, the text is sometimes rewritten, adding inaccuracies or even errors.
Wikipedia generates noise, not knowledge. Previous encyclopedias were well-researched and contained precise information that could be trusted to be correct.
It might happen that in a few years it will be so bloated that it will simply disintegrate, because some people tend to use this encyclopedia as a serious reference source. It is said, that in its current form, it's not to be taken serious at all.
Advantages:
anyone can edit
easy to use and learn
Editions are instantaneous so there is no need to wait for a publisher to create a new edition or update information
people located in different parts of the world can work on the same document
the software keeps track of every edit made and it's a simple process to revert back to a previous version of an article
widens access to the power of web publishing to non-technical users
the Wikipedia has no predetermined structure - consequently it is a flexible tool which can be used for a wide range of applications
there are a wide range of open source software Wikipedia's to choose from so licensing costs shouldn't be a barrier to installing an institutional Wikipedia
Disadvantages. Advantages in one context, may be disadvantages in another:
Anyone can edit so this may be too open for some applications, for example confidential documentation. However it is possible to regulate user access.
Open to SPAM and vandalism if not managed properly. There are easy ways to restore a page however, and on WikiEducator you must be logged in to edit pages so this reduces vandalism by automated spam bots.
Requires internet connectivity to collaborate, but technologies to produce print versions of articles are improving
The flexibility of a Wikipedia's structure can mean that information becomes disorganised. As it grows, the community plans and administers the structure collaboratively.
Orkut.com
Name of the network
Orkut. URL http://www.orkut.com.
Aims and functions of the network
Orkut is an Internet community that aims to connect people from all over the world.
However, if we look at the demographics provided by Orkut, most of its users are situated in Brazil (51.19%), United States (17.60%), India (17.34%), Pakistan (1.02%), UK (0.49%), Afghanistan (0.46%), Japan (0.44%), Portugal (0.39%), Germany (0.39%) and Australia (0.39%) [See also: http://www.orkut.com/Main#MembersAll.aspx].
Orkut is most visited by young people. 60.38% of its users are 18-25 years old. If you register to become a member you cannot choose to be younger than 18 years old. So many people who are 16 and join the network must give wrong date of birth to get registered.
60.15% of Okrut users are using it to be with friends, 19,93% for dating and 18,83% to find activity partners. There are also people who are interested in business networking [see below: Added value for business students].
In Orkut you can edit your general, social, professional and personal profile, send messages to others, upload videos, photos, write testimonials, join communities that are interesting to you, add people to your friend list and see their updates, search for old friends and accountancies, you can also decide what can visitors see about you etc.
Added value for business students
18.23% of Orkut users are using it for business networking.
If you click on business category it doesn’t show the exact number of communities, it just tells us that there are more than 1,000 business communities in Orkut. To find the one for your specific interests you must use the search engine.
If we trust statistics provided by Orkut then we can calculate the number of people who are interested in business networking. There were about 120,000,000 users in April 2008 [see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut]. If we take 18.23% out of 120 million it will leave us with 21,876,000. Quite big number I must say.
But if you want to find business contacts in Russia then Okrut is not the best tool for the job. You have to use more popular local communities instead.
My experience
I discovered Orkut in 2005. It was before Google bought it. I started to use it because many of my friends had accounts there and it was also a good tool to find old contacts.
As the time went one I joined some communities. But this year I hadn’t have time to post any messages as other activities have taken all of my time.
I login once in a while to check what updates my friends have done.
Piret Maasik, student ÕBE-31
I’m a student and as usually the evening course students work at the same time , some student have also familylife and even kids allready. I have also a child for which I’m very proud of. I’m not 100% business oriented so I don’t surf on business websites much.
I founded the website www.perekool.ee on time I was pregnant. No doubt it’s extraordinary important time for women. Specially on time of your first pregnancy when you’d like to share your feelings with others who understand these and share your experiences. So it’s good to have a place where to discuss about such themes and if needed ask advice.
The website has logical and easy structure. You can chose between 8 different themes you are interested in. Also you can be participant by each of them. Themes are for example: pregnancy, children, also theme how to get pregnant – as we know nowedays the problem is rising that people don’t get so easely children. For them it’s certanly very good place to get information and read about others experience. There is also theme for men.
As the visitors are on kids satisfaction oriented, there are always some banners from companies who are selling games ,toys, clothes, books, etc. It has become popular to buy secondhand goods and therefore is a place there. If you find some interesting things you agree by phone or e-mail the place and time for meeting each other and to buy the goods. For most goods are also the photos. The barguing is quite active there.
Nowadays it is a big issue how to find a place in the kindergarden or what kind of activity would be the best for my child in some sertain age. Also if you own a car and can easely move around then you are interested in different kind of playgrounds. So it’s very easy to search information or post your own question.
There are references to legislations related with pregnancy, kids about the bonuses and exact information what where and what kind of forms you need to fulfilled an so on. Also articles posted by the experts how to do massage,how to feet, what the child in certain age needs.
It is understandable that mothers often worry very much if the baby get a fever, cough, influensa etc. It is very mitigating if someone says to you it’s not big problem to worry about and gives some tips how to handle with it.
Certainly there is good possibility to get good friends by joining some activity where from this website users are also participants.
I’m not anymore ative participant on this website but about 2 years I surfed there a lot. It is very interesting and informative site for me. If I come pregnant again no doubt I find myself again seeking and posting information there. I belive that very many families with kids are during some period visited the webblog/website www.perekool.ee
Tripadvisor
TripAdvisor web site gives the overview of traveller reviews and oppinions of hotels, vacations, dining places, flights and prices etc. It is the perfect place to get the information when you are planning a trip abroad wheter it is business or leisure trip.
There is a forum where you can give your own feedback, share your experience or give the reviews. This web site also gives the owerview of all the points of intresets in different countries and also dining places and leisure facilities. It is a forum, where all travellers can share their experiences, dissapointments and sucesses during their trip or holiday. Travellers can give their reviews about the hotels and other tourists places, can advise other travellers what to expect and what to avoid.
I am writing my analysis of TripAdvisor website as a user: because of my profession in hotel business and as a traveller in my personal life. Being involved in hotel management in Estonia our hotel used this web site as an advantage. Our hotel has a link directed to tripadvisor web site where the clients can actually see and read the oppinions and reviews of the other guests who had visited the hotel. And it is an excellent tool for hotel personel, to get the feed back and also give the Manager feedback online, so the (future) clients can see that the hotel personel is aware about the problem and dealing with it.
I see the plusses of this forum that it is a tool which consists of all areas of travelling – accomodation, transportation, dining and leisure. Possibility to see tha Manager feedback which allows you to think that the management is aware of the probles that have been occurred in the past and they are dealnig with it. And when you travel to the destination where non of your acquintance have been, you get the info from the consumers not from the seller part.
Minuses of this web site are that not all the World destinations are mentioned there, so it can be still improved, that some info might be out of date, so you have to follow the dates and if there is only one or few reviews of the hotel or dining place or another service, then this oppinion or this review is very subjective, and you can not do any conclusion based on this one review. Also if you ask a question in forum you might not get the answer as soon as you expect. Some answers might come within a 6 months. And of course then you already made your trip.
TripAdvisor from a point of networking and self-development. Wheter you plan a business or leisure trip you can be in contact with other people around the world who had been in the same destination or who still are there, you can share the experience or when you travel you can also meet the person who gave you an information. It is a good network also to wide your knowledg about the country, traditions and people.
Being a member of TripAdvisor is not only a tool for the traveller but an excellent tool when you run your own busines in hotel, leisure or other travel-related areas. Members get weekly info about the new ideas of planning your trip, new feedbacks about the placese what you have been chosen. You can make your travel plan and print it out. Now if you are not a consumer but in seller part instead you can easily use all of this information as an advantage of your business for getting the information, new trends in travelling and info about your competitors. You can also communicate with your persent and future clients.
There has been chosen for the homework assignment International Nuremberg Toyfair. As this toyfair has business networking site www.toyfair.de, this will be the subject of the analysis of this homework. Nuremberg Toy Fair will take place every year in February, in Germany. For more information, it is the second biggest toy fair in the world, besides the Hong Kong Toy Fair, that will take place in every year in China.
When starting to analyse www.toyfair.de (in german language www.spielwarenmesse.de), you will notice simplicity and regularity of this business networking site at once. For understading different toys, there has been added different toys groups at the website – wooden toys, developing toys, soft toys etc. It is very important that the toys producing companies has been appointed out by different regions. For example, estonian wholesale company of toys could select out the companies that are logistically more suitable them (for example Germany and Italy are the biggest toys-producing countries in the world; from the other hand Spain in not-suitable logistically to Estonia, because of its long distance from Estonia and because of very expensive transportation costs).
From the other hand, as all toys-producing companies are aggregating nowadays to China, the European officies does`nt have such an importance any more (as the toys have been produced in China and imported through China). There is one very important pro of the www.toyfair.de business networking site, as this has translations to 21 different world languages.
There is one another very big plus of the www.toyfair.de business networking site – there has been added every year before the fair the companies and new brands, that have joined with the business networking site. Therefore, it is possible to use the information as a competitive advantage compared to the other competitors, because it is possible to conclude the agreements with the toys-producing companies before the fair.
Analysing www.toyfair.de business networking site more detailed, there has been created Organizer for appointing personal schedule. First there is needed to create you own personal account (or company account) and after that it is possible to see the online catalogue, where there has beed centered all toys-producing companies, that will participate at the fair.
Very important part of the www.toyfair.de business networking site are the news, where has been notified the news about the toys-producing companies. For example, there has been added the information about the companies, that have been merged or when one company has purchased another. As the trends of nowadays world of toys are that companies are merging to bigger corporations, it is very important to know such news – in case it is possible create good business contacts with such corporations, it is possible to purchase and import through that corporations very many different brands (basically bigger part of company portfolio), as such companies are usually more competitive with the price politics, are more innovative and therefire it is profitable to do business with such companies.
When to concern some minuses of the www.toyaif.de business networking site, it is probably the fact that the Nuremberg Toy Fair takes place in February, but foregoing Hong Kong Toy Fair takes place every year in January. Therefore it is a small minus of Nuremberg Toy Fair -wrong timing. The main question is that as Hong Kong is far from Europe and it is not useful to travel there every year , a competitor might conclude the agreements with new producers there. Only way to aviod such situation is concluding agreements with toys-producing companies before the Hong Kong fair, by using www.toyfair.de business networking site.
To get the biggest business profit from the www.toyfair.de business networking site, it would be reasonable to get aquainted thoroughly with the different product groups and then to select out the suitable brands. As many of the toys-producing companies have their company webpages, it possible to move further and to learn about the company portfolio. Afterwards it is possible to convince in the good quality of the company production, when meeting at the fair. It also is possible for the exhibitor to contact with the visitors, since they know (through the fair visitors accounts), in which toy groups they are interested in.
Peeter Jevstignejev, KBE-31
http://www.amazon.com
Actually I have to state that I’m not very eager to use the opportunities of open forums. From time to time I have added in some comments or searched for the solution to specified problems. However I’m buoyant reading comments of external reviewers.
Amazon.com, Inc. is an American e - commerce company.
Amazon.com started in 1995 as an on-line bookstore, but quite soon started to deliver goods as VHS, DVD, CDs, MP3, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, etc. Amazon provides a unified multichannel platform from whence a customer can interchangeably interact with the retail website.
In August 2005, Amazon started to sell products under its own private label "Pinzon" with the focus on textiles, kitchen utensils, and other household goods. Amazon reported over 1.3 million sellers sold products through Amazon's worldwide web sites in 2007.
A popular feature of Amazon is the ability for users to submit reviews to the web page of each product. Users can rate the product on a rating scale from one to five. Such rating scales provide a basic idea of the popularity and dependability of a product.
The review feature is one of the main reasons for Amazons’ success at selling books. Reviews give the reader some basis for evaluating a given book.
Amazon created a feature that allowed users to comment on reviews. Some books have over one thousand reviews. Problem exists concerning spamming but there is an ignore button feature to help counteract the spamming.
In August 2006, Amazon launched product discussion forums for certain products using guidelines that follow standard message board conventions.
Amazon Connect enables authors to post remarks on their book pages and to customers who have bought their books.
WebStore by Amazon allows businesses to create e-commerce websites using Amazon technology. Merchants can customize their sites using their own photos and branding.
Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon.com has very interesting idea – the platform for entrepreneurs. The content of this idea is that for moderate compensation, companies could get access to Amazon’s resources: sales network, logistics, payment transactions etc.. Referring Kevin Maney:
The hot talk in tech is creating “platforms” that entrepreneurs can use to quickly and cheaply build whole companies — the way PlayStation is a platform for video games, or Windows is a platform for software applications … Still, if executives at Hormel Foods thought about their business the way Bezos thinks about Amazon, Hormel could create a meat platform. If I have a great idea for a new kind of sausage, I could use Hormel to make it, store it and ship it, while I sold it from a website. I could create a sausage company and never step foot in a rendering plant.
As I have an ISIC card and I am part of a worldwide community of over 4.5 million students who share a passion for travel, adventure and discovery I would like to make an overview of the webpage www.isic.org and inform you what kind of advantages it offers to you.
The International Student Identity Card (ISIC - The World of Student Travel) is the only internationally accepted student ID card. Since its launch in 1968, the ISIC has helped over 40 million students to get the most out of their travel experience. With access to a global network of affordable and specialized student services, the ISIC can be your passport to more than 41,100 discounts and benefits in 106 countries worldwide.
Students today have more choices then ever before with regard to destination and overseas experiences. Whether traveling to study, learn a new language, work or simply for the thrill of adventure, traveling provides a first-hand insight into countries and cultures as well as a new perspective on life.
The ISTC was founded to help students fulfill all of these travel ambitions. You can find the information on how to apply and information on what kind of advantages the ISIC card gives you when traveling.
International Student Travel Confederation (ISTC) is a non -profit organization, founded in 1949 by the travel departments of a group of national student unions, to explore the needs of the growing numbers of student and youth travelers. The ISTC network includes over 5000 offices in 106 countries worldwide, which collectively serve the needs of over 10 million student and youth travelers each year.
From the webpage you can easily find information on, offers for low priced flights, travel tickets, insurance, accommodation, work and study abroad programs as well as special deals on entertainment, sightseeing and shopping in countries all over the world.
ISTC affiliated Student and Youth Travel Offices have negotiated special deals with airlines, train and bus companies to offer cheap and flexible flight tickets to hundreds of destinations worldwide. There are a wide range of insurance policies to choose from and one such policy is the International Student Insurance services (ISIS). The ISIS has been specially developed to meet the flexible schedules and limited budgets of young, independent travelers. It has several options and is available for members of the International Association for Student Insurance Services (IASIS) and many student and youth travel offices that are part of the ISTC network.
The aim of the webpage is to help students get the most out of traveling; the ISTC and its affiliates offer the option of taking part in work, study and cultural exchange programs. Each year, more than 60,000 students, youth and academic professors participate in
programs around the world. You can find information on how to apply on the webpage.
The positive is that once you have decided your destination, you can easily find information on culture, history and also upcoming festivals and events.
Another positive feature to the ISIC card is that you as a user can very easily find information about discounts. Once you have chosen the card you would like to use and country to travel in, it only takes a second and you will get a complete overview on all possible discounts you can get by showing your ISIC card. Just to mention a few possibilities, you can safe money on hotels, restaurants, public transportation, museums and a lot more.
The webpage offer its user the possibility to exchange ideas, share experiences or get advice through their forum www.travelblog.org. Travel Blog is a collection of travel journals, diaries and photos from around the world. It is free, giving you the option of uploading as many pictures you may wish since it is unlimited.
As a conclusion I would say, if you consider to traveling, becoming a member of ISIC and getting inspiration and lots of discounts options look at their homepage www.isic.org.
Myspace, Linkedin, Orkut and Facebook Social/Business Networks.
First of all I wasn't familiar with these networks, had poor knowledge and didn't use them so often. In this course I examined these four communities and realized the potential and use in personal life and use for my business. My homework might be late but for a good reason as I wanted to test the four most popular networks.
Lets start from MySpace, as I found only few friends whom I really know and after a thorough search I discovered that lot of businesses and people use MySpace as promotional tool. I made an account that referred to my company and got some response, after I had created my community and posted some useful information on boards I were sent tons of invitations all related to my business. For now I have got some contacts with whom we have established business relations and we are exchanging information. From my point of view MySpace is perfect promotional tool if you are looking to markets in the United States of America. (www.myspace.com)
Linkedin as new member there I have gone through all the links and gadgets Linkedin can offer. First of all why I am happy that I joined Linkedin is contacts that I needed and found, there was even one contact that I had lost earlier.
Linkedin also connected me with few contacts from same field of business that I am at.
But after going everything through I found that Linkedin is more like connecting tool, it cant be compared to MySpace with its options and ways to promote yourself or your company, also Linkedin cant be compared to Orkut or Facebook as these two are more for personal use than business related. (www.linkedin.com)
Orkut, been using it some time now for a personal use and this course gave me reasons also to try it as promotional tool. Orkut can’t be used as MySpace, for Real-Estate related business Orkut isn't an option, it’s for personal use only. You can create communities but there is lack of different options for promoting. After short trial for business use I realized that Orkut is good for beeing connected with some friends and people I don't see that often. Getting connected with friends is Orkut is all about. (www.orkut.com)
Facebook from my view is mix of Orkut and MySpace, and I can say it can be used both in personal and business use. You can find your friends from it, you can use applications the site offers and for example play poker with your buddies. Facebook by connecting and giving opportunities for things to do makes it so popular.
For businesses Facebook can be useful as promotional tool as you can create an application for your business and add it to Facebook. Popular applications will be quickly sent from one user to another in the network. As I am creating new company with my partners we have already started to work with creating an application for Facebook. Facebook is probably the best tool that mixes business with pleasure.
(www.facebook.com)
Gert Nurme ÕBE-31
gert.nurme@midway.ee
Jaanus Vahesalu
KBE-31
In this homework I would like to describe one social network called Orkut (www.orkut.com). I know that quite many students have made already their homework of the same site but unfortunately I’m not big user of different internet networks, so I have only possibility to write also about Orkut with what I have some experiences.
Orkut is social network and offers many different possibilities to communicate with your friends, old classmates or even your relatives. At first you have to fill your profile with details what you want to show to your friends or other users, you can upload pictures and add some of your favorites videos also. Then you have possibility to join with different communities and communicate with these members. It gives also possibility to send messages to your friends who are in your list. In my point of view it is very good network to keep yourself updated what your friends/classmates are doing if you haven’t very close contact with them. Orkut helps also remind the birthdays, so if you are frequent user then you don’t miss anymore your friends’ birthdays.
I started using Orkut couple of years ago when some of my friends invited me to join with it. At first it was very interesting to add new friends to my friend list but then I didn’t use Orkut quite a long time and with this course I discovered it again. I’m not today so frequent user as at the beginning but I think that once per week I visit Orkut today.
Thank You All for a great course
Gert ÕBE-33
Kristelle Sööt BBA-2
www.deviantart.com
DeviantArt is an international online community for artists. It was first launched in august 2000 by Angelo Sotira, Scott Jarkoff and Matthew Sephens. DevianArt headquarter is in USA. In year 2008 the site had over 8 million member and over 62 million submissions. It has also a mascot who is called "Fella"(small robotic cat).
Devianart aims to provide a place for any artist to exibit and discuss works. Works are organized in a comprehensive category structure, including photography, digital art, traditional art, literature, Flash, film making and skins for applications. Every use has a personal page, for example my page there is http://kristelle17.deviantART.com. This page may contain user's intrests and hobbies. It also exibits user's recent works and „favourites“. In „favourites“ user can show his/her favourite works done by others. Each user can edit their own public journal, which is similar to a blog. User may write an entry and it will be displayd on their user page. There is also a commentary that may be supplied by the user or other members. Of course users can creat their own gallery where they can create folders and customize their gallery. Users can send messages, write articles to report contests, events, interesting news or even just a collection of artwork they want to display. DeviantArt has also a forum where users can post a thread about whatever they would like. It also offers a subscription service with extra features and privileges.These features include the ability to browse site with no advertisments, greater costumization of a user's personal page. Deviant MOBILE is a feature that allows most deviations(Piece of art work submitted by the user) to be downloaded into mobile phone. Users can also sell their work trhough DeviantArt. The DeviantArt Messaging Network is the real-time chat system. Users can join one of many existing channels and also creat their own. It is also possible to view pictures on a pop-up slide-show player. If somebody uploads there their work then they can also get feedback about their work. There is possible to comment others work. Although it is a very good site where artists can exibith their work and get feedback it has some disadvantages too. Due to the impractical nature of researching the copyright status of every artwork submission, there are copyright violations that remain unnoticed until a user has reported it as a policy violation. Many users are not aware of the copyright policies.
For business students who are interested in art or photography it would be a great opportunity to find easily young artist and photographers all over the world.
Actually I know this page quite a long time and I have visited it to look what other have done. I am interested in photography so I decided that I want to be a member of this community. I updated my own pictures in order to get some feedback of my work. To become a member is very easy. You just have to fill in your name and password and after you get an e-mail and you are officially a member of DeviantArt. If somebody is interested in art or photography then I really recommend DeviantArt.
The website I have chosen for my analysis is www.resedagboken.se, a free Swedish site where people who are traveling and people who are planning to travel meet. The page can be chosen to be seen in English on the upper right corner.
Resedagboken, which can be translated to the traveling diary, is a page that is specialized on traveling so people that are out traveling can write small diaries to the family back home. Here the travelers easily upload pictures and show where they are on a map. This becomes an easy way of communicating with your friends and family back home instead of making a special website on your own.
The website has a second purpose, to give persons that are planning on travelling the opportunity to see how it is on the planned location before they go. This is a perfect way of seeing how it is in the real life instead of the information you can receive at travel agents. While traveling the visitors also can see who else is on the same location and if there is anything special they should experience. The conclusion of this is that the purpose of resedagboken.se is to share knowledge and to communicate.
The members on the website can become friends with each other and follow there journeys but they can not chat or send mails to each other. Comments on the diary and the photos are the only way of communicating with each other which makes this page a little different compared with other networks on the internet.
On the first lecture in Business Opportunities in International Networks we received twelve variables for understanding online communication written by Baker and Watson. I will now use some of these twelve points to describe the network I chose to analyze.
Resedagboken.se is not a community that is suitable for every person because it is such a specialized page that mostly fits those that are travelling or those that are thinking of travelling in the future. This is not a network to find new friends but to keep in touch with the friends that are travelling or those that are home when you are travelling.
The information that you can read on this website is mixed, some travelers only write about personal things similar with an ordinary diary, others write about what they have experienced on the different travel destinations and give tips on what should do there.
If you enjoy travelling and discovering new places this is a very fun and interesting website to visit, unfortunately most of the users are Swedish but you can find similar websites on English.
Something that is a little special with this network is that you do not have to be a member to read what the members have written or to look at the pictures and comment them. Resedagboken.se only says that you must be a member if you would want to write your own diary. This has both a positive and negative side, because of this it becomes easy for all the members friends and family to see what the travelers are writing. The negative side is however that a mean person can comment on what the members have written and the pictures and therefore upset the person.
Because this website is in Swedish all the users are from Sweden, this because it becomes easier for the relatives who are a little older to visit the site to read about the specific traveler.
I will now look at what negative and positive sides this network has, this to find what makes this special website so commonly used by Swedish travelers.
One of the things that make resedagboken.se special is that you do not have to be a member to be able to see what people write in their diaries. As I wrote before this is very positive for the nonmembers that both can read, look at pictures the travelers have taken and comment on this. This is also good for the other group I discussed, the persons who are thinking of travelling and is seeking inspiration. It can take a long time to become a member in various websites and because of this people prefer the sites where you can look around without having to be a member.
Of course, this also has a few negative sides. The first point is that anyone can comment on what you have written and if the person knows that he is anonymous he can write what ever he wants, this can upset the member but it is easy for the member to delete the unwanted comments. The second point is that the member has a difficult time controlling who is reading his diary and looking at his pictures.
Another positive side with this network is the memories, as long as you are a member you can look at you old journeys. This is a good option when you are backpacking and a actual diary takes to much place in the backpack.
A third point to look as is the pictures you can upload; a photo says more than a thousand words. It is a very positive side of this website but it comes with a couple of negative aspects. The first is how long time it takes to upload your photos, it takes to long for the travelers to upload when they are travelling far away. The other problem appears when the member has uploaded the picture, they than loose the control over what happen with the pictures.
The fourth point is how many members this network has, you can almost always find a person who has been or is traveling in the specific area you are thinking of traveling yourself. Many times this gives the future travelers more information on what to see and do in the specific area than many traveling agents could.
My conclusion on this analyze of the website resedagboken.se is that it is a specific network for people who are traveling and want to keep in touch with the family and friends back home with the help of diaries and photos. The other group that visits this network is the people who are thinking of traveling and therefore need inspiration.
Carol Sultson
IntBBA2
www.netlog.com
Netlog is a Belgian social networking website aimed at the European youth. Netlog comes in many different languages and as a first user, one can choose the most suitable one. What makes it so different from Facebook and Orkut for instance, is that each member can create their own webpage, and thus, make it more inviting to others. On their personalized webpage, they can then choose the layout of pictures that have been uploaded, personal information, videos, comments, etc. On Netlog, each user also has a blog which they can share with friends and other users, therefore there is no need to create a blog on a different website. Also, Netlog has developed a unique localization technology ensuring that all content is geotargeted and personalized to each member’s profile. This enables people to easily communicate and find those around them. The access to users below 15 has been made more complicated, thus ensuring that people with bad intentions could not easily access those pages.
The reason why Netlog is so much better than many other networking sites is that all the applications that have been included (instant messaging, picture upload, shouts etc) are working much better than anywhere else, in my experience. Quite everything has been made fool-proof and anyone can understand the functions the network has to offer. Although Netlog is aimed rather for young people, it still plays a very big role in business connections as well. Since there are more than 150 million visitors per month, it makes it a very attractive playground for anyone who knows what they are doing. The applications offer a possibility to introduce new ideas, products etc. via different messages, polls, shouts and even through one’s blog. Netlog enables to find contacts all over Europe and for instance, if there’s a need to contact anyone from Holland, it is easy to find a suitable person by the information found on their webpage. There are, of course, endless possibilities to use a network to the fullest, so that it would become beneficial and it is up to the person using it to find out how and what is possible, but Netlog most certainly offers an interesting playground for those who are seeking contacts or looking for ways to spread their ideas into the world.
I myself am a member of Netlog and I mostly use it to keep in touch with contacts in Belgium, Holland and Germany. Through mutual contacts on Netlog, I have also managed to establish relationships with people from whom I can now ask for advice and with whom we share similar ideas. Thanks to Netlog, who knows, maybe one day we shall sit together at a round table and bring our ideas to life! One thing that I truly like about Netlog, is that browsing through someone’s pictures has been made really simple. It is possible to look at the pictures as a slideshow, which makes browsing through hundreds of pictures easier than having to click on each one of them as on some other networking sites. I have even noticed some clever slideshows about companies, short overviews about some interesting products that have been ingeniously put together as a slideshow.
To sum up briefly, Netlog is a place with endless opportunities. Although it only contains European users mostly, then nevertheless, those are probably the people with whom we might end up doing business shortly. Netlog has a lot to offer with its user-friendly layout and applications, it is now up to the user to fully take advantage of that tool!
Dmitri Ess, IntBBA33
The CFA Society of the UK
www.cfauk.org
The Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Certificate is the aim of any investor, banker, fund manager or any other financial specialist, unless they have already received it. This CFA charter usually takes minimum of 2.5 years to achieve and is one of the most prestigious awards in finance. CFA Institute is the global, non-profit association of investment professionals that organises the CFA educational and testing program. Besides passing 3 complicated exams the candidates have to own a bachelor’s degree and at least 4 years of professional work experience to qualify. The CFA is hard and time-consuming to become, but then the successful candidate receives credibility, recognition and of course connections: global network of more than 78,000 professionals of the same or even much better qualification.
As I am going to continue my education in the United Kingdom at the field of finance and will definitely try to get the CFA charter, I am interested in the local (London, UK) community of CFA certificate holders. The most popular CFA organization in the United Kingdom is the CFA Society of the UK (www.cfauk.org). It supports more than 8,000 members that mainly include: CFA charter holders, ASIP (Associate of the UK Society of Investment Professionals till 2002, exams are no longer held) designation holders, CFA candidates and IMC (Investment Management Certificate) holders.
The CFA Society of the UK mission statement:
“To lead and promote the development of the investment profession in the UK through the promotion of the highest standards of ethical behaviour and the provision of education, professional development, information, career support and advocacy on behalf of its members.” (www.cfauk.org/about/index.html)
As it is clearly seen all the members are professionals in finance and investment that provides ideal opportunity for staying in touch with the latest trends at the financial market. I am interested in becoming a member of the CFA Society of the UK even before getting the CFA certificate, because the student membership provides access to the candidate support program and the opportunity to learn from professional representatives of the industry. It will be easier for me to pass the CFA tests, having an opportunity to communicate with the holders of this degree. Besides that, there are following advantages of joining the CFA Society of the UK:
• Over 45 networking events take place every year. These events help to share information, gain connections and build a successful career in the finance and investment field.
• There are the following special interest groups which purpose is to promote information sharing between members, to develop professional relationships and to organise networking events.
o ABS - Asset Backed Securities
o Emerging Markets
o Energy and Sustainable Investments
o FX - Foreign Exchange
• Partnership with UK leading universities, like Imperial College (Tanaka Business School), London Business School and Oxford (Said).
• For the members there is an ability to view presentation slides and other educational material.
• The CFA Society of the UK organizes briefings from CFA trainers and industry specialists to provide information about the studies and time management during the CFA program.
• There are substantial discounts on study materials and study programs for the society members.
• The society organizes study groups that help to communicate with other CFA candidates, to compare notes and share information.
• There are so called CFA surgeries (12 interactive sessions) held. They are run by CFA trainers. Their aim is to explain and discuss the most difficult areas of the study program and personal problems in certain syllabus parts.
• The society provides practice examination papers that help to find knowledge gaps and illustrate the time pressures of the examination.
• 18 scholarships are available each year to help cover examination costs, registration fees and study materials.
• For members there is a free subscription to the Professional Investor journal that is published quarterly and contains articles of many charter holders. Normally annual subscription costs £145.00.
• The CFA Society of the UK provides a range of careers resources for its members, including:
o Positions on CFA UK's website, viewed only to members
o CFA Society job site powered by efinancialcareers.com
o Careers events
o CFA Society Careers Guide
o Recruiters directory
Of course, there are some disadvantages of using this internet resource for networking, they include the following:
• There is an annual fee at the CFA Society of the UK. It is currently discounted from £90 to £45.
• “A membership year runs from July 1st until June 30th. Membership applications received after July 1st will run until June 30th and will not constitute a full year.” (http://shop.cfauk.org/membership/terms.cfm)
• CFA UK is a volunteer-led organization, and relies mainly on its members, that may fail to be so altruistic.
• There are several “under construction” pages at www.cfauk.org.
And the main advantage for me is that all the events normally take place in London, mainly in the City and in Docklands. The organization’s main office is also located in London. I am planning to live in Docklands and visit the university in the City. The location is ideal for me.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any acquaintances, who are using with networking organization. I will the first one among my contacts. The information, provided here, was mainly taken from the organization’s official web-site www.cfauk.org.
Dmitri Kurjanov (IntBBA2)
www.ning.com
The social networking website that I have chosen for my analysis is www.NING.com which is gaining in popularity every day. NING is an online platform, which was launched in October 2005. The aim of this platform is to provide people with a wonderful opportunity to create their own social network. In September 2007 the number of social networks, created on NING, reached the figure of 100,000. According to the latest account, NING already has more than 800,000 social networks and this figure constantly continues to increase. I think that these facts are a perfect proof of the growing popularity of the platform. Speaking about social networks on NING, they can be basically divided into 3 large groups: “big networks”, which have a really huge number of members; “long tail networks”, which also have a lot of members but fewer than the so called “big networks”; and “throwaway networks”, which were created some time ago but are not used, having one or several members.
The uniqueness of NING.com consists in ability of each person to create their own social network, depending on their particular need, topic, etc, which seems to be a good way of creating a niche social network. With NING you can create an absolutely new social network with users signing up, forums for your users, blogs, audio sharing, video sharing, etc. There is also a good possibility of promoting your blog through the social network. These are only a few of the huge amount of functional features available with NING.
Advantages:
1. Free of charge.
2. Easy and quick access.
3. Really huge number of members.
4. Absolutely unique social networks depending on people’s needs, topics of interest, etc.
5. Own forum for discussions, which may contain categories, photos, etc.
6. Own chat for real-time communication.
7. Own brand and visual design.
8. Own events calendar for organizing events with members.
9. Good maintenance of the platform.
10. Good privacy protection (opportunity of approving members before they join the social network).
Disadvantages:
1. Limited storage capacity of 10GB and 100GB of bandwidth. Need to pay for additional units.
2. Need to pay for the so called “premium services” (removing promotion links, controlling the ads, using your own domain name).
From my personal point of view, NING.com offers added value for business students as well, because quite a large amount of business-related networks have already been created. Moreover, you can always create your own niche social network concerning this field.
Unfortunately, I do not have any personal experience of creating my own social network on NING so far, as I only found out about this platform a couple of days ago from one of my friends, who has his own movie-related network. But I have already found myself really interested in it. And I would definitely advise everyone to have a look at www.ning.com!
Anna Nikolaeva
Int.BBA-2
www.vkontakte.ru
The virtual network that I use is www.vkontakte.ru. Basically it is the same as facebook.com but only a Russian version. To my mind it is a very good example of an internet community because it includes a big amount of people of a huge age range and it has different communities and groups that people can join and share their interests, get new information and find new acquaintances or even friends as following.
The best plus of the site for me is that you can get new connections and develop yourself in different areas. I also use it to communicate with my friends, for example my cousin lives in Russia and we talk a lot there because it is much cheaper then using a phone or coming to see her.
Another very important thing for me is that it doesn’t have almost any lags and no commercials and pop-ups all over the page. For instance the site odnoklassniki.ru (the website with the same principle) has a huge amount of flashing pictures and animations which leads to many inconveniences, so that’s why I don’t use it. And another bad thing about it is that everyone can visit your page and see your pictures, groups and etc. but vkontakte it is an option and you can set the page settings that only friends can see it.
The website is also gaining popularity and now there are over 27 million people registered on the site, so there are always opportunities to find new acquaintances in different spheres of interest. For example you are searching for people interested in doing business or have experience taking part in Erasmus program and start getting the information you need, find new friends all over the world. And if you don’t want to talk with any person you can easily put him into a “black list” and u won’t be able to see his messages anymore. There is also this great thing like “the wall” were you can draw pictures and post some silly stuff for your friends to see. From the entertainment point of view I really like this site, there are plenty more different positive functions on the site.
Another thing that I really like about vkontakte.ru is that you can publish your own music there and listen to it from whenever you have access to the internet and to the website. I listen to it from my phone sometimes. And it gives me the opportunity to share my music with friend much more easily.
If I take into consideration the self-development part, I would say it is definitely more of an entertainment website for me. But there is a huge range of opportunities to develop or to promote something. For example your business idea like a party arrangement company or a music studio can be promoted and you can add new people to that group and develop the project intensively and get people entertained and willing to join it. It is the same as free advertising which you start by adding close friends and the new people will be willing to join themselves. And it is a real life example that had been used by few of my friends.
To conclude I would like to say that I can hardy imagine our everyday life without these kinds of websites. They make communication opportunities much convenient, cheaper and give a huge range of opportunities as for the entertainment purpose, in the self-development and getting new information that is required.
With the social development, normal material life can’t satisfy people’s requirement. At the same time, network is no longer a tool of search information and news. It has been a part of everyone’s life. Most of people use it to spend excess time and contact friend. So virtual community is so famous in this year. In China, renren (www.renren.com) is very famous in this year and has been the biggest virtual community.
It can help you to contact many classmate of student stage is one of the famous reason, when someone register in renren, the primary school, middle school, high school and university must be filled, and the website will search the person who has the same information based on the registrar’ information. Relationship is very important for business student; classmate is the best relationship in the life. You can know the classmate’s recently situation.
Daily record is another reason why it’s very famous. Everyone like to abreact good and bad motions through daily record, sometimes it’s the experience to do something, it can help us to know different rules in different cities and areas. Especially some classmate in abroad, it can help his friend to know abroad life, rules and habit.
Sharing is the best function about renren; every classmate will meet the same thing in the life stage. For example, everyone will be the same time to prepare final thesis, job interview, join English grade exam, and so on. Everyone will be busy to search information everyday and even every time. Some of the classmates will search some information and put it into renren, one is preventing the loss of it, and the other is helping the others who need it. Most of time, it’s very useful. For example, English grade exam is the biggest barrier to Chinese student who is in the university; someone will share the skills of English grade exam. Job interview is the first step to the social; someone will share the information about how to prepare CV, the skills of job interview and how to dress. Final thesis is the most important exam to every student in the university. How to search useful information from much different information is a big problem. How to use word to typesetting is another problem. Someone will share some academic website to his friend, and his friend can transfer his website, so many people will know these websites. Someone will shrew some course of study about word, some of the courses of study is video, it can help person to understand. Experience is the most important gift to every student who will step social. Especially about successful person. Someone will share their speech video, advice to young man and successful process. To know successful business man how to solve problem will provide student a way to solve problem. Video can help student to learn how to speech. At the same time, renren can help you to share your friend. It can help your friend to know more persons.
Public homepage is a new function about renren, it’s about some famous person and company. It can provide the recently situation. The famous person includes singer, author and business man. For example, former CEO of Google and Microsoft in China area Kaifu Li. Everyone can leave him a message, and he will answer the questions when he is free. At the same time, he wills public some his situation and experience to everybody.
However, renren’s privacy is not very good. If I have an album upload to renren, but I don’t hope the others to scan it, I can’t set a password to this album. And the daily record is the same. The detail of author is not complete. The detail of author is only about school, but nobody can stay in student stage, it need to complete the detail about company. It will be helpful to person’s business plan and don’t need to ask what you are doing now.
Finally, this network can help person to contact classmate, it can make you to know different places and different rules. And even develop an international carrier through abroad classmate if it’s possible. The most important is keeping the relationship.
As a not a active virtual networking person earlier, I had mine first sights into such theme during this „Business in Virtual Networks” course. To make an analysis (pro and cons) over different virtual communities just is not possible without beeing a member of at least one of those for a while, so I decided to share mine findings on the „beginners” level - do start virtual networking or not and how to start with it.
First finding for me is that you can get an effort out of it and that`s the most important. Important is that the audiences of all virtual networks are rapidly growing, so using virtual networks will definately be part of our future in social networking. I started as many of us will do, googleing. Here you`ll find in short what I have to say in my own and partly in words found while googleing.
Leverage of existing relationships. Social network visibility sites, such as LinkedIn, Spoke and Visible Path, give you visibility into your existing relationships. It is likely that you know someone who knows the specific person you're trying to reach, or perhaps someone at that company.
Focus. Online, you can be highly focused in your interactions, as there are niche communities for just about everything you could imagine. You can also immediately search for and locate people in a particular industry, role, and/or company, which is impossible to do in face-to-face and even one-on-one e-mail and telephone interactions.
Increased reach. In an online community or weblog, you can carry on public conversations, potentially reaching hundreds or even thousands of people with the same effort as a single e-mail. For conversations that do not need to be confidential a public discussion will increase visibility for your company and provide additional assistance in identifying your potential partners and connecting with them. Your entire network becomes a part-time business development staff for your company.
Reduced time and expense. Networking online allows you to reach more people with less effort; to more quickly identify and connect with the right people; and to reduce travel time and expense, both local and long-distance.
How do you select the appropriate ones for your business objectives and get started?
1. Clearly define what you have to give and what benefits you expect to receive from connecting with people online. It is a critical first step. In order to focus, you have to know what to focus on. Requests for support and connections are most effective when they are extremely specific. Who do you want to connect with? What roles? What industries? And what do you have to offer? Think not only in terms of your business development objectives, but other assets -your contacts and expertise. Write it all down - you're going to need it later.
2. Join some of the general-purpose business networking sites. This will get you familiar with the practice and help you start making some connections. Some of the best ones for business development purposes are: Xing (formerly openBC) , ZoomInfo, LinkedIn, Ryze, Ecademy
3. Create a profile. In order for that to work, you have to set up a profile that attracts connections and gives people enough information about both you and your company to determine if you might be a good connection.
4. Participate. These online communities don't work unless you work them. You can't reasonably expect to derive value from your participation unless you are also willing to create value.
5. Focus. Identify the niche communities where the people you want to meet are active. Many of the niche communities will not be highly visible as "networking" sites -in fact, they may just be e-mail discussion lists and hard to discover through search engines. You find out about them by knowing the right people.
So, get connected and start to explore the oportunities of virtual networking.
Christo KBE-31
I think Orkut is the best and propably the most wellknown social network in Estonia. I use it daily myself and it is in my opinion the best virtual network where people can communicate, get new acquaintances and share information. But as I read some homeworks posted on http://elenurmnetworking.blogspot.com/ I chose not to write about Orkut because so many have done so. Instead I introduce an Estonian virtual network that is not known to many, but it has helped me a lot. The site is http://www.saabnet.ee/foorum.
It is one of many car forums around the world and in Estonia. I think every car made worldwide has its forums and clubs. Saabnet.ee is a forum for Saab owners in Estonia (but certainly everybody can join). It has about 2800 users and 35 different forums and about 11000 different topics. It is an internet site, where Saab owners can share their experience about their cars, sell or buy car parts or even cars themselves. They can upload pictures, comment different topics and send “internal emails” called U2U’s.
I have owned a Saab more than a year now, but I registered on www.saabnet.ee/foorum about 5 months ago. At first I had my car repaired (if needed) in different premium places like Saabianti and Viking Motors etc. But it is very expensive to buy parts there. So I joined the Saab forum and experienced car owners suggested cheaper ways to get my car fixed or where to buy parts. On the forum there is a lot of information about faults that a car might have and recommendations how to fix them or where have them fixed. Car owners upload pictures of their cars and it is truly a great place to get feedback from other Saab owners. Saabclub members have yearly meetings and events. On the forum almost every model made by Saab has its own subforum. Saabclub has its own products that a member can buy (t-shirts, stickers or what have you).
I have made some new acquaintances on the forum and received information and tips to save thousands of kroons when it comes to owning a car. It is very easy to join the forum one just has to fill in some data about themselves and their cars and that’s it.
Car clubs and forums are definitely social networks. People make new friends and one can even make business on the forum. For example different companies and car dealershop representatives are also using Saabnet.ee/forum to buy products/parts to hardcore Saab owners.
It is also a great place to a potential Saab buyer to learn more about the car and tips how to find a suitable model.
There is even a forum for International Saab owners. So everybody worldwide can join and make new friends.
In recent years, the network virtual learning community in distance education is playing an increasingly important role. Virtual Learning Community System based on BBS. In the thematic discussion area, learners, teachers, experts and students can post questions on the BBS and exchange their views and learning with each other. Virtual Learning Community is combination of online learning and virtual communities. The site http://www.tianya.cn/ is one of the best virtual learning communities in China. Pluses and minuses of TIANYA Community
1．Geographical and time: TIANYA Community communities are functional with no geographic restrictions and its members can study at anywhere with internet. If necessary, the TIANYA Community can be exempted from time limits, it can open to the members of the community for 24 hours.
2．Scope and scale: The range of TIANYA communities’ members can be as large as an international learning community whose members come from different countries and regions. It also can be as small as a school or even a class and learning group or interest group. Its size is also due to the number of participants
3．The level of the participants: each of participants may have different qualifications and different knowledge backgrounds; they have different learning objectives and motivation. Some participants as a student to register and obtain credits and some participants attend all learning activities but do not register and obtain credits. This will lead to some confusion in TIANYA Community activities. Instructors need to know their goals and tasks.
4．Diversity: diversity can enrich and substantiate the community. In school classes, the learner's enthusiasm mostly from external rewards and promotion of credit and in the community, enthusiasm must rely on other ways. Diversity and common interests is great source of inspiration.
5．Flexibility: in TIANYA Community community, exchange is very flexible （such as email, discussion, games, role-playing, chat, etc.)
6．Self-management: each member of the TIANYA Community can be a manager.
7．Fees: the cost of Creating and maintaining of communities is large overhead. It depends on the size and function of the community. Members need to pay the fee to ensuring the development of the TIANYA Community which has an important significance.
E-Learning is based on virtual learning community. Simply, it’s online learning and a new way of learning for students. The site http://www.etkeylab.com:8081/ is one of the successful sites in E-Learning. The site can not be separated from the multimedia network learning resources. It consists of Online learning communities and networking technology platform. In the site, data, archives, programs, educational software, and interest’s discussion groups, news groups and other learning resources forming a highly comprehensive and integrated resource library. The site is changing at an alarming rate of distance education learning style, but with the first round of research and practice boom receded, people gradually return to rational. The site has the unique advantages of multimedia-rich resources, convenient communication and friendly interaction. But it can not completely replace teachers. Learning effects are not satisfactory as expected without participation of teachers. E-Learning does not only mean long-distance education, online teaching can also play an important role in traditional teaching on campus. Similarly, in the remote network education, a number of conventional teaching methods are also very important. E-Learning completely replace traditional teaching is unrealistic, traditional teaching has great advantage in imparting knowledge, social, interactive. E-Learning is a new thing in recent years in China. It has been accepted by more and more enterprises in Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangsu and Zhejiang (cities of China). E-Learning is an effective way of learning. It can greatly increase the interest in learning. Learning through the network can expand their knowledge and making new friends.
Natalja KBE-31
Name of the network: Facebook
URL: www.facebook.com
Facebook is a social network. Its is very comfortable and easy to use.
You can change things what ever you like and post your opinions, about what ever you want. Lets talk about that closer.
Profiles allow users to post comments, pictures, blogs and apps.It has some of the best privacy options on the Internet. You can use this site to foster relationships with people you already know, or friends of friends.You can easily and qiuckly be in touch with your friends and relatives.
When you register, your location /school become your first “networks,” from there you can search for others in your network looking for friends or colleagues. Once you have found someone you want to connect with, send a message or invite them into your network of friends. Also you can share photos, news and notes. You can post comment and your friend can also post comment on your profile wall.
You can do many things with your profile. Customize skins or change your color scheme, you can change the position of some of your information boxes.
About more options. You can add games, quizzes, feeds and more.
Some other interesting aspects to Facebook profiles are the automatic linking and News Feed. About automatic linking. The automatic linking happens when you place a specific noun in your interest or education section. The link will direct you to others that also have the same interests written down or school selected. With that you can see which other members share you selections in for example, movies, music or books. The News Feeds work like mini spies. If you subscribe to someone’s feed or if you are subscribed, your friends can see what music you are listening to, the website you are on or what you’ve just bought on Amazon.
About privacy.
In Facebook you can make your profile private or you can select which section of profile you would like to display. Also allowed to block individual users, spam.
You can join your favorite band, political and local organizations. Facebook also allows you to send whole photo albums to friends even if they are not members of Facebook community.
You can also look for people simply by name, email address or AIM buddy list and Windows Live.
Facebook is a great social networking website that doesn’t waste time. This is a no-nonsense site with plenty of networking options, and with the open source apps and friendly atmosphere you really can’t go wrong.
More data about FACEBOOK
Facebook has more than 250 million users
120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day
Engagement:
The average social graph equates to 120 friends
More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
30 million users update their statuses at least once each day
Applications:
1 billion photos are uploaded to the social network each month
10 million videos are uploaded to Facebook each month
1 billion social objects (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week
2.5 million events are created each month
45 million active user groups exist on Facebook
International:
About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
Platform:
More than one million developers from more than 180 countries are active
Every month, more than 70% of users engage with applications developed for the Facebook platform
There are more than 350,000 active applications currently available on the Facebook Platform
15,000, and counting, websites, devices and applications have implemented Facebook Connect since its launch in December 2008
Mobile:
30 million users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices
People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on the social network than non-mobile users.
Marko Abel
KBE-31
www.YouTube.com
YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos. It was created in February 2005. In November 2006, YouTube was bought by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion, and is now operated as a subsidiary of Google. YouTube is used to display a wide variety of user-posted videos including movie clips, educational material, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging and short original videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by their users, although media corporations including CBS, the BBC, UMG and other organizations offer some of their material via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program.
Using YouTube is easy and even newbies to The Internet can learn using it fast ( If you want to learn how to use YouTube, you can just watch a video about it ). It works like any search engine ( like google ), but in YouTube you search for videos, which have been uploaded by other users from all over the world. There are thousands of educational videos that allow you to learn about anything. You can watch videos about speed-reading, studying abroad, extra info about the lessons you had in school today etc. 8% of the YouTube’s content falls under the “educational” category and that’s more than 600k videos from where you can learn something new.
It is also possible to join different communities ( channels ), which allows the user to see in their front page when a new video is uploaded to that channel. YouTube also recommends their users different videos based on their viewing activity and subscriptions to communities. From the front page, users can view videos that are being watched right now and also the most popular videos.
Users of YouTube can add friends and also find their friends from Gmail and Facebook. This is a neat feature that allows everyone to find their friends and see if they have uploaded any videos. Friends from different countries can keep in touch by posting video blogs for their other friends or for everyone who is using YouTube, which is fun and more informative than an usual blog and everyone can post comments and feedback about your video.
To make the best use of being a member of YouTube, you can post your own video-blogs, watch other blogs made by your friends or other users. Also, learning how to find the right videos will benefit you in the long run. If you really want to take everything that YouTube has to offer, you should join the channels that cover your needs and interests. Doing that would make it easier for you to browse and find the videos you want from millions of videos posted every day.
Why is YouTube so popular
• It’s Free
• Largest Internet video community on the web
• Easy to use and user-friendly
• Thousands of useful videos about material that you can’t find from anywhere else
• It’s basically a free TV where the user has all the control
• User to user community ( Everyone can see the video that you posted and it gives you the chance to be heard by everyone )
• Easy to upload your own videos
• No advertisements
Downsides of YouTube
• If your searched topic isn’t very popular, you might have to go through a number of videos before you find the right one
• Due to the 15 hours of video uploaded every minute, there is always a large amount of inappropriate videos up at any given time
• You might end up watching a lot more videos than you originally planned when you open YouTube, which can be up to a few hours of your free time.
Kristjan Varm, ÕBÄ-31
Twitter
http://twitter.com
Why is it good compared to other social networking sites?
If you haven’t tried it yet, Twitter is a site that allows you to post online messages about what you are currently doing and what is currently happening – via the web or mobile phone SMS. You can limit who sees the messages to people you have added to your friends list, or you can make the messages public.
What Twitter does, in a simple and brilliant way, is to merge a number of interesting trends in social software usage – personal blogging, lightweight presence indicators, and IM status messages – into a fascinating blend of ephemerality and permanence, public and private.
Simplicity has played an important role in Twitter's success. People are eager to connect with other people and Twitter makes that simple. Twitter asks one question, "What's happening?" Answers must be under 140 characters in length and can be sent via mobile texting, instant message, or the web.
Twitter's core technology is a device agnostic message routing system with rudimentary social networking features. By accepting messages from SMS, web, mobile web, instant message, or from third party e-projects, Twitter makes it easy for folks to stay connected.
But what critics say about Twitter?
The first criticizes the triviality of the content. But asking “who really cares about that kind of mindless trivia about your day” misses the whole point of presence. This is not about conveying complex theory – it’s about letting the people in your distributed network of family and friends have some sense of where you are and what you’re doing. And we crave this, some think. When you travel, the first thing you ask the kids on the phone when you call home is “what are you doing?” Probably not because you really care that much about the show on TV, or the homework they’re working on, but because you care about the activities of their days. No, most people don’t care that you’re sitting in the airport at DCA, or watching a TV show. But the people who miss being able to share in day-to-day activity with you – your family and close friends – do care.
The second type of criticism is that the last thing we need is more interruptions in our already discontinuous and partially attentive connected worlds. What’s interesting about Twitter, though, is that it actually reduces our craving to surf the web and ping people via IM. We can keep a Twitter IM window open in the background, and check it occasionally just to see what people are up to. There’s no obligation to respond, which we typically feel when updates come from individuals via IM or e-mail. Or we can just check our text messages or the web site when you feel like getting a big picture of what my friends are up to.
As I’m not the user of this network by myself, I can’t give my personal opinion and emotions of the network. But as it seems to be easy and quick way of being informed utterances of the opinion leaders, I may become a follower at least.
Nowadays I am not an active virtual networking person. For me it is impossible to use any networks at work and after school it is usually late for socializing. Therefore most of my peers do not use virtual networks either. To make this homework I thought about in which social sites I am a member. Most often I am using Orkut and there I have also the largest group of friends. I am also a member of Facebook but there I am not so active. Orkut is widely known and famous amongst Estonians and several students have chosen this theme for analyzing. Hence I would like to share my experience with Skype because I think for me it has been the most useful network program so far.
www.skype.com
Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice calls over the Internet. Calls to other Skype users via computer are free, calls to landlines and mobile phones can be made for a quite favorable fee and additional features include instant messaging, file transfer and video conferencing. Skype allows users to communicate by both voice, and more traditional textual instant messaging. Voice chat allows both calling a single user and conference calling. Skype's text chat client allows group chats, emoticons, storing chat history and has all other familiar features. Skype for Windows supports "High Quality Video" with quality and features, e.g., full-screen and screen-in-screen modes, similar to those of mid-range videoconferencing systems. Skype audio conferences currently support up to 25 people at a time, including the host.
My first experience with Skype was its user friendliness, it is easy to install and operate, and furthermore it is in Estonian language. For me Skype has been indispensable for communicating with friends who live outside of Estonia. First of all it’s free and as I would prefer communicate directly, Skype with the use of webcam provides a very realistic result.
I am also used Skype often for preparing group works with my schoolmates. Now there is also a new feature available which allows sharing your screen with others. I think it will become very popular tool.
I think Skype helps everyone enjoy long-distance communications and helps saving the costs. At least I am happy!
1) Hello, i will tell you about pokerstars- the largest online poker cardroom in the world. To access it, go to www.pokerstars.com and download a simple programm, this tool will help you to access the net.
2) The aims and functions of the network: pokerStars offers ten varieties of poker games: Texas hold 'em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo (8 or Better), Stud, Stud Hi/Lo (8 or Better), Razz, Five-card draw, Deuce to Seven Triple Draw, Deuce to Seven Single Draw and Badugi. HORSE, HOSE, Mixed Hold'em, Mixed Omaha Hi/Lo and 8-Game. Players can participate in real money games ranging from $.01/$.02 up to $1000/$2000.
This network also provides a lot of big opportunities for advertising, investments and sponsorship as it is very popular and is visited by a lot of people. The network has at least 150.000 users online every single second and over 3 million different people entering it every day; furthermore, you can easily play or contact with any of them- that would just take a few moments.
3)According to last researches and surveys, there are more than 250 million people playing poker all over the world and that means poker is becoming a heavy force in terms of advertising, marketing and investments everybody would soon start to notice. So the added value for business students would be: good practice in terms of money and bankroll operating, possibilities to make a professional poker career, opportunity to apply for a job at pokerstars itself, as pokerstars daily offers a number of vacations in their offices all over the world, possibilities to advertise your products in front of a large audience and what is more important, this audience is operating with money, which means they are potential buyers of any products they'd like. Another added values would be possibilities for long and short-term investments, along with the sponsorship, as pokerstars is a very rapidly developing industry.
4) What about my personal experience with this network: I am using it for 3 years from now on and I am absolutely satisfied with it. I've earned a lot of money, learned how to operate with finances and keep your bankroll active and flexible. My friends and me have promoted a few commercial poker tournaments, that we've held in Tallinn, through pokerstars and nowadays we are being their affiliates, which is very much profitable nowadays. We help them to pursue new clients and they pay us. Concerning long-term relations, we are planning to become pokerstars partners here, in Estonia, which will provide us an opportunity to organize regular poker tournaments, advertising poker and expanding as fast, as possible.
By Oleg Munajev, IntBBA-3
www.soundcloud.com
For an artist it’s great to have a professional looking way of sharing music with fans, label owners and venues. While collaborating or doing business with others it’s important to find an effective way of sharing work-in-progress and to have a system for giving feedback on the work. In an educational situation students can upload their files for assessment and send it via their teachers’ dropbox. For anyone working with sound it is nice to have a secure place to store your files. You can have your important files backed up on the SoundCloud servers and accessible from anywhere, in the highest audio quality.
First you’ll need to create an account. There’s a free plan available which allows you to upload 5 tracks per moth and which has a limited dropbox, in which you can only view the 15 last dropped tracks. There are three Pro accounts available. There are no limitations to file size, and SoundCloud understands MP3 and AAC files as well as Flac and Ogg and uncompressed Wave and AIFF files, at almost all sampling frequencies. This means that it supports all the digital file types most musicians use while they are working with their sound files. While your audio is uploading you can enter all kinds of information about the file. A name and description, but also things like BPM, key, genre etc. You can choose if you want the track to be public of private and if other people can download it or not. By default SounCloud creates a 128 kbps MP3 file for online streaming purposes. Once you saved your track you can start sharing it with others!
Using the SoundCloud dropbox it’s very easy for people to share their own music with you. Click on the link in my dropbox to send me your track. I’ll get a notification about the newly received file. Now I can listen to it and leave my comments directly in the soundcloud player that is intergrated with the site. SoundCloud allows you to ‘follow’ people in a Twitter-like way. You will find newly uploaded tracks by people you follow on the ‘dashboard’ page. You can organize your contacts in groups called ‘contact lists’. Comments made on tracks are public, but you can also send a personal message. There are enough places to connect with other people, like Facebook and Twitter , but it’s good to be able to get in touch with the maker of that masterpiece of sound you just discovered.
Obviously Soundcloud.com isn’t just a networking platform for the average home user. It’s really designed for the people who are in the music business. As a person who really loves music and has a passion for it I find this sort of platform more useful than all the other ones I have used (like orkut, facebook etc.) combined together, because it really delivers what I’m searching for when it comes to sharing my work and getting in contact with other artists and people who love music. The networking application on this platform need a bit improvement as it comes to finding people and maybe cathegorising them by different genres but as we speak the owners of this platform are constantly in progress of developing it and making it better.
Analysis of HPI Estonia Radio Control forum @ foorum.hpi.ee
This is a community of Estonian people who’s hobby is modeling, not on the cat-walk, modeling RC cars. Aim is to keep and provide all necessary information in one place and unite people of same interest. Moreover, people can share their finding and personal know how’s with others, ask questions and answer others, sell their used RC stuff and acquire some new stuff that other people or even shops sell.
Added value for business student that I see the most is: a simple way of collecting together people of similar interest and possibility to sale without big marketing investments. The reason why I find this way an easy way is because there is much easier to sell anything if the people who are reading your advertisement are of the same interest area. You automatically reach out to your target group, posting to a thread on forum costs nothing and people have an opportunity to ask you questions even when you are not around. These are the simplest and easiest ways of selling something. This goes for the suppliers who are promoting their good on the forum.
Another part is personal sales (usually) of used things. But even there one can find new things for sale with very competitive prices, that is because people who have ordered something from abroad and are willing to sell it do not have to pay rent or salaries. That type of business is quit common on forums when people buy some extra things for sale to cover their transportations costs.
The precise forum is the most popular in area of RC modeling, but it is mainly focusing on RC cars. That is because Car modeling is the most popular in Estonia, only after that come flying and other modeling. From the personal experience I must say that most of my RC knowledge have I gained throw that forum as I am passionate hobbyist in RC cars. In the field of sales I have quite big experience in the commercial threads of that forum as I have sold, bought and rented things there. Must mention that I have never had troubles with any of the deals. That is because people know me and they know what they are getting, so if the price is agreed on then there is just question of meeting and/or transportation. I have even found people to go to the same racing events in near countries to split the costs.
That forum can be easily compared to another RC modeling forum Mudelismifoorum PISTKI.com found @ forum.pistik.com That forum is a bit less popular but has same principles and at least half of the same people (that is because many modelers do both, cars and planes/helicopters). The forum is even structured similarly.
Therefore to sum it up I’d like to say that forums focused on any precise areas are perfect places people to find any relevant information and for small entrepreneurs to make sales, though, can’t be to pushy, while forums are for reading and expressing your emotions in written form is not always the strongest side of many people.
In addition to my homework regarding Skype.
In Skype you can create or join Public chats which let you keep in touch with the world and meet new people who share your interests. In Skype you have the ability to form groups. These groups are chat rooms and you can make them public or private. Groups are perfect for building your team and helping your business partners out. It’s a great place to get questions asked and answered in a timely manner.
Skype can be used for business also. There is a list of companies that Skype users have recommended and commented. You can search them by keyword or by location.
With use of SkypeFind feature you can add your business giving as much detail as possible, enter keywords that will help others find this business and leave a review telling the whole world why it's so great or terrible. Also you can integrate Skype with many of your social web sites and Blog WebPages for making it more easier for potential business partners to contact you.
Mikk Lainvoo - SecondLife – www.secondlife.com
Aims and functions:
Connect with old friends or meet new ones. Second Life lets you keep in touch in real time, over IM and even through voice chat. You can talk to your friends one-on-one or all at once.
Second Life is a world imagined, built and created by its Residents - people like you. Every minute, Residents assemble buildings, design new fashion lines and launch clubs and businesses. There's always more to see and do.
Explore destinations inspired by real cities, such as Dublin and Tokyo. Immerse yourself in any environment you can imagine: watch the sunset from a mountaintop, dance the night away in a club or plumb the depths of the ocean on a scuba trip.
In Second Life world anyone can take part of different events. From raves and concerts to lectures and screenings, there are plenty of events to explore. You can browse them from your event calendar which you can compose yourself.
Take conference calls to the next level. Use our free voice chat to hold meetings or hang out with friends from around the world, all in your own virtual office or living room.
Second Life is a digital shopper's paradise. From designer shoes to medieval weaponry, from yachts and mansions to starships and subterranean lairs, the options are limitless. If you can imagine it, chances are someone is selling it. So you can spend your real money on Second Life Dollars and use that money to buy anything you can think of.
Added Value to Business students:
There are also possibilities to do business in Second Life world. You can sell Second Life world products which have been created by you. A company could open up an office in digital world and find clients there. In this case company would find clients, but the actual transaction takes place in real world. Business students can set up a business themselves or also they could look job from Second Life. They could even work as a representative of a company in Second Life. The opportunities are endless.
Examples of use:
I personally created my account about a year ago and the idea was to entertain myself. But then I discovered all the opportunities there and started to take part of Second Life. I found new friends all over the world. Since at that time I was really interested in different architectural achievements in the world and I found out that there were architects who also use Second Life and they had created their achievements there too and I could visit these achievements from my home.
It is possible to use SL for free, but if you want to be noticed there some amount of funds should be invested.
I also found many friends who were really interested adding new items to the SL world and I tried it myself, but unsuccessfully. The reason was that I did not have enough time.
How To Make money with affiliate programs Today. Affiliate marketing is the easier and probably the most effective method to make money from the internet. It is basically, a kind of selling technique where potential buyers from your website are directed to the websites of sellers. For every click, the website owner gets a small commission.
www.onlineuniversalwork.com
Kristina Smyslova IntBBA2
Name of the network: LiveJournal
URL: www.livejournal.com
Livejournal is one of the most famous and popular virtual community where different people with unique opinions keep their own blogs and diaries. The network was established in 1999 by Brad Fitzpatrick. The community quickly grew from a middle-size unknown server to a huge and well-known virtual network. In 2007 the community was sold to a Russian media company SUP.
If we divide users of the network by a country, we will see that most of the users live in the US (3,961,797 people). The second place took Russia with 874,783 users and on the third place is Canada with 353,331 users. We also can find here people from United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore and Japan. The statistic shows that there are 23,838,980 accounts on LiveJournal.
Why this community is so popular? LiveJournal gives a lot of people all other the world an opportunity to express their feelings, thoughts and ideas. It gives an opportunity to find friends, to establish good relationships between people from different countries and also to find some business connections.
Livejournal has 5 kinds of accounts: there is free basic account (95% of all users use it), plus account, early adopted account, permanent and paid accounts. Various accounts give different opportunities, so everybody can choose one which will suit them most.
If you want to be a part of this community you need to be registered and you need to create you own account and blog. Each user has it own journal page and every journal entry can be commented by other community users. You can also leave comments and create your own friend lists. Users can add to this list all other people and communities in which they are interested. Users can write information about them on their user page, send gifts to each other and chat. They can upload photos and make galleries. Network provides its users with security options, so users can protect their personal information and select who can read and comment the journal and who can not.
Why people spend a lot of time on this network and how business students can use it?
First of all, people like to be listened. With the help of the LiveJournal people receive an opportunity to express their ideas and show their talents. For example, a lot of famous authors of the books posted their first creations on LiveJournal. How people can start their own business on LiveJournal? Users, who can write, embroider, sew or draw, can post their works on the LiveJournal and other people may buy it. Users, who need some help in business or law questions, can find help in special communities. People from different professions keep blogs, so users can easily find doctors’ and lawyers’ community, community of businessmen and police. . People in such communities are usually ready to help. There is a good search system on the network, so anyone can find information very easily.
One of the most important things we can consider about LiveJournal is that a lot of famous people are keeping blogs. For example, Russian president Dmitry Mendeleev opened his own blog on the LiveJournal service in year 2009. This is also a benefit for business students – they can find businessmen keeping blogs and ask questions about business. Users can also find job information and freelance work on the website.
I also have some interesting and well-known people in my friend list – famous Russian journalists, sponsors and members of big companies. They are posting interesting information about how they started their business and which obstacles they have faced.
Creating an account on LiveJournal could be a good experience in establishing virtual relationships and finding useful contacts and information.
On kinopoisk.ru
Internet has become an irreplaceable tool for communication nowadays. Each week and even day IT specialists develop the Internet facilities. If fifteen years ago people got only acquainted with the Internet, then now people can chart with each other, send pictures and files, make video conversations, download movies and even virtually travel to another country. Via the Internet it is much easier to find new friends and exchange the information about any case you like.
I am not communicating a lot via Internet and do not participate in many social networks there. Although there are some that I use constantly. For example, I frequently use a webpage www.kinopoisk.ru. It is a Russian webpage, Internet project about cinematography, which was set up in 2003. This is a place where you can find a lot of information about different kind of the movies and people who are connected with video making, starting from 1890s. On the webpage people can find the upcoming movies and television shows, exchange opinions about running films, read cinema news, watch pictures of global movies, watch trailers and posters or take part in a social network.
In April 2009 monthly audience of the portal was 3 370 400. According to the rating company Alexa Internet, kinopoisk.ru has place # 810 in the overall popularity rating of websites.
In working days average daily audience consists of about 475 thousand people who are aged from 12 to 54 years, weekly - more than 1.8 million people.
This webpage is very useful and informative, because it has a wide virtual community, forum. To become a part of a team, person just needs to register himself on the webpage and that´s it. Here you can choose a certain topic to share information with others or give your opinion about a movie. You can find new people, who may have the same interests and preferences in films as you. Also users can write reviews of films, give rates to their favorites, take part in questionnaires, add each other to „ friends“, etc.
You can book the tickets through kinopoisk.ru. Such tool is much spread and it helps to save time. In order to kill time you can play games and win presents. This webpage is mostly used for entertainment. There are no any age restrictions in using this page. This means that censorship is used. Whole webpage is absolutely ad-free, there are no advertisements at all, personally for me it is a huge preference.
There are also some disadvantages of kinopoisk.ru. The biggest is language. All the information is available only in Russian language. Unfortunately, those people who don´t know Russian would face some problems in reading and posting information to this webpage. In my opinion it is a great fail of webpage authors, because at present time most web pages are focused on big audiences and for that purpose they have a button to change the language. Such IT mistake, I think, decreases number of potential visitors.
In conclusion I would suggest you to visit this web portal yourself, I am absolutely sure you will find something interesting there.
EBay
http://www.ebayinc.com/connect
With more than 90 million active users globally, eBay is the world's largest online marketplace, where practically anyone can buy and sell practically anything. It was founded in 1995, eBay connects a diverse and passionate community of individual buyers and sellers, as well as small businesses.
This is a great opportunity for young students making the first steps in the business world. All you have to do is to sign up an account with EBay, pay some listing fees to get your item listed and you are off to a good start to maybe 300 - 400 different people looking at your item within the next 3 - 5 days. Remember that these 300 - 400 people are very targeted prospects. Almost 80% of the time, they are willing to leave the money on the table and carry out the transaction. In short, they are super interested buyers. Detailed description of how to create sellers account is given on the site. Simple and clear. Definitely a big plus. As well they have created the Resolution center where you can solve all your transaction problems.
I discovered EBay not so long time ago and my perception of it was based on what I saw: people sell, people bye. But what laid beneath was unknown to me. Not only can young people earn money through EBay they can also get relevant information or advice from experienced users. As well get to know all the policies and rules of EBay . All that information is located for your convenience in one place : http://forums.ebay.com/category/Ebay-Discussion-Boards/2001.
eBay has extended interest in it’s users by creating groups of interest where you can meet other members, get advice, and share and find information on everything from art to travel.
http://groups.ebay.com/groups/Ebay-Groups/1
As a buyer you get quite a lot of benefits. First of all the buyer protection program, everything you buy and report as not received will be compensated to you from eBay directly. Of course there are rules you have to stick to. Secondly the variety of goods and relatively low prices. You cant expect a brand cost 3 times less that of the street price but it is surely to be lower. A great partnership with PayPal makes it easy to process payments, and you get extra buyer protection from them. Basically if you stick to the rules you will not be a victim of a fraud. Just report your abuse in 45 after the item was purchased and you will get a 100% refund.
So far eBay seems as a business heaven ,especially from the point of view of customers, they are fully protected. But what are the downturns?
The transaction process is not complicated ,however, the issue that you will have to deal with is the honesty of the other party. With buyer/seller sincerity in mind, EBay has created the feedback rating as a gauge of someone's reliability. However, if you have seen someone's rating to be over 3000, don't be too sure you will get cheated. Sometimes, some people are using the feedback rating system as a larger opportunity to rake in a few tens of thousands of goods at one time.
The question and answer page is not meant for people with unique cases, something that is beyond the rules. There is no practical information on how to resolve those unique cases. In short the feedback in need of adjustment. No direct e-mail contact. You can call the UK number but it is extremely inconvenient ,considering the fact that most of the eBay market participants are located outside the UK.
In conclusion I would like to say that I personally use eBay as a buyer, so far there were only few cases where I did not get my money back ,by my own fault. As I mentioned read the rules and enjoy everything eBay has to offer: detailed explanation on how to create a good account, safety of transactions with PayPal and eBay customer protection program, variety, prices, chance to sell and earn.
Alejandro Carrillo Cantú
Moodle - www.moodle.org
Since the beginning of human kind there was a need for people to communicate with others to establish networks that will help them with their tasks and goals. The nature of a human being is to be a social person, but nowadays the world is living in a new era of technology that makes almost every activity of our life turn to live it different. Now, many people all around the world are using the virtual networks for different things. For example, some uses the virtual network for the purpose of making business, others to stay in contact with their friends and relatives, and finally students that use virtual networks that help them in their careers.
In this paper I´m going to analyze the use of virtual networks by students. I will make an overview of a virtual community where the students are involved and explain the pluses and minuses of using it. I will focus the paper on the features that the virtual community offers to the students and how the students can take it for their advantage.
The virtual community chosen is the LMS (Learning Management System) called Moodle. Moodle is used in many schools around the world because it offers many features that are very useful for professors and students. This e-learning system involves full interaction of the students with it. Students are in constant communication with their professors and with other students by posting in discussion boards, forums, blogs, etc. In Moodle you can create courses where the professors can upload documents such as presentations, articles, and any kind of file. It also allows uploading on-line quizzes and exams, so the students can take their exams from any part and can get their grades just in seconds.
This virtual community helps the students in their development of new skills that will help them in their career. I think that the best part is the communication that students can have with others. For example, a professor can post a topic in the discussion board and every student can respond to it, so even if you´re not in the classroom with other students, you´re sharing and receiving different points of view from the other students, and also having reply from the professor.
Part 2
A very interesting feature is that universities can share their information (courses, files, documents, lectures, students) with others around the world. So this provides a full experience for the students because you can share your knowledge and your point of view with others students from different countries. This really helps the development of new skills and competences of students, because now they will have a better and more complete knowledge. The interaction with students of different countries also help to establish a network that maybe in the future will help you more in a business matter.
The plus of using this virtual community is mainly based on the constant interaction that students have with others students. This tool promotes to the students the participation, and this help the students who doesn´t like to speak in public or who are shy, because for many people it´s easier to communicate by text than to speak. It also provides a variety of options to customize each session, so students can feel like they have their own space in the site. This tool is open source, so that means that it doesn´t have any cost and free for use. This is a real benefit for universities because they save a lot of money instead of buying a license to use software or paying for hosting.
Like almost every technology virtual networking has also minuses of using it. The main minus of using this virtual community is that students might lose face-to-face contact with others students and professors. Of course it is better to discuss a topic if the people are in front of them each other because they can see their expressions, have a better conversation, and replies in real time. But well, for some people it´s better to express them in a virtual way.
An important thing to consider is that students must be active in the virtual community to make the best use of it. If only they use the virtual community for the purpose of download study materials and upload home works would be consider as a passive user because they aren´t interact with other students. I think that the best way that students can make the best use of the community as a member or user is to stay in contact with other students and professors and share information, point of view and discuss a topic.
The disain on the page was the same as a lot of forums have,soft colours,the name of the forum,time and date are specified and are clearly visible.
The forum is accurately structured.You can look through the represented topics and find an applicable information at once. There are main titles and also subtitles of the main topics,which can help you easily to find suitable data.There are also given the description,so you can get acquainted with the section before open it. There are opportunities to see who have posted the every topic,what is the length of a theme and also when was the last post.
There are a lot of different interesting topics for self-development,including the business,news and politics,so everyone can chose whatever he/she wants.
On the top of the page you can find the section named calender where the birthdays of users are given,and you can congratulate each member of the forum and also you can see the age variation of the users,so that you can notice that not only students use forums,but also senior people.
The main pros of the forum is that information is also available for not logged on users,so that you can read the topics other people are discussing.
I would like to notice that the big pluses are the main rules about posting,logging,searching, and about the forum as a whole,so you can learn them before registration or before starting to use the forum.
The forum comprises many dignities but there are cons as well which I would like to analyse.
Fistly if you want to see the complete information and to be the member of the forum you should have your own user name,so you should make a registration. If you want actively partisipate in negotiation and you would like to post your own topic,or put interesting information,or discuss any problem you should register.You will not have an opportunity to read an information about the other users,so you wont`n have a new friends. To sum up you will be just passive user.
Secondly I would like to notice that such forum is not available for everyone.During the registration,to have my own account I have faced with problems.I could not be the user of such forum,because two of my different e-mails did not suit.I received such phraces like: “ Sorry, you are not allowed to register on this forum.This e-mail domain used for spam registrations”,or “Sorry, you are not allowed to register on this forum ”.So I started to read the rules of the membership and found that I should make a suitable and acceptable e-mail,if I want to have my own account on this forum.So I concluded that it is such kind of discrimination of e-mails.If a lot of peoples face with such problems ,they will choose other options for communicating and having the information and never return to that site again because often people do not waste their time to make a new e-mails only for registration on one site.A lot of people use their operating or active e-mails for almost everything.
In conclusion I would like to notice that forums are good innovations in our lives.
In my opinion in each forum are topics which could be new and attractive for you .So you also can use the same themes in everyday live and which you can discuss among friends or class mates or even relatives.I think that it is good idea for people who have problems with communicating,because of absence of the intersting information which they can share to each other. Such places can help you to have a new friends,which have the same interests,and also can broaden your knowledge in everyday live.
I think that every person is the part of community. For example, if you are active sportsman you are the part of the sport community,you have partisipating in the training process,in sport competitions,you have your own team,where people have the same sport interests as you have.
Or another example trade unions.People of the same profession make a trade unions,where they deposit their money,to be a member,they often make meetings,where they are discussing the problems, and where they negotiate to each other,and each member plays his own role in such union.
So the same forums do.They consolidate people but in network. People communicate, they share knowledge,whey unite their interests,they share experiece.In my opinion,to make the best use of membership,first of all you should be an active user.In forums or weblogs you should not only use available information,other people put,but also create your own topic,which could be interesting or helpful for other users.I guess that you should also express your opinions,not in each written topic,but in topic you are good at,or you have knowledge at.I also think that forum users could make real meetings once or twice a year,where people from all over the world could meet each other from face to face and they could negotiate in real live.
Samir Abdurahmanov IntBBA-2
LinkedIn ; www.linkedIn.com
LinkedIn is a business oriented social network that aims to connect experienced professionals from around the world. LinkedIn has over 55 million members in more than 200 countries who represent about 150 different industries. Their website states that all Fortune 500 company executives have a profile on this website. These numbers make this social network a very powerful tool in finding new business connections.
The website has many interesting and useful functions that can help you in your professional life. The main feature is that you can create a network of people that you are connected to. When you sign up to the website you create your profile where you write your professional accomplishments, expertise and other relevant information. Then you start adding the people that you know into your network and the people that are in their network also come into your network through your mutual connection. Eventually you end up with a huge network of people that can be useful for you in your business.
This network has many uses. First, you can use it to find potential clients, partners, new business opportunities etc. You can use your network to find new people and ask to be introduced to them through a mutual friend or ask for recommendations about somebody. You can also search the whole website for people in industries that you need. People can write recommendations for each other and the people with the most recommendations will be listed first in the search. This ensures that you find trustworthy and professional people who you can work with.
Another very useful feature is that you can search for jobs or employees on this website. If you want to find a new job you can browse the job advertisements and apply for the positions you are interested in. The employer can then look at your profile, your recommendations, your network etc. It makes the process of finding a job more efficient. If you are a recruiter you can put up a job advertisement or search the website for people working in the industry and try to recruit them into your company.
Third useful feature is the possibility to create groups. You can create a group for a topic that is interesting for your and have discussions about it with other people who have similar interests. Through this discussion you can learn new things and get a new insight to a topic that you otherwise wouldn’t have had. Also if you don’t know the answer to a question, you can post it on the website and people will answer it. So through this you can gain new knowledge.
People can also use LinkedIn to find information about companies that they might be interested in working. When you search for a company you can see the statistics about it – the number of employees, the percentage of male or female workers, list of employees etc. Basically you can get the essential info about a company.
I think that this website is very useful for business students because creating a network on this website you can create connections to potential business partners in the future. By joining various groups you meet people who have similar interests to yours and maybe through these similar interests you can find a job, an employee, a friend etc. Networking is becoming more and more important in today’s world, so the more people you know, even indirectly or superficially, can benefit you. I would recommend for business students to use this website. I don’t know many people who use it, but my previous employer at a real estate company was a member on this website and he told many stories how he got new business just by having a profile on this website. Random people from foreign countries who were looking to do business (sell or buy real estate) in Estonia saw his profile and were impressed by his work and contacted him. This eventually lead to many profitable deals. This demonstrates for me that this website works.
news.discovery.com/tech/top-ten-social-networking-sites.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn
press.linkedin.com/
Timo Markus BPA-33
The way i see is that through our hobbey`s you can find all kind of people who share the same intrests that you have and that makes it easy to do business with them. Because everyone are working at different fields of life means that you have connections allmost everywhere if you want to sell or buy something and because there is already trust between you and that persone it maks it that much easier.
The site I am talking about is called http://www.fastfords.org.ee/, its a car forum but there are topics that contains where you work and how you can be useful to other members of that forum. Because it is a car forum there is a lot of talk how to to different things around the car your self or where you can do it for the best price, so you can share useful information or you know who might have you can point them to the right direction and if you need something to know you just go and ask. Big part of that is also just interacting with other people and making good friends and finding people you can do business together. People there are friendly and they will help you, I think that its better then facebook or orkut where I am member also but these two I use just to keep in touch with old and new friends. In that forum I interact with people online and face to face because we have track days or we just meet some place to have fun or need to discuss something. Forum can be as useful as you need it to be for you, more active you are the more business you can do there and there is no limit what you can do. For example my friend is cafe owner and when we have a track day or some party we ordered a catering from him or you need something for your home improvement you ask another member for what ever you need from that store and because its a club we have discount card with the partners that we have found. For business students more direct benefit is making surveys or questioners for class or their own business and all thanks to the group of people that visit that forum. Because people who likes cars have their forum and other people from other forums interact with each other you will have more and more people with whom you meet through different events. Thanks to the internet the world has become smaller and in these events we do have people from other countries who has found our forum and likes our events will tell others and they will be back here again, when they organize something they will invite us to their events which means that you have connections behind the borders of your own country.
In conclusion i think that this forum has helped me more then just to have fun and i am sure that all these forums where people go when thay have some kind of hobbeys have same sort of experience because it will prepare you to the future what ever field you might be. You will learn a lot of things about yourself also because if you organize events you will be incontact with all kind of people and it helps you to do business wiht small amont of money and it prepares you to the future when it really matters, it is very good exercise for life.
Joonas Ljaš
ebay
www.ebay.com
eBay was founded in 1995 by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar. eBay is an American Internet company that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide. The majority of the sales take place through a set-time auction format, but subsequent methods include a substantial segment of listings in the "Buy It Now" category. eBay is used worldwide, it has localized websites in about thirty countries. Company also owns PayPal.
It is very easy to become a member in eBay. If you do not want to buy anything then it is not necessary to do account, because you can watch items without that. But customers who have clear vision what they are looking for there, then they have to register. It is very simple, just some personal facts and then credit card data and you are willing to buy anything what your budget allow.
Environment is the big issue in nowadays. Many companies are improved their methods to produce products naturally. But all companies are not managing that way. But eBay has proven to be a boon to the environment. Millions of tons of goods that would otherwise go into landfills or more resource-intensive recycling programs instead find new homes every year thanks to eBay. This company is also socially responsible because eBay eliminates middlemen and lowers barriers to buying and selling, potters in rural Mexico and bead weavers in central Asia can sell hand-made goods directly and inexpensively to a massive global audience. This brings new economic opportunities to developing areas and increases cultural understanding between populations.
Biggest minuses of eBay are dishonest people. It is like in the real world where you can encounter honest and dishonest people. Thankfully, eBay's site includes a selection of tools like the feedback system that are designed to help you to remain safe as an eBay member.
eBay is the one of the world's premier online properties and the corporate home of a number of successful internet brands. With over 300 million registered users, eBay's core site hosts millions of retail and wholesale transactions in some 30 countries encompassing tens of millions of transactions every day. According to eBay's mission statement, "eBay's mission is to provide a global trading platform where practically anyone can trade practically anything." For business students it is a very good site where you can buy wholesale stuff and sell it in Estonia for a profit. These little things help you to improve your skills. I am bought from eBay some cheap stuff and this is very comfort and easy. You have opportunities to meet business partners there and make some good deals with them.
eBay is a great place to buy and sell, but it's also a great place to meet friends, make connections, share your interests and knowledge, and get help with common problems. For conclusion I can say that eBay is a wonderful online marketplace and include almost everything what we need.
Marja Seppä
IntBBA-2
www.facebook.com (advertising,groups,fan-pages and connections)
Everyone knows it. People have already written about it. Is there more to add? Most certainly there is. With more than 350 million users, it can be said facebook is one of the most useful websites for normal people, and international business students, in the modern world. Though commonly seen as a place to meet one’s friends and ”waste” time, facebook actually possesses a lot of qualities that should be taken advantage of by companies and entrepreneuers.
Many of us as facebook users are not complitely aware of all the opportunities existing in this social network. When thinking the business side, it’s not about uploading photos of your own personal life but more about informing people about your, or even your company’s, existense. For companies that produce something for people under 30s facebook is the best tool for reaching a large amount of people at the same time.
One of the most effective ways to affect consumers is to advertise. In facebook it has been taken a step further by making it possible to reach the exact target group in question ( when you sign-up for facebook you have to let them know your age, gender and location). A good example of this is when I moved to Estonia and soon realized that the adds on the side of the page were in Estonian language after I had changed my network according to my current location.
Advertisers pay the site either per each click they get or by impression. Get familiar with the intructions, they have made it very easy:
http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?src=awgl01&v=ntl1
Another way is to form a group for your company or a fan-page (if you are an artist for instanse). Every user has an information part in their own profile which friends can see. If you happen to belong to a group or fan-page of some gym or a singer for example that propably will interest your friends aswell. Kind of like mouth to mouth advertising without talking. On the walls of these certain groups companies can post information about up-coming events or send private messages to people belonging to them. Artist can make their fan-page seem that they are trying to come closer to their fans and promote themselves while doing it.
Of course from personal perspective facebook is excellent for staying in touch with people it would normally be a bit harder to do so. Keeping connections to various countries is most likely useful in some stage of life and might even help create work contacts. For us as business students this side of facebook is propably now the most important as most of us have yet nothing of our own to advertise.
All in all, keep in mind that facebook is infact a business tool aswell and a great way to reach people who are spending their time in a familiar environment communicating with their friends.
PS: Once I got to researching the so called business side of facebook I found an very interesting article about different ways to make use of the social network site, it even claims one can run the whole business through it, definately check it out:
http://mashable.com/2009/01/22/business-facebook-apps/
The network I chose to analyze is the most popular and quite possibly also most famous one in the world: Facebook. The reason I decided to analyze Facebook, is that it is actually one of the few networks that I really use and I am familiar with.
Facebook is internet based network (www.facebook.com), where anyone can register an account for free and start using its full capacity, without any costs. Some of the information of the users might be public for everyone, but most of the content is hidden from the eyes of public.
Facebook was founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg and his schoolmates and some rumours tell that the original idea was to help people to keep in contact with their old classmates after their graduation. Nowadays Facebooks main benefit is the fact that is acts like a huge interactive address book, from where you can not only see the names contact information of your old friends, but you can also monitor their life and contact them easily if you have something to share with them. Facebook also has inbuilt mechanisms that allow people to create “fan groups” for almost anything or anyone and people who share this interest can register themselves into the group and share their toughts together. This way it is quite likely that you will meet interesting people to connect with. Another form of user made groups is the closed ones, which require an invitation for browsing. These groups can be used as more personal forum where people with common interests or relatives can share their opinions in relatively safe environment.
Facebook also offers a great way of finding information about persons you are going to meet with or work with or perhaps even be employed by. Trough Facebook it is possible to find out persons hobbies, interests and connections quite easily, unless he/she has had some effort to hide his/hers information (and even these efforts don’t necessarily help). This is also the biggest minus side of the Facebook as it is extremely easy to make posts and statements in with your name and face that might not be possible to remove from the internet. Everybody does not understand the fact that if you post something into internet you have to consider that it might circulate there forever. This might lead into situation where pictures or texts of a person could come to haunt him after years or even decades and cause some unnecessary devastation. Facebook has also been criticised is that it might cause some levels of addiction and that the workers might rather hang in Facebook than work. This has lead to the situation where several workplaces and schools have banned the use of Facebook on their computers.
For business people Facebook offers a great ways for cheap marketing and promotion. The most obvious way are the PPC (Pay Per Click) advertisements that are visible to Facebook users in the right side of the page. But the more prominent way for promotion is the user groups which companies can make, either official or unofficial, it provides a great way of keeping touch with the customers. This however is not as simple as it might sound as too straightforward advertisements usually tend to irritate people, so you must be able to provide some hooks for the customer that make them stay and contribute when using this tool. Also following the popular groups abroad might give good business ideas that could be put into practice in other regions.
For example I have been able to make new contacts with old friends that I had already stopped keeping contact with from my former school, workplace and army. Most of these contacts that I have been able to renew trough Facebook would probably still be forgotten if I did not use Facebook. Other examples that include me using Facebook for my benefit are the social gatherings and parties that are advertised trough Facebook. Without it I would have never heard of many of them.
I choose Facebook (www.facebook.com) because it is a social network that I only use. Facebook is a free social network site and it is founded in January 2004. It was founded by student called Mark Zuckerberg and his two friends in Harvard university. Facebook is worlds 4th used website and the company have over 900 workers and over 350 million users all over the world.
I’m using Facebook almost every day because Facebook is a place where you can communicate, send messages and share your thoughts with your friends and contacts. People are using it to finding old friends and keeping touch with them and making new friends and contacts in local and also in cross-border. It is a place where you can keep your contacts near you and share your life-experiences with them. You can talk there with your old classmates and crushes and maybe ask them for a cup of coffee.
In Facebook you can upload photos of you and you can update your personal profile in your wall every time you want. You can also make groups concerning for example your job, hobbies or music taste where your friends can join and share information with each other. There is also an option or forum where you can see your all friends birthdays. You can also send invitation for your friends there and make your own forum where you can put all details about the invitation.
I think people should join in Facebook because it is worldwide and the most popular and used social network in the world and it is free to use. It is very clear to use and it is translated in very many different languages. If you want to improve for example your English skills it is possible to do in there. You can use it to communicate with your friends in walls, forums and in groups that you can add there. In those forums you can find people that you have same interests and maybe same kind of job. It is not anymore only for regular people but also companies are using and joining there more and more all the time. You can advertise your company there and get it more visibility.
First thing that I’m not comfortable with in Facebook is the new version or update of Facebook. Just when you have learned to use the latest version of Facebook they are updating it with a new and strange version again. People have done several forums and groups in Facebook where they require to get the old version back.
Second thing that I don’t like and disturbs me in Facebook is that people are updating their profiles and walls with (I think so) unimportant things like “my one teeth is a little bit darker than the other ones”. For me it is frustrating to read that kind of thing on my first page. I think that people should have something else or important things to say. The problem is that I can’t block those things away from the first page even how hard I want to.
There is also a major risk that your pictures and files are going to wrong hands. Facebook is the most popular social network site the hackers are trying to abuse it. In Finland Facebook has come a really big problem in celebrities life. There are many fake accounts in Facebook with someone famous name in it. Their friends can’t know when there isn’t the real person in the other side because the hackers are copying their pictures and files from internet.
If you are already using Facebook and you want to find a new social network site that will help you more with your career and business I think I have to suggest for you this site called LinkedIn. According my friend opinion it is the best social network site in the web or at least it is better than Facebook if you are thinking from your career or business point of view. I think that most of you have already heard about it but if you don’t have go check it out. I don’t have my own experiences about that site and I can’t give guarantee for you.
Facebook
I chose to write a little analysis about Facebook community. The site for Facebook is http://www.facebook.com. It was created in February, 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg (with Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and 2 other Harvard students). The site was made for Harvard students, to let them communicate with eachother after studies, to speak to eachother, share information and other stuff. Later it was opened for other US and Canadian colleges also, then it was opened for European and Asian colleges too (basically everyone who had an e-mail address with end *.edu were able to create an account there). In September 11, 2006 was Facebook finally opened for everyone, interface was only in English, but everyone were able to create an account there. Took a year after opening to everyone, and in an analysis on September 25, 2007 it was already second largest social networking site globally, after MySpace.
Growth was huge, over 270% between June 2006 and June 2007.
Facebook creator – Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in the world and that is only thanks to his creativity which he made while studing at univesity.
Facebook is offering alot of different opportunities:
1) You can search for your friends and connect them over the internet.
2) You can create different groups, for example: Own course group, own family group for family members and so on, you automatically become a moderator of that group and that’s on your own will, that you accept who apply to this group or decline.
3) You can share videos and pictures there.
4) There is also possible to play different games, which usually are quite addictive and take alot of time.
5) Also you can advertise there on different occasions, like partys and so on
6) Also there is possibility for companies to advertise, these are called flyers (You can pick there for who You want these flyers would appear, like location, sex, age, keywords, political view, relationship, status, workplace). Also price is not set there for time, You need to play for clicks which are made on Your advertisment.
7) Also there is built in messenger, You can connect to other people who are online at the same time and chat with them in real time.
8) There is a possibility to create Your own blog.
And alot more possibilities, but I mentioned the main points which I know from that site.
Personally I’m using Facebook almost every day, talking to my friends, old school-mates. I used to be a computer gamer, spending atleast 10 hours per day at computer playing different games, mainly MMORPG’s (Massively multiplayer online role-playing games) and FPS (First person shooter) games. From these times i have alot of friends who live all around the world, for example USA, Canada, Spain, France, Italy, alot in Asian countries and so on, mainly all around the world. So this is another reason why I’m using Facebook, to connect to some of them. In Asia most of people who i know or used to know did not use msn, so I lost alot of contacts with them, when i stopped playing. I take it as a little challenge for me, to find them on Facebook and to start communicating with them, hearing how are the things there, at their place.
Probably the best use for this kind of community is to make a group already at the time when we are at the university, to get somehow people to join one group, to keep in touch even in 10 years, when we have already forgot our studies at the uni-versity, moved on with our lives. It is nice to hear from people in years after You have seen them for the last time and this kind of website makes it really easy.
Perfectbusiness
Internet is full of different networks, sites that are meant for all and for no one. Different people, different countries use different networks, that is why a lot of us, who are eager to use internet as a very useful tool or for doing, growing businesses, have to spend a lot of time online developing our virtual profiles in many different networks, being informative, selecting all the data that we really need or want to know.
Finding a good network for a business student is a hard thing to do, because one has to use many networks to be successful, but in my opinion one should most definitely take advantage of all the possibilities that a network called PerfectBusiness offers at www.perfectbusiness.com.
AIMS AND FUNCTIONS OF THE NETWORK.
Most of the colleges teach their students, that a business student is a person who is actively involved in launching and leading a business. So I believe that I can say that PerfectBusiness is almost a perfect website for ideas, development and guidance of how to be a businessman. This network is determined, that being a businessman lies on 3 very important characteristics. One has to have an idea with the knowledge of how to, connections with the right people, to set up and grow the business, and capital as a seed to it all. They are determined that these three things are essential. So they have gathered professional material to help everyone achieve them. Their resources include easy-to-use tools and resources, plus a network of entrepreneurs, experts and investors to assist members in accomplishing their goals of finding startup funding. Thanks to its great user interface it is very easy to navigate on the site. Because it is a professional network and has well educated moderators and administrators, every member can be sure that using this site is not wasting time. There is no nonsense, no chitchat, just possibilities to help each other succeed.
VALUE ADDED FOR BUSINESS STUDENTS
The greatest value in this network is its content and connections. It has all the basic know-how that a starting businessman needs. Besides that it has made it easier for business students to pitch their ideas to well known successful international businessmen and potentials investors. To use the network one has to be a member, that adds value for business students, because it makes easier to find the necessary, right people by knowing everyone’s background, likes and dislikes. Besides that, it gives a sense of security for this network is meant for professional use only.
EXAMPLE OF USE
I am a business student who happens to have the next great idea, a new „Estonian Nokia“. I register on this site and fill in information about myself – name, interests etc. I’m using this site, because I’m, looking for some potential investors. Thanks to a lot of professional tips and suggestions, I can be sure, that I can format and pitch my great idea in an acceptable, right way. Because I’m a new user, I do not have any connections. But yet I can start searching for people on the network, who have same interests and for people who have had successful careers in the same field of business or just for potential partners. Therefore, with a few clicks I have the connections and all of their background.
Pitching an idea is always difficult, because you never know if it’s secure, safe. Perfectbusiness can provide me with that feeling of security. Usually, the use of the network, the site, ends at this point, but this site will provide me information to succeed in the launch and to keep my business on track.
Vkontakte.ru is a very popular social network, created by Pavel Durov. According to Alexa.com (subsidiary company of Amazon.com) the site is the second most visited in Russia and Ukraine. The network was launched in September 2006 and was firstly represented as a social network for students and graduating students of universities, but now it is supposed to be a universal way of connection for all social groups of different ages. In January 2009 vkontakte.ru outstripped his main competitor – odnoklassniki.ru. Administration of the project assumes that nowadays the number of registered users reaches to more than 60 million of people. In English “vkontakte” means “in contact”, or better is to say “in touch”.
Design of the web-site can resemble facebook.com, that is why it is often claimed to be a clone of it. There are several pluses of this virtual community:
*connection with relatives and friends.
*broad communication possibilities for all users: convenient ways of intercourse and considered interface, easy access to friends’ profile.
*unique online-applications for users.
*possibility to upload photos, music, videos free of charge.
*absence of limit (you can download as many photos and music, as you want).
*by using “search” you can quickly find all the people you need by filling some basic information about them or just get acquainted with the people of similar interest (by joining into groups of your hobbies).
*privacy is on the high level. Users can choose whether to hide their profile from other people (only friends will be allowed to watch it), or not. You can also hide only certain photos, which you want, or just hide the list of your friends from everybody. If someone proposes you to join a group or wants to add you as a friend, at first, you have to accept or decline it.
*regular updating of the web-site (lately you can leave anonymous opinion of a person, ask questions from the visitors of your profile, new applications have appeared)
*reminder of your friends’ birthday. This is a really useful thing.
*vkontakte.ru is available in 20 different languages
Actually, we can face some minuses of this social network. First of all, people become addicted from this web-page, they just wasting their time playing useless games and looking through hundreds of photos of their friend. As for me, the first thing I do after coming home is to check my profile, new comments or friends’ photos. Secondly, people start living an internet-life, they forget about face-to-face communication. Thirdly, you can find some viruses and a lot of spam, but it is a problem practically of all social networks.
Speaking about the value for business students, all social networks can help them and vkontakte.ru is not an exception. While doing some group works or presentations at home it is very easy and quickly to ask questions or offer some new ideas to your group participants via this web-site. Another possibility is to find the suitable group with the problem you need to solve and to read other’s people thoughts and opinions.
In conclusion, I’d like to add that I am not addicted from this virtual community, but I visit it at least once a day. In my opinion it is really a good opportunity to be in touch with your friends, especially if they live in another country. At the same time there are hundreds of other social networks, so everyone have to find the best for himself.
Name of the network: Youtube
URL: www.youtube.com
Aims and functions of the network
Youtube is a video sharing website. Any person who has an account can upload videos and share them. Making the account is free for anyone. When you don’t want to make an account you can view videos but can’t upload them.
Youtube was created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005 and was bought by Google in November 2006 for $1,6 billion.
Youtube includes movie and TV clips, music videos and video blogs.
In November 2008, YouTube signed an agreement with MGM, Lions Gate Entertainment and CBS, which allowed them to post full-length films and television episodes on the site.
Youtube has an large issue with copyrights. There are many unauthorized clips from television shows, films and music videos. The problem is, that Youtube doesn’t view the content before video is uploaded, so the copyright holders have to issue a takedown. Also many companies have filed a lawsuit against Youtube. After those lawsuits, Youtube started to use a system called Video ID, which checks uploaded videos against a database of copyrighted content.
One of the main advantages of Youtube is that users can view videos outside the site. This feature is called embeding and it allows to view videos in social networking pages and blogs. For example, many news webpages add visualy explaining videos to their articles. Orkut users can post their favourite Youtube videos under their account etc.
Added value for business students
Youtube can be used as an alternative to Powerpoint. Students or company workers, who have to make a presentation, can use Youtube, by making a video, using special features like annotations. The video presentation can be easily accessible from every computer that has an internet connection. The video presentation will be stored as long as you need it and it can be downloaded by using some special programmes.
Quick capture makes life easier for business people who can’t attend an important meeting. By using quick capture, the meeting can be recorded and uploaded directly to youtube and is available to employees, shareholders and others, anyplace and anytime, where the internet connection is available. Also a live broadcast is now available.
To promote a brand, you can create a channel for it and update it with new videos or remove the old ones. Brand name can also be reflected in the username. Finally you can add your channel URL to marketing collateral and social network profiles.
For product or service promotion, you can put together a video review or an advertisement. When customers or people who are interested in your product or service, or have any additional questions, they can post their question to comment section or to your account mailbox. Also, if they want to respond to your video, they can leave a video response. When people get really interested in your channel, they can subscribe to it by a simple click to subscribe button, which is next to the video description.
Schools and organizations can make introductive videos to new employees or students to get started in a new place.
It is also available to earn money by entering into a partnership with YouTube.
I use Youtube mostly for entertainment purposes but i have also found useful information about the company or organization that i’m interested in. Many newssites are using Youtube to give a reader a visual overview of the news, by embeding the video to their site.
I have an Orkut account and there are some Youtube videos that I like and can be seen by my friends.
I have chosen to analyze Estonian business forum http://www.arif.ee
Arif.ee is a business related b2b forum which gathers different businesses owners at one place allowing to exchange experience, solve business related problems, provide different business ideas and be in course of all business related news and activities. This forum is mainly dedicated for Russian speaking persons however it also has some sections for Estonian entrepreneurs.
The registration is not free. You have to pay a 50eek registration fee from your company’s account in order to prove that you are a business owner. Every registered user is connected to his company so everybody can see this data. This allows to eliminate people not connected to business. Another advantage of such system is that you always know that the person stated in the status is actually the company related person and this also builds a good base for competent and ethical communication. Registered users also get access to closed sections of the forum where they can find a more valuable information.
Arif.ee is a place that allows an entrepreneur to be in course of all major business news and activities that can affect your business (for example new tax regulations or internet selling rules or customer refund obligations). If you are a business owner then it is really hard to underestimate the use of this resource.
Arif.ee also is a good place to promote your services to other businesses or find valuable business contacts be it new product suppliers or accountants or other service providers that can be valuable to your business. Very often this community helps you solving all sort of business related problems which might save you a fortune when it comes to paying for consulting services every time you stuck upon a problem. Arif..ee is a very food educational forum for beginners in business. Also I would like to mentions that Arif sometimes makes seminars oriented to exchange of experience or gain additional knowledge in different spheres and business aspects.
As for my personal experience I have registered at Arif.ee in summer 2009 and since then the forum has served me in a very positive way. For example I have covered some gaps related to business laws in Estonia and Arif.ee allowed me to find a good accountant that is competent in e-business. Also it gives new business ideas or new ideas of how to improve my current business. It is also a pleasure to be a part of community where people tend to help each other, provide with required information and just chat on the business related topics that can be very useful to both parties. Arif.ee is well structured and has a search function that allows easily find required information with several clicks of the mouse. If you haven’t found needed information you can make a post and be sure that somebody will help you.
I hardly see any disadvantages in this kind of community, however there is one. Your main competitors can be part of this community and sometimes it is not a good way since they can find weaknesses of your business and opportunities for themselves. Besides that I can hardly name other disadvantages.
I recommend to bookmark this resource, you never know when you might need some help in your business.
Sofia Jokinen, Intbba2
www.facebook.com (Events and promotion)
Since the task is to write about an internet forum that is important to my self-development and future career I chose facebook. I use facebook almost everyday, usually even few times a day. To me facebook serves many purposes. It is not only a networking site where I can stay intouch with my family and friends but it is so much more. Although facebook is used in many ways and it has many different functions I´m going to focus on how it is used in promotion.
In facebook you are able to share important information in multiple ways. Facebook is one of the most cleverest ways to promote events and advertise your ideas. Since I want to focus my future career on event managment and public relations I keep a special attention on what is going on in facebook and how do companies use facebook in their advantage. In facebook you can promote your event by simply creating an event and sending an invitation to all of your friends. Another way is to creat a group and send an weekly/monthly advertisement to the members of that group. After creating an event you can see who and how many people are attending to your event, which helps you to know what to expect.
All the events I have organized or helped my friends to organize have been promoted in facebook and the guests have been invited through facebook. A good example is a shoe sale which I helped to organize. It was promoted in facebook and around 80% among the people whom attended had responded to the invitation by using facebook. Another example is a friend of mine who is a PR manager for several nightclubs in Barcelona and he uses facebook to promote the club events because that way he can reach the tourists who are unaware of what is happening around the city.
Now a days there has been a lot of debate whether facebook is a threath to an individuals privacy and also how it affects our future careers and goals. I believe that having an account in facebook is more of an opportunity rather then a threat. Through facebook you can be active in many different fields and learn more about networking and communication. It is your own choice what sort of photos you upload, what kind of information you share and how you set your privacy settings. It is very common that people who promote themselves (such as artists) or people who promote their companys have two profiles in facebook, one for their own personal use and the other for promoting and advertising.
In a conclucion I would like to point out that facebook is a very important networking site now a days and I strongly reccomend everyone to atleast have an account there.
Pavel Pugatsov.IntBBA-2
Facebook . www.facebook.com
I have got accounts in different social networks . But the most useful network for me at the moment seems to be Facebook. Why do I use this network regularly ?There are a lot of reasons for that.
I decided to analyze a social network website Facebook, as I am a regular user of it and this site gives to me a real value .Being a student of an international university I have got a lot of new friends and acquaintances from different countries . To keep all of new and old contacts together there has arisen a need to get some international social network . This is the reason why I have got an account at Facebook.Actually, one of my new friends from Finland recommended it to me. This is the time when I started to use a very valuable site – Facebook.
According to different resources Facebook nowadays is the most popular international social network website. Nowadays there are more than 350 million regular users of Facebook around the world. Why did it become so popular ?
First of all,people of all ages can register there and find their friends all over the world . Besides,it is a regular opportunity for communication 24 hours a day 7 days a week. You can upload your own photos and share it with your friends and with other users of Facebook.At the same time you can make a restricted allowance to your account,so it means your information will be shared only with your friends.Besides , you can always write down your current location,wherever you are on a business trip,holiday and so on. On the one hand it might be interesting to other contacts to know where you are.On the other hand sometimes it is quite useful to get to know that some of your friends is currently at some country and you can contact him or her if you need some information or get some stuff from that country.One can describe Facebook as an electronic address book. Sometimes you can find it useful to get a reminder about someone`s birthday date that is very important part of communication.
Besides,while using Facebook you can create your own or join already created group,where are people which are connected with each other by some reasons : classmates,university or just kind of people with same hobbies and interests.By the way,it is a great chance for Erasmus students to find out some information about the country and university they are planning to go to and find some contacts in Facebook before arriving to the chosen place.
Speaking about business students ,why is it so important to have a Facebook account?It is not an exaggeration to say that very often best friends and trusted business partners are people with whom you have studied at school and university.So,Facebook gives us an opportunity to keep all the contacts from your studying years. I think it is also very important for international students.Who knows may be once you decide to open a business in some countries and this is the time when some of your contacts from that region can really help you.Another good option for using Facebook in terms of business and doing business is an opportunity to advertise your product or service at this website.Facebook offers a really simple way of doing this advertisement,where it will catch an attention of your future consumers.
But besides the advantages there are always some disadvantages . Here I can mention one typical problem that people get addicted to communication by Facebook and also others social networking websites.And it is a real problem nowadays.There are some examples of how using a facebook decreases an efficiency of the work of employees.That is why many Estonian firms do not let their employees to use websites ,which are not connected with their working process.
To sum up all mentioned above,I find facebook a very valuable social network and recommend it to other students and people who have not received an account there to sign up.
franchiserecordpool.com
The best virtual network for urban dj
I’ve been dj’ing for almost 10 years and I wouldn’t imagine my life without Franchise Recordpool. This website is made by Funkmaster Flex, who is an American hip hop DJ, singer, rapper, musician and producer on New York City's Hot 97 radio station, described by The Rough Guide to Hip-Hop as "one of the biggest players in the game". And his website is made for dj’s only. Before you can make an account there, you must answer several questions and pass the background check. That is necessary, because with the membership, that costs only 20$ a month, you will get an access to most exclusive songs and videos and you can legally download them on the assumption that you will play them in the club and because of that people will hear these songs and hopefully will go to the store and buy them.
Before I discovered this service I was subscribed to Promo Only services. This was also a service that was provided for the dj’s only. They sent every month a new compilation with the newest songs. I was subscribed to 8 different series and it cost around 120$ a month. But after I discovered Franchise Record Pool I was able to save 100$ a month and actually get even more new songs than before, so go Franchise!
So what are all the features that make Franchise Record Pool so great. First of all, as I already mentioned, the song selection. You can listen to all these different tracks and if you like them you can download them instantly. You can also rank them and read ratings of other dj’s. And of course you can send messages to the other dj’s and through that make new friends. I am in connection with 3 dj’s from the States and I’m checking from time to time which songs are popular over there, so I could try to play them in here more often as well. Of course one might say, that you could also check the US countdown, but I think that communicating with other dj’s is giving better results, because sometimes the song is on such a high spot on the countdown, but at the same time in the club it would bring everyone to the dancefloor. So that’s why I think this is very nice feature. But you have to take into account the cultural differences and sometimes what may be popular in the States, might not work in Estonia and vice versa. But I don’t think getting the information and communicating with another dj’s from around the globe can do you any wrong.
The negative side is the websites orientation to mostly US market. For the UK artist I have to check out some other sites, so there is something to improve, but I don’t think I can come up with any other things I’m not happy about in this site.
Compared to another analog sites like 8thwondercdpool.com, crooklynclan.net, crack4djs.net, digiwaxxmedia.com and tjsdjs.com I would say that Franchise Records is having the best balance between the price and quality. 8th Wonder Records cost actually only 10$ a month, but their song selection is not so diversified as in Franchise Records. But I am a member to all these sites, because they have a little bit of different selection.
In Estonia there also 2 websites that are offering the songs for the dj’s. These websites are beatnet.ee and muusika24.ee. But these sites don’t have any restrictions in the sense that anybody could join them and they don’t have also the community, the ratings of the songs and you cannot interact with the other clients of that service.
So altogether I come to a conclusion that Franchise Recordpool is at least for the urban dj the best place to get the music, make some new friends and who knows, maybe also business partners, and get the information about the songs that will become big in the near future. And I suggest this site to all the dj’s for the new music and for networking purposes.
Andrey Kulpin, IntBBA II
www.artlimited.net
ArtLimited.net is a social network and portfolio platform for artists, critics and
models who propose creative, personal and original high quality work which is
recognized and appreciated. It was designed to bring a personal vision of Art
presentation over the Internet media. The idea was to propose something well
designed, really fast and simple to display, with a lot of features to help artists to
promote their work and share their passion and knowledge to other members. New
technologies and amazing effects are interesting for games and shows, but a web
gallery should help a work of art to be exhibited in the best possible way, and seen by as
many people as possible. Many similar communities exists over the Internet and each one
has its specificity, its public and fans and No one can pretend to be the best as human
tastes are - still - personal. ArtLimitedʼs vision and concept is to bring a emotive dialog
between creators and visitors, helping them within advanced features to meet each other.
In general, ArtLimited allows members to create online portfolios and exhibit their works
among other artists and critics, receive feedback and comments, discuss various parts of
creative process, starting from expressive concepts and ideas to managing exhibitions and
clients. Website contains a vast image gallery with various sorting and searching tools,
lists of top images and authors. Along with a general gallery, users group together and
create specific projects developing and studying a concept in detail. Contests are also held
among the members, helping to improve exposure and reveal talented authors. The art
event section delivers relevant information regarding coming events and exhibitions, that
relate to the community topic.
ArtLimited was developed by a team of creative people from France: Denis Olivier, a fine-
art photographer and artist, Marianne Le Carrour, a photographer and fashion designer,
and Francois Frennois, a “mad scientist and musician” as he calls himself. Thus the
community was originally created by artists and for artists, correspondently implementing
the features and ideas, desired by photographers, artists, sculptures, designers and critics.
To be continued...
Contrary to other popular portfolio platforms, like deviantart.com, ArtLimited is of a more
elitist nature. The artworks and ideas, shared through AL, are typically deeper and
carefully selected. The content being very innovative, experimental and sometimes controversial, is although classical in its nature. The selection of techniques, used by the
authors, lack the predominance of so called “photoshop art” — a tendency for excessive
usage of photo-manipulations without more or less significant artistic or stylistic meaning
or context. Content of ArtLimited is by large created using traditional techniques and
media, such as classic black-and-white film photography, darkroom silver processing and
printing, acrylic and oil painting, sketches etc. Discussions also relate to traditional aspects
of art, while preserving a tendency to create extraordinary works and ideas.
ArtLimited implements subscriptional payed membership that comes in different types.
Although, full membership is charged, anyone who has something to share can join the Art
Limited community freely, create online portfolios, share ideas and take part in critical
discussion. More advanced subscription types allow members to use powerful content
management tools, promote and even exhibit artworks in real galleries, which cooperate
with the community. Membership is also available via invites, given by other members.
Such approach guard the community from becoming too public, loosing itʼs professional
and high quality nature.
For me, being a good friend of Denis Olivier and one of the first testers of the platform,
ArtLimited is a wonderful opportunity to contribute to the global community of artists and
fine-art photographers in particular. It is great to exchange ideas and concepts, as well as
ways and techniques to succeed it expressing them on media. At the moment I am more of
a side observer, having la relatively small image portfolio, but I visit the community
regularly to be aware of events and exhibitions, as well as to discuss artistic issues of
photography.
ArtLimited may be seen as a useful platform for students seeking exposure and active
networking. The community functions as a very close, chamber cluster, luring creative
people. Due to itʼs tight connections with critics and galleries, ArtLimited is a perfect place
for building useful acquaintances, connecting the community of gallery curators and artists.
Thus the community can be used for business purposes by art-related people.
Ruth Jaama BBA-2
part1
Toidutare.ee
Toidutare.ee is an extensive and most visited food and nutrion online portal in Estonia catering for anyone interested in food, food preparation and nutrional facts. Time and money consuming piles of cooking books, recipe clips and trips to library are things of the past. Toidutare.ee is a library and venue of ideas at your fingertips. No more need to travel far to workshops or look for people who share your ideas or can teach you a thing or two. All you need is a computer, internet connection and passion for a delicious, adventurous and inventive meal.
As an avid cooking enthusiast and advocate for healthy eating habits, Toidutare.ee as an online community is a great outlet for me to learn, share and discuss ideas with others. I have implemented Toidutare to my everyday life leasurely and professionally. Being involved in a food and drink business, I find Toidutare to be a vital learning tool and virtual classroom so to speak now and for my future endeveours.
Ever growing social network, Toidutare.ee has developed into a virtual online community with registered users from all over Estonia with 8522 recipes posted to date, 3188 of them with photos. In depth step by step option offers food preparation in illustrated form with pictures in different stages of particular meal preparation. Toidutare users come from every county of Estonia, Harjumaa with most at 39 per cent. 13 per cent of Toidutare users are located outside of Estonia with Spain and Canada as leading countries for foreign visitors. Current statistics show that the majority of Toidutare’s community is between ages 20 and 50, making up close to 90 per cent of all registered users. Perhaps by decadent and stagnant perception that women are rulers in a kitchen, only 4 per cent of Toidutare’s registered members are men.
Either reading postings from ordinary cooking enthusiasts or top class chefs, one can find helpful and healthy tips for every kitchen need. Besides learning new recipes, visitors can educate themselves in healthy nutrional regimens and learn how to avoid not so healthy substances. Quality of content is guaranteed through collaboration with leading food publications, such as magazine Oma Maitse, cooking book “100 Rooga” and kitchen and food sections from other popular magazines. Overall, 98 other website links are incorporated into Toidutare.ee and it is accesible via popular social networks Twitter and Facebook. Toidutare.ee is an easy place to navigate between wide variety of options and truly a fun place for a trek around the culinary globe.
In addition to cooking tips and recipes, it offers food reviews, comments from health care and nutrition professionals, food and dining news from around the world and samples of fascinating international cuisines and dieting tips and tests. Added behind the scenes video clips from Toidu TV about food preparations and kitchen secrets of Estonian public figures add more flavor to Toidutare.ee
Want to share your ideas, recipes, take part in discussions or present an argument?- Toidutare has it covered. Navigate between comment, forum or blog sections to find your most suitable outlet. One can tests knowledge or get a score on eating habits through questionnaire section and take part in online cooking competion between registered users. Useful and constructive critisism is always welcomed, but of course, out of line and vile comments are filtered by network moderators to keep up the professionalism and good taste. As with many online forums with commenting options, my only recommendation is that all commentators should be required to publish their real names and valid e-mails to avoid or decrease anonymus unfounded negative comments that serve no purpose.
Ruth Jaama BBA-2
part2
At its launch Toidutare had only limited resources available for visitors and I would have had several requests to point out, but as it kept growing, developers have catered to my every need I can think of. One great addition could be Toidutare for children, where simple and basic recepies for younger kids would be a great start to expose them to a magical world of food and homemaking. It should be simple salads and cold appetizers which they could prepare under supervision of their parents and without a need to use electrical and gas appliances to avoid possible hazards and accidents. It would be a great teaching tool and a pleasurable experience for entire family at the same time.
As of today, Toidutare.ee is ranked nr.108 in traffic frequency on the web among Estonian websites, a respectable position in a country with strong and highly developed internet culture. User friendly layout and easy to navigate sections have made Toidutare appealing and fun to everyone, let it be a computer savvy techie or an elderly housewife making her first steps in cyberspace.
Toidutare is an open network, meaning everyone interested can join. To fully explore and navigate through entire community, post your recipes or participate in online activities, users need to register which is a simple and easy process. You can, but do not have to reveal your identity, instead you can choose a nickname or alias. Being a registered user also has advantages of accessing virtual forums to have professionals assisting you in preparation of nutritious weekly menu and giving useful cooking tips. A special section- “Online tools” directs users to self help menu. Calorie calculator, weight calendar, “smart charts”, food glossary and a tips corner (for kitchen and general household as well) are among the many great features.
Although most of the developed world struggles with obesity and other bad dieting related health issues, Toidutare is not a social network focusing on or advocating for any particular diet. It is a food network in it’s purest meaning. Let your diet be vegan, high on protein or carbohydrates, Toidutare is a place for everyone who loves cooking, eating and widening their horizons in the culinary universe.
Jaan Siispool
IntBBA-2
Article Alley
www.articlealley.com
This site is used by millions of people and it is one of my favourites. The aim of this site is to read what other people think and write what you think on those topics. The website was built in 2004 and since that time became very popular as there is possibility to write web blogs and articles so that other people could express their own opinion on the aspect that you are writing about.
For business students it is useful even from the point of view that the most recent happenings are published there and discussed, also it is possible to monitor the whole situation in the world if you critically analyse the content of articles you can make right decision in future business because you will know what is the position of people for different aspects of life.
As I already said this is one of my favourite websites, because it covers a huge variety of all themes that bother people in the particular time period. You can find a lot of interesting information concerning themes that interest you and along that while you list them during the search you will definitely find couple of other articles that would catch your attention and you will not refuse your self in reading them because the themes discussed are very interesting.
Karl-Ingemar Viilver, BBA-2
eFormular (www.eformular.com)
Part I
The Internet has taken the World by storm over the last couple of decades. Nowadays we can not even imagine taking care of our routine simple tasks, communicating or working on a project in a company without relying on the possibilities that the Internet provides us. It just makes our everyday actions, the gathering of required information and endlessly processing it that much easier and quicker. Adding to that, looking upon the Internet with a business student’s view, it possesses massive opportunities to educate oneself, get vital contacts and useful feedback on things learnt and projects encountered to make the most out of all the mentioned parties.
In my opinion the aim for business students globally in reaching that desirable success is to become familiar with different business oriented landscapes and customer behaviour in them. A future respectable businessman has to know his/her clients, their needs, the mindset towards the product and suggestions how to make it better. Usually these highly valued bits and pieces of information seem to be easily accessible, but as a “freshman” in that certain field, one can find himself/herself endlessly lost when meeting the first irritated potential customer or getting a document consisting mainly of not understandable data, along with a humongous bill from the marketing research company. In that certain point of misery comes into play the possibility of using eFormular.
eFormular is an unique tool providing the possibility for creating electronic forms (eFormulars) and conducting surveys via the Internet using the site www.eformular.com. Using the site enables one to easily collect the affiliated customers' opinions about services or products catered to them. Students usually use it to gather up data for the investigation of a project questioning their mates. Even innovative tutors have found it useful for taking a peak into the students’ preferences about examination time, the way they like the course to be ran, etc. In addition to innovative tutors so are school teachers finding eFormulars helpful in conducting a test or a quiz in an interesting and novel way.
When deciding to use eFormulars, they work like that - every registered user can compose unlimited number of different eFormulars that can contain unlimited number of questions. The questions can have predefined multiple choice or free text answers. Users can also edit, copy and delete their eFormulars, as well as send them to other registered users. The data gathered with the help of eFormular is stored in the database and can be used for further processing in one’s own spreadsheet program. The data can also be mailed directly to the user’s inbox. Registered users can access only their own data and operate with their own eFormulars. Your ready-to-use eFormulars can be linked from one’s own homepage or included in one’s frameset. Users may send the questionnaires to multiple e-mail addresses directly from the eFormular environment or provide the address in direct mailings or use social virtual networks like Orkut, Facebook, Twitter or MySpace to post up a link there.
Part II
The first major advantage of using eFormular is that it enables to get reliable knowledge of potential customers’ mindset towards a service or a range of products quickly and in a cost-effective way (EEK 249,- for 1000 answers; EEK 499,- for 10000 answers). The site is also easily accessible to everybody, simple to register to and use all of the goods provided there. Moreover it only takes a matter of minutes to form up the questionnaire and send them to people using a direct link they can click on, to reach the questions. The questionnaire gives the potential customers a great overview of the matter on hand and it is really pleasant to answer to the questions as it just takes an effort of clicking onto the most suitable answers, while being able to also comment on them in text. In addition to all of it, the processing of all the gathered data is already done for the user, making it possible to show the audience the results in clear graphs just logging onto the webpage.
Although the creators of eFormular are constantly updating the possibilities of the site for better usage, the main fault I see there is that it did not have a built in interactive forum or messenger type environment to share information even quicker with other users. In other areas the website serves its cause and is an easily usable tool in getting the information needed.
At first when I started to do the homework, I gave my mind a hard time in trying to figure out what I was going to write about that might give business students an edge infront of their competitors they are looking for. Then I remembered that I have used eFormulars with great success. My last connection with the site was when our entrepreneurial team in EBS formed up a questionnaire for market research and received more than 550 reliable answers and 50 suggestions about how to enhance the product even more to the liking of the future potential customer. It was the first real step we took in reaching our goal and today I can really say that it made us and the product look trustworthy. Moreover it helped us to save huge amounts of time and gave us a round of applause from the audience for the “great work we had done”.
Therefore, taking everything into account, using eFormulars extensively implies that it truly serves as an edge not only to business students, but businessmen and the previously mentioned parties. In today’s cost-cutting world, a person willing himself/herself towards success has to use every trick in the book to stay afloat, making the usage of eFormulars the perfect start in achieving the ultimate goal.
Homework
part 1 Carolyn Rist BBA-2
Overview of Buduaar.ee and comparing it with eBay.com
At first I am going to talk about Buduaar.ee and then I am going to compare it with the international networking site Ebay.com.
Buduaar.ee is a internet-based networking site. The aim of this place, is to sell, buy and change different things that you own or desire, that means that it is an economic network, but also a social network where people can communicate and tell other whatever they want to say. In addition, it is also an entrepreneurial network that bring together professionals and resources that compliment each other to start or develop entrepreneurial initiatives. That also makes it a business network, where people can make business contacts or create new partnerships and can share their contacts and business information that can be useful for both of them.
Mostly, buduaar.ee is for girls and women, it is a place for selling and buying, but it also is for communicating and to get information. There are also news for women about famous people and about trends and fashion that rule the world. Secondly it is a place for advertisements and all kind of announcements. On addition, there are some TV shows that can be seen, these are about fashion , clothes, make-up and other things that women like the most. There are also articles about women life and all that comes together with it. This website includes even forums where people can discuss at different subjects.
We can say, that it is a wonderful web page that Estonians have created. So many opportunities and things do that women would like. Buduaar.ee is very nicely created, the colors are pink and purple, the topics and main activities are concrete and easily found, different kinds of advertisements are flashing and it is useful for all women, it only depends what they are looking from there. Is it a help, communication, business contacts, partnership, news or desire to sell or buy something.
As I said, it is an easy place to surf. It is also very easy to open and to have an account there and it is also easy to put up your own offers or buy the things that other offer. Registration, using, selling and all other things are for free, that also makes sense why there are so many users and offers seen. It is a very large and opened networking environment. Mostly the users of this network are 20- 50 years old women, and they are interested in gossips and buying and selling. Clothes are the most popular, but there are also pets, technology, household appliances and home decoration that are sold and bought from buduaar.ee.
It is still a place where students can develop and see how business is made. If you are smart enough, you can make partnership and also make an international career. All that the person needs is the right attitude and a strong will to put their business up. Buduaar.ee giver a change to do it only in Estonia, but there is a lot of space in networking world to develop and do business even on international networking business areas.
I should mention that everything you do in internet or with computer is somehow networking. It also teaches you the opportunities on large bottomless networking area and you also learn how to get maximum from the internet or from any activity on internet. Even if we think that we can use our computer, it still teaches you something or makes you a faster users of computer or you know where to look up things that are necessary for you and for your future life in communicating and business.
Carolyn Rist BBA- 2
Part 2
It is also a fun community were to hang out and look nice things. It is very hard to find minuses about that network. But indeed, there are also some minuses. One of the biggest disadvantage will be the security of paying. When you pick out a thing that you want to buy , you must contact the vendor and get her bank account nr, but there is no guarantee when you send money to her, that you really can have the thing that you ordered. But it is still a small risk, because I know that mostly the persons are honest and send your orders as quickly to you as possible. Me and my friend who use this site have had no problems yet, but we have to admit that the risk is still there.
In this report I also will compare buduaar.ee with ebay.com because then students from other countries get a better overview what I was talking about. But why didn’t I talk about ebay instead of buduaar? Because, I didn’t know much about this network business community before, and I found buduaar to be more homey and easier to use. In my opinion it is also easier to start networking in your mother language community and smaller network are easier to discover and learn. Then , if they feel comfortable about it, then they can move on to international networking level on business area.
As I was not an user of ebay.com I had a little time to look a little bit into ebay’s networking and business opportunities. I looked around and gathered some information. Firstly, making an account was very difficult and hard for me. The site was very colorful and it was hard for me to find what I really was looking. Ebay has more categories than buduaar, for example there are categories like craft, antique, travel and real estate that buduaar doesn’t have. Also another plus will be the paying system, it is more secured and you can be 100% sure that you are going to get your items that you have ordered. The disadvantages will be the complicated paying systems. You need a credit card to buy things, but many students like us do not even have it. Also the design of that networking website is not very nice and it is even dull and boring. It is also hard to make business contacts and friend there, because there is not an opportunity to communicate with others. Selling and buying is made individually and others can not comment or say anything about those products or about their experiences. There are no news seen on this webpage and not so many advertisements also. But it still has got many users from all over the world and it is an international networking community. Still, if you have enough will to make international business contacts and set up your own business it is possible, and using ebay may make it easier to find and learn the right methods and contacts for your career.
In conclusion, buduaar.ee and ebay.com are good virtual networks for students for self- development and learning how to make an international career. Both pages have their advantages and disadvantages for self-development and career making. Networking is just a good way to make business contacts, develop yourself and get the ideas how to make an international career and partnerships. The main point is that you must have a strong will and desire to educate yourself and know the best ways how to make useful contacts in virtual and face- to face networking. If a person really wants to exceed and makes efforts, then he or she probably will get what he or she wants.
Microsoft Eneta - a site about IT solutions.
url: www.eneta.ee
Microsoft Eneta is created in co-operation between Microsoft Estonia, Estonian association Tiigrihüpe and BCS. The site has a history from 2006 and today there are more than a thousand students who passed courses at Eneta. The objective of this site is to give up-to-date information about new innovative technology in the IT field. Since today we are living in a so called IT-society, more and more The target group is mostly Web programmers, designers and developers, but other enthusiasts are also very welcome. The idea is to make Info Technology as acceptable as possible for the every-day-users. That is established by creating new technologies and passing it over to developers.
This site enables everyone to have a quick overview of new technologies and to learn about it. There are many possible ways to do that – Web studies, forums, discussion groups, communities and courses. All studies and courses are carried out with the help of Microsoft and other specialist in their own area of expertise. Within the discussion groups and forums there is always someone from the Microsoft development to give tips and share knowledge, when needed.
In addition Microsoft offers a lot of free state-of-art software for personal use to have a practical approach to the studies.
I use this site to keep myself up-to-date on the latest achievements in IT and to learn new technologies to use in my everyday work.
I could say that I am quite happy with this site, because I have gathered a lot of info, knowledge and business contacts around the world.
The only downside to this site is the fact that today it is not yet so well known. The main users are people who really work with IT day in and day out, but this is a small community. There is nothing to do about that, but I believe that will change, because after all we are living in a IT-society.
studiVZ by Anne-Marie Bandmann
Social Networks become more and more important in the world as well as in Germany. The market research institution Comscore shows in their report of the third quarter of 2009, that there are 26.4 million active users per month in social networks in Germany. These are 3.6 millions more than one year before. The most popular social networks in Germany are studiVZ, schülerVZ and meinVZ, which are all belong to the StudiVZ Ltd. In 2009 these three networks had together 14.6 million users.
StudiVZ (long form: Studierverzeichnis, possible translation: students register) was created in 2005 with the purpose to connect students of Germany, Austria and Switzerland with each other. In 2006 the same kind of networks were introduced to France, Spain, Italy and Poland, but they were finished in 2009 because of the missing success there. The main target is now the German-speaking region. There studiVZ become really popular also by pupils and non-students. Therefore StudiVZ Ltd. created a new social network, which is structured like the original, just for pupils called SchülerVZ (possible translation: pupils register) in 2007 and a network for alumnae and non-students called meinVZ (possible translation: my register) in 2008. The last one is connected with the network for students.
The main focus of this homework is on the students’ network – studiVZ.
Like in all social networks the user can create a profile about him. As the name suggest is the main target group students. Therefore the user has to choose a country where he or she is located and his or her university. The year of attending the university and the subjects are optional as well as uploading a profile picture. Further additional information about personal belongings like favorite music, movies and books or hobbies and political views as well as contact details and uploading pictures are also possible to add on the profile. The possibility to register in courses the user attend at university is a good feature for students to get in contact with other students and to exchange information about the specific topics there. Another possibility for exchanging information is the group function. Every user can join at least 100 groups. There is a huge assortment of different kind of groups: from serious learning-groups to fun-groups and it is common in this network to show the own personality through these groups.
Part 2:
StudiVZ provide a lot of different possibilities to stay in contact with other students. First there is the so called pin board, where other students can leave short messages on the profile, secondly there is the possibility to write mails and thirdly there is some kind of messenger system called Buschfunk (possible translation: outback talker), where it is possible to write with online networks-friends.
After the adoption of studiVZ in 2005 there were a lot of discussions about the similar appearance and arrangement to Facebook. The main difference between these both networks is actually the corporate-colour – studiVZ is coloured in red and Facebook in blue. And one technical feature that is patented just for studiVZ and made this network famous: gruscheln. It describes a feature with whom a user can get in contact with other users. Gruscheln itself is a neologism and implies something between greetings and giving a hug to somebody.
Social networks, especially these with a lot of personal information are always victims of onslaught through hackers. In 2006 there was one big data-mining at studiVZ. Thereupon the security adjustments were verified and every user had to make a new password. Since them every user has the possibility to make some parts of his or her profile invisible for unknown users, which is used by a lot of users. Therefore the interactive part of this network was shut down.
Internet security as well as intercourse with personal data in the internet is one big issue in Germany. There are a lot of discussions about social networks, especially studiVZ. Nowadays it is common that possible future employer take a look to studiVZ to search for the applicants profile to get a first impression. Some cases cause a sensation, because companies confronted the applicants with their uploaded pictures of party or some specific groups. These cases offer a lot of space for discussions and ends in general in a generation problem, because the actual generation of students and pupils are more confident with the internet than the rest of the population of Germany. In my opinion the discussions of social networking as well as all related things will be growing in future and will a take a bigger part in everyday life.
Attention Internet Explorer users!
Please mind, that in case You face security warning which asks:
"Do you want to view only the page content that was delivered securely?" You should choose NO.
In this case Explorer won't block content which is linked from outside of blogger.com environment.
With best regards,
Juri Tretjakov
ht@ebs.ee
educational technologist @ EBS
I will base my review on the very populaar social Network Facebook (www.facebook.com)
I know facebook is a social Network that all course student always want to discuss but my reason behind choosing Facebook is simple: its is the only Network that I currently use.
Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004 that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc., with more than 500 million active users in July 2010, which is about one person for every fourteen in the world (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook)
Users can add people as friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by workplace, school, or college.
Estonia currently, with its 258 220 users, is holding the 92th place out of 212 countries. This means that 20% of Estonians have an account in Facebook (Source: www.Facebakers.com).
As a person working in an international company I use Facebook daily to communicate to colleagues in other countries. It gives a social background to all of them- I can see their interests and pictures and thus communicate with them as people and not as just email addresses. This is a big plus for me as communication over joint projects with other countries can be very difficult as the cultural background is often very different.
Facebook is also a vital part of doing research about clients and business partners. Of course we Google everybody that we come in contact with but Facebook gives us more specific information- information that the person in question wants other to know about them. When dealing with clients we always do research to see what our clients are like- we see their pictures, their hobbies and most importantly, their friends. In a country as small as Estonia you most probably have some friends who know the person in question and it’s a great way to get more information about this person.
Facebook is also a easy tool to keep in touch with competitors in the market. I work for a media agency and media and marketing news is always put on Facebook for everybody to discuss and share. All Estonian media agencies are connected in one way or another in Facebook and information travels fast. I have met many people threw Facebook that I have similar business interests with and keep in contact with them daily.
For a media agency Facebook is a very important media channel. I buy advertising in Facebook because the CPM (cost per mille) price is quite reasonable for Estonia. I also create groups and pages for my clients and their campaigns. Facebook is also a very good channel for business students to start their own business or to join somebody else’s business idea. If a business student has an idea for a business he/she just needs to make a group/page for the business and start sharing and being active. On Facebook its very easy to communicate with people outside your own country and share ideas without borders. I know an Estonian IT company who found their Brazilian affiliate threw Facebook.
In conclusion I have to say that although Facebook is a great network for communicating with friends it’s also a very effective tool for enhancing one’s business, finding business partners and sharing good ideas around the world. Facebook gives good information about people and as we know- information is power! Facebook shows you the people behind the email addresses of work contacts and that helps you communicate better with them. Facebook is also a very effective tool for marketing your company and also yourself.
Triin Puskai
ÕBÄ-33
Finding business ideas or business partners is not an easy job for a student. That is why I have chosen to describe a business networking site, which is totally new for me, but it might become useful and important one day! So, for my homework I have chosen to describe webpage www.xing.com.
Xing is the professional business site for people all over the world. Site has over 10 million users at the moment, who all are there to get in touch with people to generate contacts which can give possibilities in career or just to find new ideas for your business.
Webpage Xing plus is that the site is always up-to-date, which gives an opportunities to register your meetings with other Xing-users or even with those, who are not using it at the moment! So, it has few of Office functions in it. Also, Xing is available in any mobile device, which is quite important now-a-days. Many of us are using mobile phones, to read mails or to stay in touch some other way. So the free usage in mobiles is very important. When I registered myself as a user and specified the field and the company where I’m working, the site automatically gave me persons who are also working in the same company and of course only those who have registered themselves. At the moment there is only one person from the same company. Hopefully there will be more in the future!
Which is very interesting is that the site gives me many alternatives which groups (or special employers) might be attractive to me. The site compares it with my working field and gives as much possibilities it finds.
Information which is available on the site is also quite interesting and might be useful. For example events which are coming up in a day, in a week or in a month. And there are not only Estonian events, there are described all the posted events all over the world which are connected with entrepreneurship or any other business subject! That is the place where you can give information about your own company activities, too. Plus there are special offers for Xing users in many places of the world. For example you can book a little bit cheaper overnights in Park Inn Hotel etc. Only restriction is that you have to be a Xing member for at least 31 days!
To think about the minuses which can occur when using the network is that when you register yourself you will automatically be the test premium membership user which lasts only a week. But if you want to be advanced member you have to pay a certain amount depending how long you want to use your account there. For example if you want to use it one year, you will have to pay € 5.95 and to be two-years user costs less, € 4.95. It helps definitely to keep away those how just like to register themselves to different social networking sites which they might not use a week later. So in that case I take the paying part as a plus! Not having any “empty users” in network keeps it clean and gives free space to do more effective business online!
Added value for students might not be so easy to find, because there are registered people who are working at the moment. But if we consider evening studies at EBS then there definitely are 70% of students who are also working at the same time! So it is absolutely interesting information for them, too.
In my opinion the site Xing.com is useful and gives a lot of information for workers and for those who want to find new business partners all over the world. You just have to be active user and talk along!
Pirkko Lipp
ÕBÄ-31
www.studivz.net
StudiVZ is a German social networking site started in 2005, aimed at university students. With 17 million members, it, along with its sister networks MeinVZ and SchülerVZ, is one of the biggest social networks in Europe. These sister sites were founded in 2008 and 2007 respectively. MeinVZ is intended for people who aren’t students while SchülerVZ is aimed at school students. The databases of StudiVZ and MeinVZ are linked, so users registered with one site can interact with users of the other. SchülerVZ is kept separate for safety reasons.
Concept
The features are familiar for any user of social media sites, especially Facebook. The similarities extend so far that Facebook actually tried suing StudiVZ for copyright infringement. Profile information, updates to friends, posting pictures – all this is very similar to Facebook. Even the poke feature exists under a different name. The only major difference in features is the ability to see which users have visited a profile page – if the visiting user allows the owner of the profile to see it. On the other hand, the creation of pages that aren’t profiles is very limited, making StudiVZ a less useful tool for company promotion activities. Only the group feature is available for this purpose, but without many of the customization options of a Facebook page.
Usage
Among German university students it is still slightly more typical to have a StudiVZ profile rather than a Facebook one. However, the number of Facebook users in Germany is rising rapidly, tripling between August 2009 and 2010, while the number of VZ users (all networks combined) only increased by 2 million from September 2009 to September 2010. It seems likely that many users are creating profiles in both networks or are even migrating completely to Facebook. Since the features are largely the same, it is reasonable to assume that the larger worldwide user base of Facebook serves as an incentive to move activities there.
Usefulness for Networking
Since it is mainly used by students, it is easy to find contacts from that area. An example for a business student could be a search for fellow students of the same subject, possibly via the group feature, to exchange ideas and opportunities. Following the addition of MeinVZ, usage among professionals has increased as well. However, it is still perceived mainly as a recreational network, not a professional one. Making contacts based on interests and hobbies is relatively easy; networking for business or job search would be better accomplished via networks such as LinkedIn or possibly even Facebook.
I myself use the network mainly to stay in touch with friends I made in real life, especially now I am Estonia. However, Facebook is quickly replacing it as my main social networking site.
Future Prospects
Unless a new direction is found, the VZ group is likely to continue losing ground to Facebook. Originally, Facebook was perceived as an “American” network used largely for communication with international acquaintances while StudiVZ was used to interact with German contacts. But this difference in perception has largely disappeared since Facebook launched its German version in 2008.
It is going to be necessary to develop new, unique features instead of copying those of Facebook, in order to continue existing as a relevant network.
Kaisa Schmidt
ÕBE-31
For my homework I choose the webpage www.linkedin.com.
LinkedIn is a business –oriented social networking site that was lunched in 2003. At the moment over 75 million professionals use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas, find new interested and useful contacts in business opportunities more than 200 countries in the world. Also you can learn about other people experience, share them and learn about them. The webpage is simple and free. Further, being a LinkedIn member will provide you a Google presence. A very important is that if you will be a member of the webpage, make a good and simple profile. All the informatin is needed to be correct and usefull to other users. If somebody will search you they can see your current and past job, education, friends and in the contact settings about what you are interested in.
The purpose of the site is to allow users who are registrated to maintain contact with people who they allready know and are interested to communicate in the future. It helps you to find pesons who are working the same position in your home country and around the world. In the webpage they offer opportunity to send e-mails. Its a very comfortable because users can keep work messages and new contacts seperated.
Users can search companies and their employees. These information can be useful for marketing, sales and finding jobs. Also you can join to LinkedIn groups. There are many different ones like school, employer, company. It will give you the opportunity to network with others with the same background.
I think for me and other people LinkedIn is a connecting tool and there are some similarities with Facebook and Orkut because many of my friends use three of them at the same time.
The webpage advantages I discovered are:
You can easily find around the world knew contacts, find new exciting business opportunities, job seekers can find easily information about future co-workers, ask additional information from the former boss of a potential employee, users can ask questions and get answers from educated and experienced people.
I used th webpage for my homework because it is something knwe for me that i think i will use in the future. Also in my opinion the site s is useful and gives a lot of information and help in business world.
Kaisa Schmidt
ÕBE-31
Henry Auväärt
BEB-3
I am going to analyze briefly a social network called Twitter. Personally I am not using Twitter but I think that it is a growing advertising tool in nowadays and I would like to know more about its advantages and also disadvantages.
Twitter is a website, which offers a social networking and micro blogging service, enabling its users to send and read other users messages. Micro blogging means that its text-based posts can be up to 140 characters and no more. It was created in 2006 and has gained popularity worldwide and currently has more that 100 million users worldwide. It has also described as the „SMS of the Internet“ Twitter has ranked as one of the 15 most visited websites worldwide and I am going to discover what makes it so successful. (Wikipedia)
Let us kick off with the advantages of Twitter. The best thing is that it is very easy to use. I mean who cannot post a 140 character text? Furthermore the registration will only take less than a minute to join and no confirmation e-mail is needed. But the magic is that it has to be so interesting that others cannot wait for the next post. Because of its easiness to use the news spread in this network very fast and that is how Twitter keeps you in touch with the latest information. Of course you have to be critical about its reliability. But if you post information that other people like and need to read then imagine how powerful tool it can be. If you have so many followers you can easily advertise almost everything. It can easily become a part of your company and with the right moves create a competitive advantage.
Twitters easiness creates some disadvantages as well. Your posts and advertising can spread out only as text plus the one photo as avatar. That makes it a little bit harder to be interesting. Moreover because Twitter can be anonymous you do not have a clue who is really following you so you have to be very careful when posting.
So for the conclusion I would like to say that Twitter is a powerful tool for obtaining and spreading information and despite of its disadvantages, it creates many opportunities to network with people or to advertise your company.
My overview of the best virtual network for self-development and finding new business opportunities is about the website www.in.ee, which was brouhgt to life within the project „The Year of Innovation“, launched at 2009 by the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communication on the basis of the Innovation Awareness programme developed by Enterprise Estonia.
The Year of Innovation means a year of new ideas, creative thinking and acting differently. We live in difficult times where we are all have to rethink and reorganise – whether at home, at work or in ourselves.
The Year of Innovation team has more than 150 partners who arranged innovation-related training events, conferences, competitions and acts of recognition throughout year 2009, as well as debating the latest innovations, developing new services, hosting think-tanks and writing stories.
Although the year 2009 is over, exchanging ideas with each other and initiating collaborative projects in www.in.ee environment has continued.
The site www.in.ee is a place for exchanging ideas and launching projects, and organisations will also be able to gauge the views of consumers in terms of the development of new products and services. Idea Bank offers visitors the chance to say to express an idea that would solve a problem or have a driving force for the human, organizational or societal level. There are many other positive aspects of this. The ones, who have a problem, but no solution for this, can seek for good advice. These, who do not have a problem, nor a good idea, can contribute to a shared pot of thoughts by helping to analyze the ideas. All this can be very valuable for business student, because there will be many new ideas every day, which broaden the mind.
But discussions and debates needn’t be limited to the web. The founders of the webpage invite everyone to talk amongst themselves, about who has done something new and who is planning what. So that more new ideas are being thought up all the time, and to support and inspire one another. The support and advice from others is very important to young people, who for example, want to start business.
After all that, www.in.ee is is a virtual network, where all users have their profile, where they can add information about themselves and communicate with each other. This is a good way to find people with same intrests as you.
Here in Estonia, we are already a forward-thinking nation, coming up with and rapidly adopting worthwhile innovations – from Internet banking to the state’s e-services and mobile parking. But www.in.ee helps us going even further.
The biggest goal of the people behind the Year of Innovation is for innovation to become a natural part of our lives, both now and in the future. Their moto is: „If every resident of Estonia comes up with one innovative idea and adopts it, that is already well over a million innovations, all of them making our lives that little bit better.“
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Priit Kattel, BEB3
Internet has changed the way the world lives today. There were many tactics that a business had to use in the past to become popular and be more successful. Now one of the main and the best things that a business can do is to have a website and ensure it is well known and successful so that there are a large number of visitors. There are many Search Engine Optimization techniques that one can apply on their website which will help them increase the visibility and popularity of the website. To apply all these techniques one needs some level of technical expertise and not all businessmen have this.
One needs a website which will help them to do all the work and ensure that there are high number of visitors on the website, which will make it successful and popular and increase sales. Xrumer Master is one such website and rather the best one. They sell backlinks and one can use these backlinks to get the traffic. The backlinks have to be posted on different websites and forums from where one can traffic. Getting traffic is not the only thing that needs to be done, as one needs to get quality traffic. Quality traffic is the visitors who have interest in the website and the work of the business. This traffic can be obtained when the backlinks are placed on the relevant websites and forums.
Xrumer Master is a master in the field and they provide backlinks at very nominal rates. The website offers various packages. Through [url=http://www.xrumermaster.com]Xrumer[/url] master backlinks can be obtained which gives a boost to the traffic on the website. Links can be placed on various websites and forums and these guarantee visitors on the website. Xrumer master offers many packages to so that the clients can choose the ones which suits their requirements and also fits in to their budget. One can get a package where 500 backlinks to 20,000 backlinks are available. The 500 backlinks are available at a small rate of $5 whereas the pack with 20,000 backlinks comes for $80 which also is reasonable. There are some great deals also available which are very economical and bring in huge sales and profits for the website and for the business.
Xrumer Master is very reliable and offers high quality services. They charge very nominal rates which can be afforded by any business and the increase in revenue that they cause makes the investment all the more small. By investing small amounts one can easily get huge returns. With the help of backlinks that are sold by Xrumer Master one can get a high level of quality traffic on their website which is bound to affect sales of the business and increase the profits of the business as well. With the assistance of Xrumer Master all business will reach new heights of success and will be able to cash on the website which will have many visitors.
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The name of the network is „Ettevõtlusklubi Ärikatel“ its webpage is http://www.arikatel.com and it is also on facebook http://www.facebook.com/?ref=hp#!/arikatel?sk=info. It is a non-profit organization founded in 14th of January 2010.
The aim of this youth organization is to provide the right knowledge and training for investing activity and entrepreneurship. The mission of the organization is to connect young people with business interests and to educate them with practical knowledge, as well as connect them with experienced entrepreneurs and experts. Each year Ärikatel arranges interesting conferences, for example „Start ärimaailma,“ where I have personally participated twice. Apart from organizing conferences, Ärikatel also arranges theme evenings and workshops, where the main work is carried out in two groups- investors and entrepreneurs. They emphasize practical activity, but also pay attention to theoretical part.
I think it is very relevant that business students should be involved in such a network, because they can get a lot of new information and useful tips for many business- related topics (e.g. how to start a business, where to find investors etc). People, who share their experiences on those conferences or workshops, are one of the best in their activity field, so they are definitely someone a young newcomer would want to learn from. In the network (for example in facebook) it is possible to share your own ideas, ask advise, find business partners, comment others‘ posts or just find new friends.
The only negative side I can bring out, is that this website and facebook page are in Estonian. The big conferences they hold once a year have also foreigners making presentations in English, but that is usually one presenter out of five.
One of the best virtual networks in Estonia is www.hinnavaatlus.ee. Its main idea is to illuminate buyers on prices of technological devices and related news and information – it is an informative intermediary between merchants and potential clients. The prime benefit is the forum where members could exchange knowledge on technology, software, hardware, programming and crucial news in IT sector. Moreover, one could post an advertisement free of charge in order to sell various items: from memory cards to business class laptops.
Appart from interesting information, one could earn money in business forum which intermediates advertisements on IT products. Nevertheless, there is always a risk to become a victim of fraud, but it could be hedged in some ways. Firstly, if a seller is identified by an ID card, then one could be confident in integrity. Secondly, every member of this forum is able to leave a comment on everobody’s profile: crooks or not serious persons usually get negative feedback as a warning sign to others. And lastly, seller could always refuse to make a prepayment and remunarete only after receiving an item. The aforementioned procedures also add positive publicity: if a seller or a buyer is identified, is honest and excellent, then this information is available on his profile as a sign of quality and reliability. As a result, more profitable deals and useful contacts could be made.
The forum of www.hinnavaatlus.ee has a great advantage in bringing people together, exchanging information and products. Members gain in knowledge and keep track on news and changes in the IT sector. What is more, people are friendly and prices lower than in shops. In conclusion, this virtual network is a cornerstone to one’s IT development.
As my homework, I chose www.forexlive.com. The site is being held up by individuals who have a long backround in financial markets. The site´s main purpose is to provide information to other parties. It mainly gives information about foreign policies, statistics and all kind of market moving information. Its focus is foreign exchange market. The site is being constantly updated for new information. The people who update the site get wide information, which is hard to find and not free, and they also get inside information what they share with others. To those news and comments they sometimes add a chart and make a guess where the market is going (up or down) and people using that information also comment it and express their own ideas and perceptions. This site is good for people who are interested in financial markets and/or who make business actively depending on that information. The people who are running the site have connections by which they from time to time get exclusive information. Using this site provides readers with wider perception and knowledge about financial markets and sometimes there are of course other topics mentioned which sooner or later should or will move the market. The site is nicely built up and it has many positive virtues.
As not a true fan of social networks, currently the only network I use would be Facebook. It is probably only once a month I use it so it is not an inevitable necessity. Whereas I am not a fan of social networks I would really like to be a part of some elite social network which has “invite only” policy which means anyone could not be a part of it. There are different kind of these networks, mostly known are the ones to where very famous and rich people belong to. If any, then I would like to be a part of (being invited to) Elixio which has around 40 000 members currently mainly consisting of young business executives and also has a large amount of people which You could name as “business seniors”. By different reviews of critical websites, Elixio could be rated as one of the best channels for meeting business contacts in the category of “invite only” professional social networks. Elixio has been rated in the ability of meeting business contacts better than rivals Stroome, Multiply and Legal OnRamp. These 3 names plus Elixio are the pioneers of business oriented social networking. Whereas there are very known other invite only networks, Elixio is the most known in business oriented networking.
The main positive side of a “invite only” website I believe is the small amount of “noise” in it. Whereas other networks have millions of users, there is very large amount of information which has no relation to the topic You are involved with. The negative side ofcourse is that although people could have huge interest in joining this network, it never might happen. As in most social networks, all could be done online including registering and etc., then probably concerning the “invite only” networks, there probably needs to be a more profound physical connection to a member in order to join it.
Name : Samet Cikrik -Estonian Business School/ErasmusB- BUS 4103
My favorite web based international network is Xing. The Access to this network is through https://www.xing.com
The aim of this network is to meet the people around the people in a shared platform. In order to get benefit from this network, first you need to create your own profile. Later, you can meet other people in this network. The reason why I am interested in this website is that they started to run this network also in Turkey which is my hometown. They are very popular especially in Germany and they bought the rights of a popular network in Turkey which was accessed by the link www.cember.net to be able to meet people in Turkey business and social market.
You have the chance to look for business opportunities and learn about them. Moreover, you are able to follow the new business trends in many industries. You can even contact to the Human Resources Employees through this website. Even some small businesses find partners through this network. So, this network gives you the chance both following business news around the world and searching and even finding new job opportunities. On the other hand, in this network, you can socialize like you can do in other platforms. As I mentioned before, you create a profile like and you can have friends in this network. You do not need to be very open. You can choose your friends in this network. The point that I am trying to stress is that if you want to use this network beneficially, you should choose your business related friends really well. You can also limit your information to other profiles. As well as it is a business network, some people also join this network out of purpose like socializing. Therefore, for business students, it is useful to eliminate information, and other profiles. Doing this, you can benefit it.
Lastly, I joined this network because it is also popular and top followed in my country. So, I suggest you to search before whether it is informative or not for the country that you want to follow. I usually follow information and contact business related people in this network and attain suggests from them and also I follow the opinions of people about the business areas that are up to be popular today’s world.
Homework 1 Virtual Network,
Sébastien Blazy
Erasmus B
Google plus/ + Google:
I am going to describe a very new network named Google +. It is hold by the leader of networking Google and its first aim is to concurrence the last network as Facebook, Twitter...
First of all it is quite easy to access to Google +, the URL is https://plus.google.com/ but it is possible to get in it from the tool bar of the Google page and even from your page G mail.
The main function of Google + is to propose a high concurrence to Facebook, it proposes the same possibility but it keeps the simplicity of the Google way. Firstly you create your profile with some information about yourself, name, employment, formation but as well add comments or photo/video that you can share with people. Google + has a different way than Facebook or other social networking, it is divided into circles, the family circle, the friend one or colleagues and you can even create your own circle. Then went you want to add someone you have just to send him an invitation in his G mail box or search his name. In your profile page it is possible to add your favorite or more useful web site, how do to it? When you are doing whatever research on Google, in the list of results, it will appear a logo "+1" under the name of the web site. If you click on it, the web site will be registered directly in your list of "+1" in your profile page on Google + and your family, friends, co-workers and acquaintances will be able to consult them. I find it is really useful to share what you find out interesting on the web and the fact that you can show to people the network in you are in activity. In order to send information or to discuss with someone you can send him a quick message with the tool of Google + "send a message" or you can also use your Email address in on click. The huge difference with the Facebook system is that tanks to the circle system you can chose who or which circle can check out your personal stuff, photos, documents or favorite web site.
On a business point of view, Google + permit to companies to created their own page to promote their business or just give information. To realize it you need to click on create your page, then you will have the choice between several categories of pages: for small or local companies, for a good or a brand then for big company, association or institute and to finish you can create a page about sports, arts or what you want to.
Create a page can be a good way of communication in order to promote your business, meet investors or partners and to share ideas hobbies or thought. The next advantage for business is the accessibility to an agenda to help you to plan your time table and meeting, it send you an E mail that allows you to stay aware of your planning. Then people have the possibility to create a document like a text document, draws, calcul sheet or a table that you can send to other people via e mail, share with your circle on Google + or just use it for working tasks.
Of course Google set up the application for smartphone of Google +, it helps people who has one smartphone to follow their friend's profile but as well their agenda, mails, work news and so on.
Google + proposes to access really quickly to all the advantage that provide the company Google such as G mail, Google Translate, Google Map and you can even search something from your main page. It permits as well to create pages or document to represent your company or promote it. Finally it stays anyway a social network which help to stay in touch with famiily and friends and to meet new people.
For my homework I chose a very well known internet based social network www.facebook.com. For access you have to register and after this you may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, exchange messages, upload pictures etc. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as "Old classmates" or "Best friends" and so on. This site offers endless possibilities to spend your spare time. The greatest value in this network is its content and connections. Already more than 800 million active users prove it very well. That`s why this site has become a very effective social media tool. Facebook isn`t just a site for friends and old classmates. Nowadays businesses are looking for new ways to get their message out and Facebook affords that opportunity fantastically well. Facebook grows stronger as a resource for business. All businesses, large or small, use Facebook to reach, interact with, promote to and learn from their current and prospective customers, and this activity is growing rapidly these days. You can use Facebook as a business tool because it offers quite many applications which are very useful, especially for starting businesses. Excellent solutions to imrove communication, networking, collaboration etc. You can run the whole business through Facebook because it has all that your business needs.
I use Facebook almost every day. One good thing that I like about it, is that I can create my own community in this network and communicate with the friends that are added to this specific community or group. One community that I have created is called Rummivilla (http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/127177137353798/). It is so called close group with 20 active members with same aims, goals and common interests. Nowadays it`s very hard to get all those people to the same room at the same time. Thanks to this community we don`t have to get together, we can communicate from where ever and when ever we want to. In this community we can share information and thoughts openly because the content is hidden from the eyes of public. So far we have exchanged business related knowledge, tips for stocks, job offers, great deals on the market etc. Also we have a plan to participate on a competition called Ajujaht. We have a unique idea and thanks to this community it has been a convenient way to develop it without seeing each other. So far this kind of communication between our group has worked very well and we plan to use it further on.
Many of us as facebook users are not complitely aware of all the opportunities existing in this social network and many use more than one network at the same time. I think that Facebook has all the opportunities and solutions that you need. Therefore I recommend to choose one site and manage both our personal and business lives from there.
Couchsurfing!
www.couchsurfing.org
“Help to create a better world”
As we can see on the top of the website, the principal aim of this organization is to promote the exchange between the people, through the country, in order to push the
peace forward without frontier. This movement has the idea that the people can change the world as we can see with the slogan: “Participate in creating a better world,
one couch at one couch”. Its objective: favor positive experience across the world.
A huge social network
Couchsurfing is like a huge Social Network like Facebook, more than 3 million of “Couch-surfer” are registered in more than 250 country and eighty thousands of cities all
around the world! This website permits to find a free couch for a night or more, and moreover to meet new people from different backgrounds, different culture. It helps
you to create a real International Network, to spend some times with a local people in a country, sharing with him his way of living, his daily life, and to have some of his
advice for you trip.
For example, here in Estonia, in its very day, almost nine thousands of couch surfers are register!
First of all, you have to register yourself on the website in order to start the adventure! There is no fee, the registering is free. Then you can say on your page if you can
host someone or not, or maybe if you can’t host, you can say that you have the time to have a drink with a traveller. You don’t have to host someone if you don’t want
to. There is no reciprocity; you can be just a traveller!
Now you are register, you have to define your profile, this stage is essential. Enter the maximum of information about yourself in order to give an idea about your
personality, your hobbies, your values… You can add as well the tongues that you talk, even if you are a beginner (in instance: a French guy would be happy if he
sees that you are a beginner in French), you can say your Job too, it’s really important (maybe you have in front of you a guy who would be interested in your status,
and perhaps a couch surfer could become a partner for the future, who knows!). Then put the country you had liked, add the kind of music you use to listen, add your
favorite film, a book writer that you like, your philosophy about the life… The more interesting you seem to be, the more people will want to meet you, or to host you!
Show as well a pleasant photo of you!
How to find a couch
There is fact, people would prefer to receive a request at least one or two week before the appointment, so send a request as soon as possible!
You can already find a couch; let’s say in Helsinki for this Week-end for example, you just have to click on “surf/host” at the top left-hand corner, wright “Helsinki” in the
box, “Search!”, and you happily discover than two thousand and four hundred sixty-four couch-surfer might be able to host you this week!
As you can understand, you can’t sleep in all those couch, so you have to filter, would you prefer a male, a female? Would you have a couch for the night, or just have
a coffee with one of them? And so on… Then you will see that it still a lot of choice, start to check the profile of the different couch-surfers on the page, look if you
have may be some hobbies, sports, or interest in common. Normally, there is no language barrier between Estonia and Finland, but it might occur, so you have to check if
the person speaks the language you speak!
When you have made the choice, you’ll send some request, to maximize your chance to get a positive answer it’s better to personalize your message. If you haven’t the
patience for it, you can also create a “copy-paste” message …
Do not forget to offer a gift, a little thing, just for the principle. It’s really kind to host someone and your host would be happy to receive a gift in exchange of his kindness.
I chose for my homework www.ecademy.com
Ecademy is a membership organisation for entrepreneurs and business owners who belong to a community that connects, supports and transacts with one another.
The philosophy of Ecademy is „Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me
Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me provides simple learning steps - included in your membership - to guide you on how to get a return on investment from Ecademy, social media and online networking for your business.
To ensure quality connections and results, Ecademy have developed the tools, resources and events since 1998, to ensure a small to medium business can quickly and effectively find the right kind of people it needs to grow.
Know Me - Utilising Social Media and to be visible and understood
Like Me - Engaging on Social Networks to be part of the conversation
Follow Me - Serving and supporting your followers to maintain attention To build a strong business relationship, you must first gain trust from one another through having a personal relationship, this is critical before you can expect to move onto a relationship where a transaction or a referral can take place.
Ecademy has particular values they stand by, these are:
1. Openness
2. Honesty
3. Transparency
4. Friendship & Kinship
5. Winning by Sharing
6. Connectedness and being connected - the old Chinese belief known as GuanXi
7. Connecting and Supporting Business People whatever they seek, helping them with new contacts, new knowledge, new prospects, new customers, new projects, new suppliers and new direction in life
Anton Lehtla BBL-3
The main idea of this web, is to share your view and opinion about sports. People here are putting bets and playing for real money, so they are quite serious when share their ideas and carefully look at ideas of others. Although on the left bar there are analitics' blogs,so if you know russian you can read them through. To post your comment quickly here you have to be registred. If you are not registred your post could appear in about 15 minutes or after few hours. One big weakness of this site is that it is not international. Main language on web is russian and ukranian. So if you know russian, know about sport mostly football,share your idea and suggestion with others and maybe someone in future helps you.
Aleksandr Lilik Bebsv-3.
I choose for my topic website called " www.arif.ee". I discovered this source approximately year ago, when I needed some data about current prices for realestate. After I found up-to-date information I've needed, I started to investigate whole website to see what usefull I can find there. It was enormous surprice for me to find all the thoughts of estonian and russian entrepreneurs about some new laws,events and another things that happen in everyday life. Mainly this sourse is a big forum,where people share their plans how to build business, how to increase profit or just to ask questions or oppinion.
For business students this website is realy usefull due to ammount of information about " How to start your own enterprise". You will find not only where to establish your company and how much it will cost you,but also you can ask,if your business idea will work or ask another people what you can add or remove from your plan. Mostly people ask where to buy,find,hire,get something that they need or sometimes they tell whole plan of their business and another people are just commenting his thoughts.I have an example that this source helps youngsters : My friend wanted to make a web design company,but he faced huge competiton in the local market,so I suggested to ask him what to do in arif and he followed my advice. In two weeks he red more than 150 comments from people that already built their enterprises and are ready to help and by the way he got three requests to renew websites and to make new business cards. This was his start, now he also contacts with people in arif on daily basis and benefits from this a lot.
For me this recourse is a good help sometimes when I cannot find answers to my question and I hope www.arif.ee will become stronger as all us.
Denis Golubev Bebsv-3
I would like to introduce you one of the finest social networks - vkontakte.ru or vk.com.
Basically it is the same as facebook ,but :
There you can watch any episode of your favorite movie (mostly english and russian language).
For example, i watch The Big Bang Theory. It takes half a day for new episode to appear there.
There you can listen to any kind of music (there were not a single song , i could not find).
With some special software you can easily download any song or movie(most movies with 720HD Quality)
Rest all the same , we discuss it during my presentation :).
The portal I use in my every day life is www.facebook.com. This is a well-known social network website and it has 800 million active members. Active members can log on and create their own profile. This portal gives a person a freedom to chat with every active member, upload pictures, post comments etc. Facebook has become also a very useful tool for buisnesses because they can advertise themselves trough facebook. Users also can join user grops that share common interests that are created by some users or buisnesses. In theese groups people can share their point of view on their common intrests. The user group I use is called EBS Sport (http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/118876888189901/). This is a community that shares a view where and when can you do some physical activities with people from you school. Its aimed for EBS students proffessors and graduates. You can read a latest news on training places and times. Also it is the fastest way to know if there is a new training that everyone can paricipate. I recomend it to all who wants to be physically active and wants to know where to spend good time with people who are connected with the same school therefore share the same point of view.
Jorgen Viks BEB3
Biznik community was founded over seven years ago by Dan McComb and Lara Feltin and have built a remarkable networking community of independent entrepreneurs, who are motivated and aim at collaborating with other professionals.
As per StatsCrop.com (http://www.statscrop.com/www/biznik.com), the community is ranked 28,421 and is worth $502,216 USD with 15,300 visitors and 44,573 page views per day.
The community is aimed at creating and facilitating online networking between independent business owners that seek opportunities and claims to be the most efficient network for motivated business individuals. The platform guarantees that all individuals registered to the website are authenticated at registration and are motivated business professionals, rather than bogus marketing professionals that try to sell products and services. This is supported by their 95/5 principle, which aims at filtering inefficient partakers of community. In other words, 95 percent of the user contributions on Biznik must be helpful and therefore relevant in order to maintain presence in community. Biznik has a ”No Multi Level Marketing Policy”, which strictly forbids Biznik users to approach the community with aggressive marketing. Individuals’ marketing activities should be limited to 5 percent of their activities. This limits the spam, which is thoroughly monitored by the community moderators.
Biznik.com is a place for independent business owners, who want to engage with and establish relationships with other independent business owners based on an element of trust and extension of business. The platform stresses that they are not another Facebook, which is notoriously known for being a business marketing tool to engage in communication with customers and is not considered efficient for activities of business professionals. The platform is also not comparable to LinkedIn or any other social network, because they are not for hiring employees or managing professional graphs, but focused on building relationships with other motivated and independent business owners. Biznik is interested in users’ questions, resources, ideas, opportunities for collaborations and so-called ‘business angels’. This community is aimed at helping users succeed with their new or independent business ideas.
As per involvement in the Biznik community, it is important to consider the advantages as well as the evident disadvantages of the community.
Advantages:
1. Users are motivated and independent business owners.
2. Identities are authenticated.
3. Spam is not a problem.
4. Communicating with other business-oriented individuals.
5. Receiving constructive criticism and experience.
6. Marketing and business ideas.
Disadvantages:
1. There are three types of memberships: Basic, PRO, ProVIP and are not for free. This is the largest limitation of the community; however, it can also be seen as an advantage, because the individuals who purchase the membership are true to the aim of the community.
2. Furthermore, only with PRO membership it is possible to interact through Biznik. Basic account provides with limited features.
3. The majority of registered individuals are from U.S.A.
4. There is not enough diversity, as majority of business entrepreneurs are from U.S.A.
5. Customer Service is more advanced at upgraded stages of membership.
In conclusion, necessary is to mention how this community is important and useful not only for independent entrepreneurs, but also students who seek new ideas and expansion of business network. Biznik community enables this in a broad manner, and this community is an excellent way to engage in possible business angels, acquire new ideas, experience and feedback from the part-takers of the online community. With a membership at Biznik, even a free one which does not enable contact with other members, it can be used to stay alert on current business trends and new directions of development in independent businesses.
http://www.waze.com/guided_tour
Waze.com or how to reach the donut the fastest way or how to avoid donut jams or where is police trying to search your donut.
Waze is a fun, community-based GPS traffic and navigation app. It allows you to join drivers in your area, easily report what's happening on the road and get turn-by-turn navigation that automatically re-routes you when road conditions change. This could be useful for transportation and taxy companies.
This is how they describe themselves.
„Waze is all about contributing to the 'common good' out there on the road.
By connecting drivers to one another, we help people create local driving communities that work together to improve the quality of everyone's daily driving. That might mean helping them avoid the frustration of sitting in traffic, cluing them in to a police trap or shaving five minutes off of their regular commute by showing them new routes they never even knew about.“
How does it work?
After typing in their destination address, users just drive with the app open on their phone to passively contribute traffic and other road data, but they can also take a more active role by sharing road reports on accidents, police traps, or any other hazards along the way, helping to give other users in the area a 'heads-up' about what's to come.
In addition to the local communities of drivers using the app, Waze is also home to an active community of online map editors who ensure that the data in their areas is as up-to-date as possible.
Some bottlenecks.
It needs lot of users to get appropriate data.
Using cell during the roll can be dangerous, especially while reporting about police, traffic jams etc.
Using data roaming abroad can be expensive.
Not available on Nokia Windows mobiles.
Definitely it is not a app for people who are little paranoid about someone following them, because you are online and you can be easily found and of course if you claim your wife to be somewhere else you can be easily unfolded in case you forget to switch off your device.
The community I would like to present is called the STARTUP GARAGE and may be accessed by the following link http://www.startupgarage.eu. It is a meeting place for students, scientists and entrepreneurs to develop new technology startups. The idea of this organization is simple- the best way to learn something is by doing it. Therefore the most valuable and priceless experience a person can get is during the starting years of a company when it grows in a rapid pace and overcomes different struggles. The organization has also its community on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StartupGarage
Description:
Startup Garage team is combined of similarly thinking people with high interest in startups, but at the same time it is hugely varied by the expertise of members which is deep in specific areas such as marketing, design, info technology, cleantech, nanotech, biotech, mechanics, electronics, civil engineering, power engineering, medicine etc.
The organization was founded in 2011 and located in Tallinn. It is situated in the heart of Estonian coolest startup environment, close by companies such as Skype, Technology Park & Incubator Tehnopol and innovative Tallinn University of Technology. In the Startup Garage there are 12 team-members that specialize on the different startup types and related topics. They can help and advise the newcomer on the specific startup related issues. There are three main events that Startup Garage organizes:
- Field specific startup nights
- Teambuilding Team Up! events
- summer of Startups
The startup nights usually represents an evening event that starts with some theme-based seminars and followed by a practical workshop. Team Up! event helps to gather different specialists like designers, engineers and marketing specialists according to their knowledge in the teams and develop some product or idea. The coaching by more experienced staff is offered during the event. In the end of the event the best team is chosen and is supported on their product implementation afterwards. Summer of Startups is a 9 week program for technology-based teams and business ideas to get as real starting up experience as possible. In the short period of time the main aim is to find out if the idea is worth trying and learn a lot while doing it.
The purpose of this community is to support the people that want to start their own business. They propose either the idea of a new product or service or help the newcomer to develop and implement his own idea. Mostly they provide a team and bring different specialists together. During Startup Garage events or on their website or the community on Facebook it is possible to find useful connections and people with whom you can start up your own business.
Pille-Riin Kilter KBE 31
Hotmail.com
I chose Hotmail to my homework webpage, because it is the most visited page in my computer and definitely one of my favorite.
Hotmail is mostly focused on e-mails. Having an account in Hotmail you can easily send and receive e-mails. In addition to e-mails there is possible to create a contact list with who you can communicate easily with messenger. This is nothing new that there can send and share files and photos, play online games etc. One of the convenient things is that there is no need to install messenger program to your computer, because in Hotmail site is possible to communicate with your messenger contacts.
These positive sides above are not the only ones. Actually the Hotmail is something more than just page with full of e-mail and messenger functions. For Hotmail can say that it is 2in1 network- social and useful for working or self-development network. If you are clicking a MSN, then the Hotmail is going automatically page msn.com. This is the page where is something for anyone. For example: the latest news, articles which contains every kind of separated subjects:
* News (for example politics, tech & science, health news, breaking news, world news, U.S. news),
* Entertainment (games, movies, tv, entertainment news etc),
* Sports
*Money (business news, investing, personal finance, careers, real estate)
*Living (relationships, online dating, family, healthy living, food and diet, horoscope,)
* Cars
*Job search
* Local news.
One advantage is that it goes automatically on your local page. For example if you are visiting Finland, then it shows automatically Finland news, weather etc. Of course you can change it to US page, but I don’t know if it possible to change it to your own home country. This is the negative side of that, because it is not very useful when the local news is in Finnish and you can’t understand a word.
Definitely on positive thing is that it has similar searching engine such as google, but named bing web search.
For me one of the positive sides is also if you are going news page, msn.com, then your Hotmail account is staying online, you see immediately if you receive a message.
Why is the page useful for business students?
First of all, as I said before, it contains business news, like world news and some kind of specified business area news. For example if business area is mostly cars, health or human relations, then you can choose an area which is most interesting for you and read news, articles about this. Every student needs a development, career- this is the place when you can use function job search (it might help).
In my opinion, as a business student, the most important for me is communication part, like e-mails and messenger. With e-mails I receive news from school and schoolmates. It is easy to communicate with schoolmates in messenger and to send to each other school materials, files and photos.
BNI – Local Business – Global Network URL:www.bni.com
BNI was set up in 1985. BNI-s founder and chairman is Dr Ivan Misner, he is one of the world's leading experts in business networking and referral marketing. BNI has grown to cover 40 countries and has over 5,300 separate groups, or chapters.
BNI´ philosophy - The philosophy of BNI is built upon the idea of "Givers Gain®": By giving business to others, you will get business in return. This is predicated on the age-old idea of "What goes around, comes around."
The mission of BNI is to help members increase their business through a structured, positive, and professional "word-of-mouth" program that enables them to develop long-term, meaningful relationships with quality business professionals.
There are one year and two year participation options. If you apply to participate in BNI, your application will be reviewed by the chapter's Membership Committee, and you will be notified of the status before the next meeting.
BNI is a closed group, allowing only one person from each profession to be a member of a chapter. It means that BNI takes one person per professional specialty. So if you are a residential real estate person and we already have one, we can refer you to another chapter, or allow you to open another chapter. Of course, if you are a commercial real estate person, you could be eligible to join this chapter.
Benefits of Membership:
Substantially increased referrals.
Tools to network more effectively, including an orientation CD giving the "Formula for Success" in BNI, a badge, a vinyl card holder to carry members' business cards, referral slips, marketing materials for your chapter and much, much more.
Participation in up to 52 networking meetings per year.
Bi-monthly newsletters with educational material on networking, public speaking, and business.
Participation in business tradeshows (where you'll have an opportunity to market your chapter and your business).
Free periodic workshops on networking.
BNI understands the importance of the ethical concerns governing certain professions and acknowledges that rules can differ by location. As such, BNI therefore requires its members to uphold the rules of its profession so as not to violate the professional’s ethical obligations. In the event that BNI’s general rules could potentially violate a professional’s ethical code, BNI’s rules are superseded by the dictates of the professional’s ethics’ code. Significantly, a primary objective of BNI is to educate its membership in ways to market and grow business. It is BNI’s intent to ensure that this is permitted.
I believe, that using this network helps to get more information about how other companies from different countries running the same type of business.
KBE-31
www.booking.com
The website which I have chosen for my analysis is www.booking.com . It is the leading worldwide online hotel reservations agency, currently offering over 245,932 directly contracted hotels with the best rates guaranteed. It is user-friendly website with the best prices guaranteed for accommodation all over the world. You can book from a broad selection of accommodation options, wherever you travel in the world. It helps easily discover all backgrounds for hotels, book and enjoy the best places to stay in the world.
I chose this to my homework because, I have been using this site a lot for now. If I need to go for a business trip or for a vacation and choose the hotel then this is the first site what I use to get the information about hotels. It is so easy to search them just writing city, region, district or specific hotel name and then check in-check out date (dates are not mandatory to choose it even) and all results are showed. You can read a little description of the hotel, see how many stars hotel has got, see all the pictures taken inside and outside of the hotel, average score gave from the guests and read their reviews. Which room types are available in hotel and which are facilities and policies in that specific hotel. Also see directly from Google maps where is this hotel situated, how far from the airport etc., possibility to see closest other hotels with pricing and introduction information all on the map. Also possible to search with the filter where you can get the result with your own specific needs about the hotel.
Advantages of this site: Guarantees the best hotel rates in cities and regional destinations - ranging from small family hotels to luxury hotels. Reservation service is free of charge. They do not charge you any booking fees or administration fees and in many cases cancellation is without charge. There are 17,560,000 reviews from real guests not only from the hotel sellers. You can see all this website information in so many languages and currencies, that everybody in the world can use it.
More than 350,000 room nights booked every day. Booking.com provides a cost-effective commission based model, a network of over 5000 distribution partners and a personalised account management service to help you optimise your revenue.
The Booking.com affiliate partner programme has a demonstrated track record of great earning potential. The commission-based model they use with hotels is the preferred sales model in the hotel industry and guarantees a long-term, mutually beneficial business relationship with the hotels.
Only disadvantage what I see in that page is that every people can give the review including hotel stuff itself but as this site is so popular and has now so many users then this % who can write wrong information in reviews are so small from the total users that it cannot affect overall results.
If you are in accommodation business then it is almost must to have your hotel in this website. You can easily get feedback from your guests how well or bad the things are in your business and how satisfied are your guests.
LinkedIn www.linkedin.com
LinkedIn was founded by Reid Hoffmann 10 years ago and the official launching was in spring 2003.
Site has 175 million members worldwide by August 2012, which makes it the world’s largest professional network in the Internet. There are also more than 2 million companies which have LinkedIn company page. Site is available in nineteen languages.
Environment is mostly used by professionals to exchange information, business opportunities and ideas. In LinkedIn it is easy to find past and present colleagues and classmates, discover inside connections when you're looking for a job or new business opportunity. You could easily build up Your own network which could be full of different experts willing to share advice.
As LinkedIn is designed for professionals, a businesslike behaviour is widely used when working in site, posting advertisements, shearing knowledge and so on rather than sharing games and pictures.
To enter the site You have to open an account and create Your profile. You could either choose between free of charge account or paid premium accounts. In most cases free of charge account would be enough, but if You could have advantages like:
• To search connections faster ;
• To send messages directly to the people You are not introduced;
• To see full profile of Your network members;
• To see names of Your 3rd degree and group connections;
• To organize Your profile better;
• To get priority customer service,
than you could upgrade Your account to three higher levels-Business, Business Plus and Executive. Monthly fees are from 18,39 € to 88,50 €.
Added value for business students.
All users could create a groups or to join to the existing groups of people with similar interest or skills. There are several groups for students ( based on the level, faculty, region etc) as well the different Universities have their own groups. So the people within the group could easily share the relevant information or to ask help to their questions. It is the easiest and fastest way to communicate with someone like You. It is also great tool to find an interesting job- temporary one for a summer while You are still study and afterwards permanent job.
I have opened my account in LinkedIn about 2 years ago when I worked at home as a private professional providing financial services to different private companies. My motive to be there is to find new challenges and career opportunities as well to stay connected with the people I have had
worked together. Furthermore You can be easily updated with the most important information and news worldwide. Unfortunately local financial professionals have no group there as well the information regarding Estonian business environment and legislation are not so well presented in the site.
www.alibaba.com
This site is aimed at wholesellers and retailers for trading. It is a site that links businesses all around the world. I could buy a container full of sofas from China in minutes and be sure the supplier exists, is reliable and I can assure myself with the escrow service the site has provided that my money is safe. One of the best features of this site is the TradeManager application. You can immediately chat with the suppliers or buyer depending on which side you are.
The site does not only link buyers and sellers, but helps buyers find local independent specialists to check the loading of the goods, the quality etc.
So basically you get every service you can imagine as a buyer and as a seller from this business network. You can even have a personal assistant in China to help you use the website.
I have used it personally to find suppliers of different goods and I must say this site has a wide range of suppliers from all over the world and very different categories. It is by far the best way to find business partners if you don´t have the time or resources to visit trade fairs.
Tanel Samm
ÕBE-31
The Buduaar case
The internet site www.buduaar.ee is well-known virtual network which is orientated for female visitors. It is one of the most visited web pages (nr. 68 in top 100) in Estonia. This webpage is not only place where users, can read freshest news or follow newest trends but there is something much-much more in this site. It is the internet bible for females - they believe in it with all trust and they are highly loyal to this community. An advantages is that the visitor doesn’t have to register to use the site.
Mostly women discuss in this site different topics concerning traveling, relationships and preferences from fashion to sex. They search answers to their problems and give advice for the other users. The suggestions what they find from this site is highly important for them in decision making process.
For me it’s utopic, how can it be this way that anonymous people will tell you how to act and what to do? How they can be trustees although they don’t know each others? They don’t know backround for the problem but they know exactly what is the diagnosis.
Can they really be sincere and honest in their recommendations? Yes! The answer lies in strong community where all participants know their role, responsibility and expect it also from the others.
Even though i’m not user of this forum, it shows clearly how strong is the influence of such sites for people decisions. You may spend thousands and thousands euros for commercial, word of mouth still remains strongest weapon in marketing. Deal with it!
Webpage advantages:
- Easy to use
- Comment adding is available only for registered users (easy to identify)
- Users are honest with they answers (good faith)
- Many different topics (you can easily spend all of your day in this site)
- Profitable for the owners (big audioence and many possibilities to sell ads to the site)
Webpage disadvantages:
- Too much commercial banners (annoying pop-ups and etc).
I would like to introduce to You the best freelancers network www.odesk.com.
Odesk.com is a network where all the exporting entreprizes and international work searchers or freelancers can find eachother. It is the best opportunity for entrepreneurs who are interested in export markets to find the right contractors or workers. It is most definitely the cheapest way to get the job done. And more importantly the job quality i usually very high, because the people who are using this network are very international and highly educated.
For freelancers or workers it is very good opportunity to find the suitable job or project and grow his/her social network and improve CV or grow portfolio.
I have heard that some Estonian entreprizes have used this network and have found very high quality and at the same time cheap opportunity to get the work done. For example the overview about all Netherlands logistic companies with contact data and neccessary contacts cost only 400€.
This network is especially good opportunity for start-ups and smaller companies, as they do not have so big amount of money to hire the personnel in foreign countries. And also they do not have enough competencies to get the job done by themselves.
On the site You can post a new job, if You have some. The good thing is that is absolutely free of charge for company. And by the way it is the fastest growing network, ranked by annual contractor earnings.
Tiit Tähnas
Social Networking opens doors for travellers
Who loves to travel? I guess everyone does. And what about travelling for free? Or at least getting free accomodation in a country you are going ot visit? Sounds great! All you need to do is register on the website: https://www.couchsurfing.org/
CouchSurfing (CS) is the world’s largest travel community, which connects travelers and locals who meet offline to share cultures, hospitality and adventures. Founded in 2004, it was the first global hospitality network to tap into the younger backpacker demographic and reach a significant scale, with over 5 million current members in 97,000 cities around the world. A couch surfer finds hosts in the city they are staying who are willing to let them sleep on the couch for a few days.
How doest it work? Well, first you register and create a profile, upload your photo and answer some questions about your personality. Once you’ve done it, you can browse the CS network - look for available couches in your desired destination and get in contact with people by sending them a CouchRequest.
How save is CS? There are three methods that increase security and trust: First, there are personal references, which hosts and surfers have the option to leave after having used the service. Second, an optional credit card verification system, which indicates that a member’s identity and address have been verified. And, finally, personal vouching system, that allows members to designate Couchsurfers they find exceptionally trustworthy.
Added value for business students? Beyond the initial purpose of CS, many members also use this website for communicating their personal interests and collecting information on destinations which they plan to visit. In addition, numerous offline meetings and gatherings around destinations have been organized on the website, and face-to-face relationships are expected to enhance online social networks. There are numerous online discussion groups that you can join. Just browse the categories to find your interests. Among other groups there is also a large number of ones with a “business flavor” – for example, “Singapore Jobs & Internships”, “Beijing Freelance Group” and “Looking for Business Partners in Istanbul”. So, you see, it is not only about travelling cheaper and getting an insider's look at the city or country they are visiting, but it is also a great opportunity to make a career, get business-related knowledge and establish business contacts abroad.
What about me? I took twice the opportunity to be hosted while travelling around Switzerland and it was an absolutely great experience. Not having the chance to host someone myself yet, I strongly wish to do so in the future when I have my own flat.
Extended network: since 2011 CouchSurfing and Facebook have been connected! Now you can even Sign In using your Facebook login and add Facebook friends to CS and vice versa. When adding your friends on CS, remember to leave them references!
And hey..for all those cool business students and lecturers with smartphones..there is a great CouchSurfing App for Android and iOS! :)
Well, that’s pretty much it. Watch the following video for more information and then join the world's largest travel community! http://youtu.be/R9zF77GXqoA
My favorite virtual network for international career in Finland at the time is definitely www.cimo.fi. As Cimo describes itself it is “an organisation for international mobility and cooperation, providing expertise and services to clients at home and abroad. The main task in Cimo is to promote international cooperation and mobility in the Finnish society with specific emphasis on education, training, working life, culture and young people. This is promotion is happening online through online seminars.
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Cimo is making the viral interaction possible by arranging online seminars almost every day. This way people all around the world are able to get the information they are looking for and chat with the speeker and everyone else simultaneously. This way you do not need to wait to get the information but you can have it right a way and also give immediate feedback. Also these videos will stay in the page so people are able to watch them over and over again.
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Currently there are no around the clock chat possibilites in the page so Cimo should open this as soon as possible. This page is very popular and it would be nice if people could share their toughts and ask questions all the time and not only when the seminar program is open.
-Taruanne
THUMBLR: http://www.tumblr.com/
What is it? Thumblr is a platform for creativity and self-expression. Being creative is one of their key factors, which they encourage highly through their business idea. Thumblr allows their users to express themselves freely as well as allow them to reflect, who you are, and what you love, think, witness, and believe.
BUT HOW DOES IT WORK? Thumblr’s users can post texts, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos from one’s browser, phone, desktop, email etc. There is also the possibility to customize everything from colours to theme's HTML. Functionality is similar to PinInterest, but also some of Twitter’s features can be seen.
What’s in it for business students? It is important to have the awareness of such platforms existence. Many users are already using platforms like Thumblr and this website especially focuses on creativity of the user. Users can express their personal interests and collect information (pictures, quotes, links, music, TGIs). Furthermore Thumblr can be used inside a larger network for business’. To illustrate more and more campaigns, advertisements are placed in the social media; therefore usage of Thumblr is one approach to do some research (of market, target customers, desires etc.) or simply market own products. Moreover why not take an advantage and use this as the source for one’s marketing, campaigns or ideas. Business’ can advertise them via creating blogs, uploading photos where they express their products. Also by status updates their followers can be informed of the upcoming events or other current matters.
SoundCloud
URL: https://soundcloud.com/
SoundCloud is a site for advertising the sounds you have created. As the site itself welcomes: „Capture and share your music & audio on SoundCloud, and connect with our community to grow your audience“.
So the main function of the site is for users to have a medium through which they can publish their audio works(original songs, mixes, pod-casts, audio lectures etc.). The main aim of the network is to provide a tool to advertise the works of community members and help users to grow their audience. Also, the site is very entertaining, as finding new music is easy and often one finds artist and songs that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.
The added value for business students comes the traits of SoundCloud community. You can follow other people and like and repost their music & audio, leave feedback in timed comments in the songs, join a group or start your own. Also, it is very easy to share audio through other network sites as facebook, twitter etc. If you are engaged with a business that deals alot with audio(a radio station for example or a nightclub or a producer) or you are a musican/band trying to build your personal brand, then this tool is very useful for distributing your works and finding new partners for future.
Personally, I have found the site useful, because I play in a band and for us SoundCloud has been a great tool for sharing our works and building a brand. We have launched two singles so far. SoundCloud makes easier reaching our formed fanbase and also for people who have not yet heard of us to find our works. It is one of the main networks we use, apart from Facebook.
Antti Juul, IntBBA-3
Name of the network and how to access it:
Raising business finance through online investments/online investing – www.crowdcube.com
Aims and functions of the network:
Investing on Crowdcube is designed to be straightforward, simply register as a member, find a pitch that you like and invest online and, if the pitch reaches its funding target, you’ll get your equity share. Investing via Crowdcube is straight-forward. Once a businesses to invest in has been found you will be required to complete a GoCardless transaction. This doesn't take any money from your account until the pitch hits its funding target and the legal documentation has been completed and sent to you for review.
Added value for business students:
As an investor, you may receive voting and pre-emption rights that you’d expect from a normal angel investment, depending on the type of share offered. There are no investment fees, either upfront or when the company exits – it’s your money, your risk and your reward
• • Invest in UK businesses
• Support businesses you like
• Select investment ready businesses
• No investment fees
However:
• Investing in start-ups is high risk
The network can be used to locate easily accessible investment opportunities. Reading through the business ideas of different companies and monitoring their actions/success is a really good way of building up expertise. You can make your own investment in the company you like and get a direct ownership, which means you will be following and contributing to the success of the business, thus expanding you knowledge base.
I will analyze the social networking site Vimeo. Vimeo.com is a video-sharing website onto which users may upload and view videos for free. Vimeo has been running since 2007 but has gained more popularity in the pat few years. As in December 2011, Vimeo had 65 million unique visitors per month and 8 million registered users. I personally use Vimeo on a daily basis. It is a successful tool for viewing videos from friends, companies and brands. Since 2007 Vimeo announced that they will support High Definition playback (1280x720) and here they were the first video-sharing site to support HD. Even the White House has posted high-definition versions of their broadcasts on Vimeo as well as popular singers have used Vimeo to launch their music videos. Vimeo has often been compared to Youtube, but as many others would also say, I think Vimeo is more about professionalism and supporting other video ‘artists’.
Vimeo is a great tool for online video marketing. In the recent year online video presentations have gained a huge popularity with marketers. This is due to the fact that they work. Video marketing is the new effective marketing tactic. As it is said that a picture is more than a thousand words, a video gives even more. Watchers tend to get information better when they can see and hear it. The demand for videos has never been higher and all brands are using it. Vimeo is successful because of the fact that anyone can register as a user and upload high quality videos. These can then easily be shared through a link onto Facebook, Twitter or a homepage. There are not a lot of negative effects about Vimeo, the only one worth mentioning is that some users have had problems with uploading videos, but this has only been temporary.
In my opinion Vimeo is the best tool for online video marketing. Also it is a good tool for finding inspiration if your business in heading towards a video marketing tactic. The whole concept is free and easily accessible.
Natalia Aru BEBsv-3
Network: vk.com
The site has a mobile version, located at m.vk.com.
Vkontakte is currently the largest social network in the Russian Internet. The original site was designed to unite the graduates of Russian universities, but with time and a major increase in its audience a social network has become the most visited resource on the Russian language space Internet. As of December 2012, VK has at least 195 million accounts.
As with most social networks, the site's core functionality is based around private messaging and sharing photos, status updates and links with friends. VK also has tools for managing online communities and celebrity pages. The site allows its users to upload, search and stream media content, such as videos and music, and different games online. VK features an advanced search engine, that allows complex queries for finding friends, as well as a real-time news search. In addition, the registered user of social networks can create interest groups and meetings to any events. For all listed, the social network has its own magazine, which lists all the news on topics that interest you, where you can comment on. Interface "VKontakte" is available in over 50 languages.
The main advantage of Vkontakte, which is a direct analogue of the English-language social networking site Facebook, acts that here visitors can use all the services provided for free. Among paid services here are only such as publication of advertising, rating increase individual, or placing paid ads, as well as sending a network created on the basis of gifts.
The main advantage of a particular social network is comfortable to use interface, which is equipped with simple and clear settings. Additionally, Vkontakte remains one of the few networks in which not a lot of advertising, here are open all the possibilities for communication and other interaction, and the dissemination of intellectual and other content.
Due to the fact that the social network includes multidirectional audience, here are opportunities for advertising executives trying to sell your product or service, and for the optimizers, who promote sites. And the main advantage of the social network emerges as quite the immediate opportunity to communicate with your potential customer directly. In addition, if the user is interested in the service or product they can recommend it to others to your friends using the service Vkontakte.
Creator of Pavel Durov based Vkontakte created similar social network, which aims only to place job boards, but it failed.
Alibaba.com
Alibaba is an internet business platform, which help people from different places in the world to sell or buy needed products.
This web-site was launched in 1999 year in China by group of 18 people led by Jack Ma. In our days alibaba.com is one of the most famous e-commerce platforms around the world. In the year 2012 around 37 million users from more than 240 countries were registered on given web-site.
Alibaba group is a business to business market place, which consist of 28 business units. It is quite ease to find there any product you need. As I know, it is possible to make online deals directly on this site and arrange online payment. However I did not tried this function. I mostly use this site to get a new business partners contacts.
There is a good function on Alibaba – every company could post their products advertisement. Because of alibaba.com popularity, when potential customers are looking for products, which your company provides, for example in Google.com – advertisement, that is placed by your company on alibaba web-site, will be accessible on the first web-pages of Google. So, it is a high probability that the requests for your products will increase.
In my experience, our company has established new long-term business relationships with more than 5 companies from this web site. Due to alibaba.com become more popular in Europe, I could advice you to try to use it for your business purposes. Hope this web-site will be helpful to you as well.
All the best,
Maria
Andrei Barybin, Bebsv-2 , sorry for being late, yesterday was busy day.
Alibaba - www.alibaba.com, Global trade starts here.
The site is aimed for shops or retailers, who want to buy some cheap products with huge stock. There are many types of products starting from house&garden items and up to automobiles&motorcycles. Functions of the network are just seeking for seller and buy some products. Moreover, you can be the seller by yourself. Finally, aim of this site is to be the most "global trade site".
This site is very simple, because you just need to find the product you need and make a contact with the seller. Seller can be manufacturer, retailer, exportet or you, choice is up to you. In making contact you just need to get a knowledge about how many it will cost, how long is delivery and how high will be price for delivery and how can make it lower. For example, if you deliver by Fedex, so there they have discount if you deliver more than 24kg and delivery cost will be reduced for 6$/kg.
It is high value for business students. Because many of students can make their business from this site. For example, they can just buy items and resell it for higher price and make money. The only question is on calculating profit, seeking for buyers and taking risks of not buying your products.
Experince of me was that i tried to do this business and maybe in furute i will, but now i need to find some startup. My friends, like i know, don't make this business too. But the guarantee is that on this site are golden sellers or "tried by us" sections. So as i hope, we can be sure that there is no tricks and you will got your offer and will not be deceived.
Jakob Garšin Bebsv-2
www.reddit.com
Reddit is a social news and entertainment website. Where users like you provide all of the content and decide, through voting, what's good and what's junk. For comment on that site you need to be registered to search answers you dont need to register.
Users vote the submission "up" or "down" which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site’s pages and front page.
This site aimed for people who have questions and cannot find answers on them and also for sharing some information knowledge’s. On Reddit there can be posted any kind of topics.
Very easy to use this site, everything is simple. Easy to search the information which one you need. Write down on search and you will get all from Reddit and also can be some links from other sites.
This site is high value for business students. If you want to do business in a different country and you don’t know some rules about doing business there you can easily post a question on site. Later people who are visiting this site will answer you.
For me Reddit is kind of big forum where people sharing their information about something.
Experience for me was that I wanted to visit one popular web site and it was shutted down for no reason, so I decided to ask people on Reddit. After, less than 20 minutes people posted on my topic about it. So feel free to visit and ask your questions or sharing some interesting information on Reddit.
Facebook is one of the biggest and most know virtual network in the world. Everybody can find something useful from it. It is used by people from all over the world.
One of the big group, who uses Facebook are students. Students can benefit from it in many ways. They can create groups and discuss the study materials in this virtual group. They can add people to this group and make the group closed, which means that only the members can see what is written there. They can posts files, photos and videos in this group. I have found this very useful when working on a group work. This is a great environment for discussing and doing group works.
There are also many different communities for students. One of them is economist community, which is the official Facebook page for the Economist newspaper. They have already 1.4 million fans. Students, who have become fan of it, get posts on their walls about different new topics and discussions. In addition, there is possibility to connect with economist radio with iPod or IPhone and listen it. It is good for student´s self-development. There is very intelligent group of people who listens this radio daily. With those intelligent people it is possible to share your ideas, ask their opinions and engage with discussions. It is possible to post your questions and then get answers from others in this community. This is very helpful for many students who want to get new ideas and develop themselves. Students can listen the live broadcasts and get a lot of useful information about what´s going on in the world.
There are many similar communities in Facebook, where students can get useful information, about what is happening in the world in the areas that interests them. For example, if people are interested in the latest news, then it is a great idea to like the BBC world news page. They will get posts on their wall about the latest headlines. BBC Facebook site has 3 million likes. It is very interesting to discuss different topics there, because there is always so many comments from across the world. I think that it is very educating to be a member of their community.
Vera Lindström IntBBA-2
TripAdvisor, http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/
I will analyze the international travelling site TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor is a travelling website that gives travellers a possibility to plan a trip, gather information about the location and to post reviews and opinions about destinations, hotels and restaurants all over the world at no charge. Users who are planning a trip either business or vacation, this site gives you all the information.
TripAdvisor has been used since 2000 but it has become more popular during the past years. In 2012 there had been over 200 million monthly users and over 100 million reviews posted on the website. I personally use this website, but not in the daily basis. When I am planning a trip to abroad, I usually use this website to gather information about the culture and trawling tips about the best hotels and restaurants.
Plusses of this travelling forum is that it offers information about everything in the context of travelling such as flights, transportation, accommodation, sights and dining opportunities. The fact that I like the most is the reviews, because by reading them you can get information from customer’s point of view. One of the sites key features is that travelers are able to get information from their Facebook friends on TripAdvisor. There are also a wide range of destinations to choose from, which make the site beneficial in international level. There have not been many disadvantages on this website, but one which is worth of mentioning is that questions posted on the site are not getting answers back very quickly.
In my opinion this forum is the best e- marketing tool for businesses that are related to a travelling, such as hotel management and restaurant areas. Companies from these fields should definitely use this online marketing strategy to get more customers to comment their services online. This strategy is free of charge and all information is clearly presented.
Deniss Sizov, BBAõv-33, EBS
www.odnoklassniki.ru
Odnoklassniki is a social network service which originally launched for classmates and old friends. Odnoklassniki is russian word with meaning classmate. It's very popular in Russia and former Soviet Republics. Site was developed as a search engine, which can be used to find old classmates, not only from schools, but also from universities and from others institutions. For many people, the friendship began in the school time is very strong and long. And if it happened, that after school friends parted ways, www.odnoklassniki.ru will help classmates to find each other. Some former classmates can become good partners in a business. Some classmates moved to another countries - so they also may be very helpful in traveling or into establishing new contacts.
The website currently claims that it has more than 148 million registered users and 33 million daily unique visitors. The site is particularly popular among users in Ukrain, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. But there is one big minus of this site - lack of multilingual interface. Initially it was only on Russian, and later were added four languages of former Soviet Republic such as Ukrain, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan.
For more than 7 years classmates developed rapidly and nowadays it is a large social network is very similar to facebook. There are many possibilities how to use odnoklassniki for different purposes. The members of this network can create group by their interests, communities, some activities. This site can be used for ads, for promotion goods and services.
Registered users can use other Internet services related to their profile. Since odnoklassniki associated with such products as email (mail.ru), dating (love.mail.ru), news portal and other useful services. It is very simply to switch from one service to another - just one click.
Be sociable!
Solovjov Vladislav
Network: Vkontakte, vk.com, m.vk.com(mobile version)
Founder and creator of the biggest social network in ru.net is Pavel Durov. Vkontakte have about 200 millions active users.
The statistics of number of visitors of social networks gives figures shaking by the size, after all, it appears, they are visited by about 50 million users a day(about 30 mln in vk.com). And, it only in the former Soviet Union territory. Therefore if there is a desire to earn in this sphere, it isn't surprising, and is very natural.
Let's consider possible options:
Theme groups. It is necessary to create group on a social network. Its direction has no values, the main thing – to collect as much as possible subscribers. It is necessary to fill it with intriguing materials, something amusing or useful, to keep order, and also from time to time to send to all participants the offer to go to the page of the Twitter which has been specially created for this group, to arrange there a subscription to free news, messages or services. Among free offers it is necessary to intersperse and the commercial information at the expense of which your income will increase.
Sale of thematic communities. Everything works according to the previous scheme, only for the purpose of promotion and subsequent sale to interested persons. Quite often owners of certain brands look for the person, capable to advance their group, having filled with participants and subscribers. Often nobody wants to potter with mailing of invitations and notifications independently therefore the person interested in the income, for example, you can be engaged in it.
Advertizing. It is one more option of earnings on groups of social networks. If the community is rather untwisted and densely populated, always there will be an advertiser who will want to hang up there the banner, advertizing article or the reference to the goods, naturally, having paid the owner of group for a place on a page.
Appendices. It is necessary to create flesh-game, the test or a trick for which complete passing it is necessary to pay toy currency that, however, it is bought for real money. In this question the main thing – idea and availability of the programmer, capable to implement her. Social networks can redeem completely working appendix or pay to the owner percent from profit.
Full-time work. Each network developers, administrators, workers of technical support are required. Therefore there always it is possible to find worthy vacancy, and the residence plays absolutely small role – there would be a high-speed traffic.
Hobby. And, at last, it is possible to create group for sale of that you do by the hands: the knitted hats, the cross stitched napkins or figurines of exaggerated glass. It is actual and for those who can provide services: photo and video shooting, sketches of interior design and other.
LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com
LinkedIn is a social networking website for business people; students, entrepreneurs and companies who use it for professional networking. It is quite similar to Facebook, but is mainly used for business purpose.
On Facebook people share their private life with their friends and family members. LinkedIn is for sharing skills and expertise and connecting to people you know. Contact network consists of direct, second-degree- and third-degree connections which allow users to find more employers, potential candidates and job opportunities. Users can design their own profile with their skills, education, professional background, and upload their resume and pictures for identification.
Value for business students is that in LinkedIn they can find jobs, people, or business opportunities. They can also visit company profile pages and managers’ profiles in order to see if they have job offers and mutual connections to introduce and recommend them. Employers can check candidate’s skills and expertise quickly and easily. Users can upgrade skills and expertise easily and connections see them immediately. Also all your connections can endorse you with new skills which they find important to be seen in your profile. LinkedIn is useful for students to network and connect to each other and benefit of that also in the future when they can contact easily their old friends and people when necessary. It is important to be aware that more and more people and businesses are operating on the Internet, and even seeking a job can be easier and simpler through this kind of websites.
Instagram
http://instagram.com/about/us/
Instagram was launched in 2010 and after that it grew rapidly for one of the most popular social media services. In January 2013, its users are estimated to be approximately 100 million, of which 90 million are active users. In 2012 April, Facebook acquired Instagram, acquisition price was one billion dollars.
Instagram is a social media service for photo-sharing. It is designed for smartphones and tablets and it is currently available only for IOS and Android platforms. Instagram is very easy to use. Photo uploading is made for effortless and sharing pictures to other social media services e.g. Facebook or Twitter via Instagram is also very convenient. One special features in Instagram is image editing. Before you publish your pictures, you can add some effects to your pictures, crop them etc. This editing option, as the whole program, is implemented very easy for the user. This feature allows also “amateur photographers” to take cool and artistic pictures.
In Instagram there is used Hashtags (#), like on Twitter. The idea for Hashtags is same than in Twitter, only difference, that in Instagram you classify/categorize images, not messages like in Twitter. For example, if you take a Christmas themed image, you can classify it e.g. #Christmas and in this way other users can find your picture under Christmas Hashtag.
What comes to the business opportunities of Instagram? It is great tool for marketing, especially for small companies or start-ups, which doesn’t necessarily have the money for expensive TV or newspaper ads. Instagram has on another familiar feature of Twitter, followers and following, how many people follow you or your business activity in the service. In practice, the more followers you have the more visible it is. For example, Los Angeles Lakers basketball team has more than 600,000 followers in Instagram or company which is familiar for Angry Birds, Rovio Entertainment, has just a little more than 1000 followers.
Here is a short clip:
4 Tips to use Instagram at your dealership
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xk0KA9AIhc
-Matti Peltoperä
Juha Kärnä
Facebook for networking and self-development
For general information Facebook is world largest social-network with almost 1 billion users which is almost one-seventh of the world population (http://www.socialbakers.com/countries/continents, 05.04.2013). In Facebook individual persons can make profile pages and additionally also groups and companies can make pages listed with their details. Now a days many small companies have only their Facebook page instead of having their webpage. People, groups and companies can share their pictures, newsfeeds and likes, which has resulted in totally new field called Facebook marketing. In Facebook you can invite people as your friends, subscribe pages and other people to see their posts.
Facebook lets you save your contacts as “friends” which will help to find them easily than traditional business cards. Also you have access to their newsfeed, latest post and photos so that you know what is going on with their life. This makes it easy to keep in touch with your contacts occasionally and keep the good relationship between peers. In the perspective of networking keeping contact with people makes your relationship stronger. You are also available to see your “friends” contacts which will be beneficial while doing research on someone or looking a right person for something. On the other hand personal Facebook profile might have some unwanted information which will be available to all eyes without restriction settings.
As a self-development Facebook is not a fit social-network for that purpose. Of course there is a possibility for self-development by sharing ideas and arguing your opinions, but more efficient place for that is forums of the subject or overall any forums which are meant to change opinions.
Emma Luhtanen, IntBBA-2
LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com
LinkedIn is a social networking website for business people; students, entrepreneurs and companies who use it for professional networking. It is quite similar to Facebook, but is mainly used for business purpose.
On Facebook people share their private life with their friends and family members. LinkedIn is for sharing skills and expertise and connecting to people you know. Contact network consists of direct, second-degree- and third-degree connections which allow users to find more employers, potential candidates and job opportunities. Users can design their own profile with their skills, education, professional background, and upload their resume and pictures for identification.
Value for business students is that in LinkedIn they can find jobs, people or business opportunities. They can also visit company profile pages and managers’ profiles in order to see if they have job offers and mutual connections to introduce and recommend them. Employers can check candidate’s skills and expertise quickly and easily. Users can upgrade skills and expertise easily and connections see them immediately. Also all your connections can endorse you with new skills which they find important to be seen in your profile. LinkedIn is useful for students to network and connect to each other and benefit of that also in the future when they can contact easily their old friends and people when necessary. It is important to be aware that more and more people and businesses are operating on the Internet, and even seeking a job can be easier and simpler through this kind of websites.
A group in professional networking site Linkedin - International Export Import (sales, retail, apparel, fashion, etc)
Link: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/International-Export-Import-sales-retail-27040
This business oriented group is dedicated to professionals involved in import and/or export business and has around 85 000 members. According to group statistics, around 20% of the members are business owners, around 16% are CEOs and others divide between senior managers, mid-range directors, etc.
A business student can very easily find new business opportunities by following this group and keeping an eye on the discussions. Of-course there are a lot of chinese manufacturers, who are trying to push their cheap-labour, made in China products but there are also a few smarter young, emerging brands, who take a great advantage of this group.
Advantages…if followed with interest, there is a lot of fine information about great deals, macro-environment movements and frauds. So business students (to whom this comment is supposed to be appointed) can minimize the risk of taking the very first step into this kind of business.
What has been in it to me so far? We manufacture bags out of decommissioned fire hoses - in short we give this great looking material a new life as bags (see hosewear.com/en). So far, I have followed the discussions, and have posted some to this group and have found 2 wholesalers for our products - one in Germany (first order sold + exclusive contract signed for German market) and another in Sweden (first order to come in a few weeks, going to be HoseWear's Scandinavian representative)
So there are two outcomes from this group: 1) risk-free opportunity to see, how new business relations are set up and 2) Whenever one feels ready, take his/her first steps to close a first (or why not second or third?) deal.
www.dream.do
A web service that helps you dream and do.
Dreamdo is a global network for dreamers and doers. Dreamdo’s mission is to help people find good a balance between dreaming and doing, and as a result, lead a meaningful life. In Dreamdo individual or team’s dreams become part of a community where the community encourages, inspires and helps each other to make their dreams come true. Users can get support by sharing their dreams or inspire others by sharing what they have already accomplished.
On Dreamdo a user creates a dream profile by adding a title, description and the progress stage of the dream. The progress is signaled by choosing one of the three different options: dreaming, doing or did. User can then post status updates, pictures or links to the feed to update the progress of their dream. Other users can follow and comment on dream profiles. One user can have several dream profiles at the same time.
Following and commenting on other people’s posts is interesting and inspiring and will become even more interesting when the network is launched to large audience. At the moment Dreamdo still works on beta program, so the number of users is rather small. For me the most important feature of Dreamdo is its positive atmosphere. Seeing what other people have accomplished encourages me to pursue my own dreams. On this web service there are many different types of dreams and some of them are about setting up a business. It has been very interesting to read how did people get business ideas and what they had to do to start their businesses. You can read or ask what they found surprising and how has the business been so far.
This network helps business students with entrepreneurial dreams to get connected with people that can help them to realize their visions. They can get new ideas by seeing how others have accomplished their visions and be encouraged that dreams are worth being pursued.
Kickstarter
www.kickstarter.com
Kickstarter is a for-profit organization, which offers a platform for projects to gather funding. Kickstarter features projects of a large variety, from small art projects to large movie projects and start-up money for restaurants etc.
Since 2009 over 3.7 million people have pledged over $554 million, funding more than 38,000 projects.
Kickstarter is a platform that brings the backers to the projects, and the creators get to keep 100% ownership of their work. Instead backers get different kind of rewards from the project, for a book example a signed copy might be sent for the backer and for restaurants a table might be named after the backers.
When starting a project in Kickstarter, a goal for funding is set. It is all or nothing; if the goal is not met the project doesn’t get any money. If the project is successful however, Kickstarter takes 5% commission of the money raised.
Here are some interesting numbers. In 2012 2,241,475 people pledged a total of $319,786,629 and successfully funded 18,109 projects. 17 projects raised over a million USD. 2 movies from kickstarter have been nominated for an Oscar, last year 63 got in to theaters. A class of sixth-graders got funding to send a camera in to the space. Openrov got funding for underwater robots to be sent around the world.
For networking and self-development aims, if you are not planning to launch a business in US soil the site wont work for you on its main idea, but you can still take part in funding some of the projects as well as go there and find interesting ideas, get inspired of what could you do of these projects, maybe even better in your homecountry. On the site you can as well get connected to the people behind these projects or the biggest funders to get people backing up your business.
Kickstarter is an organic site where people constantly amaze each other with new innovations and the generosity of backing up people in order to get good ideas running. In the possibility of expanding a business to the US, we will most definitely use Kickstarter, as it is a good marketing tool as well, raising awareness of your brand.
Olga Kamoza Intbba 2
I am going to review well-known social network in Russia and other Eastern European countries called Vkontakte. http://vk.com
This network was created by a young programmer Pavel Durov. Actually this network looks very similar to Facebook and many people say that Durov has simply copied it, however this web source has obtained a lot of visitors and participants.
Vkontakte was established in 2006 and right now there are around 200 million registered users on the network, this make it the largest social network in Europe. Around 47 million people visit Vkontakte on the regular daily basis. More than 2,5 billion pages are viewed during the day, really huge number. Approximately 67% of users are from Russia and 67% of users are older than 25 years old.
In 2011 Vk.com Holdings made a turnover around $152 millions. In the beggining Vkontakte was positioned as social network for students and graduates, now it is the main source for chatting, sending messages and communication.
Now about pluses and minuses of this particular community. The main advantages of this network for students and for business are connections and networks. Almost all people who are not older than 35 have an account in Vk.com and it is easy to find old friends, colleagues and partners to keep relations and contacts.
The other advantage of this network is information. Vk.com has become an interactive social network with 24/7-news flow. A lot of events and news are posted in Vk.com first and only after that they appear on other informative source.
One of the main advantages of this social network, that any person who has an account has a possibility to subscribe for any publics and groups that seem interesting or useful for this person. Groups are ranging from cooking, health to money, politics and religion.
The only minus of this social network, that mainly people from former soviet union countries are using this network and it is not such popular in other parts of the world.
Dmitri Lihno Intbba 3.
It seems that there are still no reviews on Yammer. Everyone write about popular social networks, so I decided to present you Yammer, because it could be useful for future entrepreneurs and managers. Actually I faced with this social network a couple month ago and was satisfied with its user-friendly interface and it appeared to me that it is quite useful.
Link - http://www.yammer.com.
Now about the Yammer. Yammer is a kind of all other social networks like Facebook, Twitter etc. but it is meant for companies. Actually it is very powerful enterprise social network.
The principle of this enterprise social network is to incorporate all the employees of one company in one place not in a Facebook, Twitter or somewhere else but in working environmental network. All in a word this network is meant to share information, news, photos and other stuff very fast within a company.
I will try to draw an example:
Let’s call a company ZXC.
Some senior member creates a profile of a company ZXC on Yammer. Then employees create their own accounts with their personal information like in a Facebook and they get an invitation or join the company ZXC. Admins apply or deny the member.
As soon as all members get on Yammer, only with 1 instant message it will be possible to notify all the employees about recent news or changes.
Moreover people are able to send messages to other employees and to communicate with each other.
The main advantages of Yammer:
- It helps to separate a private life from professional life.
- With Yammer it is faster to write private messages than emails and there is no need anymore to be so official.
- No one else will see the corporate information besides employees and management.
- Possibility to notify all the employees at once, possibility to share video or a graph/picture and get a feedback.
Disadvantages:
- Privacy, some companies like financial organizations will be afraid to show up their confidential information.
- Recording and supervise conversations and chats. I do not know whether there is a possibility to do that and to monitor what your employees write to each other; in some organizations it is very essential.
- Employees start to scroll down one more additional social network beside Facebook, this could lead to smaller productivity.
All in a word, this social network has a potential and a place to grow. In my humble opinion in that current moment this idea is still fresh and has to be retreat.
Flipboard
www.flipboard.com
This app, Flipboard, takes your social media experience to a new level. It is simple, free and easy to get started with. Just a few clicks and you are good to go. Flipboard Inc. has raised over $60 million from a variety of venture capitalists.
Flipboard could be described as your personal magazine. Using Flipboard makes sure there is no need to change from app to app in order to stay updated. Flipboard makes it possible to gather all the information you like to a one simple application. You can connect all your personal social media accounts with Flipboard. How useful and cool is to access Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc. by using only one app and to see all this information on one magazine styled page. Some people want to follow all major news sites and some could not care less and that is exactly the point of Flipboard. You can personalize it to follow only the stuff you are interested in.
Every student should have Flipboard. It makes your life more efficient. Many business students are always in a hurry and they do not have enough time to sit down and to go through all the social media apps or news sites they use. Flipboard makes it possible. Just open it and you will see a glimpse of everything that is going on in SOME.
It keeps you organized. If you do not have enough time to read an article you like, save it or as it is called in Flipboard, flip it, and read it later. Any content can be saved to a specific folder where it is easily accessible. This feature came with a recent Flipboard 2.0 update.
For advertising purposes, you can find more information from the following link. http://flipboard.com/advertisers/
Flipboard graphic how they managed to quadruple their user base.
http://visual.ly/flipboard-quadruples-user-base-20-million-8-months
http://www.ning.com/
WHAT IS NING.COM? : The online platform NING provides a possibility for creating your own social platform and thereby engaging users from other networks. Ning is targeted for both individuals as well organizations. Ning, Inc. is a subsidiary of the well-known media company Glam Media (Silicon Valley 2004) and it was launched in the year 2005. Currently there are 90 000 social websites recognized worldwide as the ones that are using the Ning Platform.
HOW DOES NING.COM WORK? : The special feature that Ning carries out is that the networking is focused on offering a customer-orientated, - and especially business-customized look for its customers, as well as a possibility for a support from the biggest networks such Twitter, Google and Facebook, meaning that the users can directly connect the posts with the already-existing followers. Even though Ning.com is a paid network (possibilities for individual, performance or, - business-orientated users) it offers a great range of business possibilities and even an advertisement opportunity trough Ning’s partners, such as Google AdSense.
HOW DO BUSINESS STUDENTS BENEFIT FROM NING.COM? : Advance of Ning for us as university students and as futures business leaders- is that the network provides a great possibility of creating something new and interesting that attracts the community who we are interacting with trough other online networks. The difference that ning draws between other daily-used social networks, is that its created for business –aimed activities.
HOW THIS NETWORK CAN BE USED IN BUSINESS TRANSACTIONS? : What it comes to business-related use, Ning is quickly accessible which makes interacting easy and appealing. Ning can provide a good value for example for those with an idea for business and who wants to implement the idea by creating a platform for it. Another case could be someone who has a need for campaign where Ning can help to bring the desired attention.
Topic:Twitter
Twitter is rapidly becoming a leading online networking service as well as a mightful marketing tool for many decent companies.The main advantage of twitter is that it is very simple to use it comparing with other virtual networks like Facebook and MySpace.For instance,it is very easy to join Twitter and it takes less than a minute to create an account so registration is instant and you do not have to follow up with a confirmation email.On the other hand, everyone has a Twitter account, so their server tends to get overladen easily.So it is a usual thing to have problems with connecting to Twitter.It is very simple to use Twitter you have only 140 characters, so there’s no need to start off a huge story to over-explain your thoughts and ideas.There is only one main screen so it is impossible to astray on this website.On the other hand,your profile is poor because You can only have one photo attached to your profile at a time, and little detailed information about yourself.One of the latest developments of Twitter are advertising tools that will allow companies to target tweets at specific users.According to words of Kevin Weil(product manager),advertisers are now able to tweet at users based on their geographic location.Quote:"Today we're introducing targeted Tweets, an enhancement that enables brands to reach specific audiences on Twitter without first sending a Tweet to all followers".Feature also includes an option for global brands to send tailored messages at different times, customised for the users in each country.Twitter said that it has tested this enhancement with advirtises such as British Airways and Coca Cola and it worked well.Another development of Twitter that has been unveiled is the Follow Button. This follows their Tweet Button which is already in use on thousands of websites across the web. While the Tweet Button was great for sharing individual pieces of content, the Follow Button is used to build more social connections on the service.So the main point of the Follow Button is to establish connections with other Twitter users at a distance.Twitter also improved its navigation system so it has become easier to obtain an information than earlier.The main navigation part has been shifted to the left position, earlier it was in the right side of the page with less to define who acts how.Anyone can now easily get all the information about an update by simply placing the cursor
above the tweet.There is also a new Discover part added in Twitter which is a great way to find stories within specific interest someone is concerned with. The interest search helps a lot in getting the best results.Twitter also launched a new option ‘who to follow’ which helps getting in touch with particular people.Twitter also developed the embeddable Tweets feature which has become a decent plus for the users, especially for the bloggers.With this latest achievement anyone can get connected to the tweets which induce an interest.The embeded tweets have the power to connect to everything else.So we can make a conclusion that Twitter is interested in new enhancements to keep their prestige and to be competitive with other virtual networks.
Topic:Twitter
Twitter is rapidly becoming a leading online networking service as well as a mightful marketing tool for many decent companies.The main advantage of twitter is that it is very simple to use it comparing with other virtual networks like Facebook and MySpace.For instance,it is very easy to join Twitter and it takes less than a minute to create an account so registration is instant and you do not have to follow up with a confirmation email.On the other hand, everyone has a Twitter account, so their server tends to get overladen easily.So it is a usual thing to have problems with connecting to Twitter.It is very simple to use Twitter you have only 140 characters, so there’s no need to start off a huge story to over-explain your thoughts and ideas.There is only one main screen so it is impossible to astray on this website.On the other hand,your profile is poor because You can only have one photo attached to your profile at a time, and little detailed information about yourself.One of the latest developments of Twitter are advertising tools that will allow companies to target tweets at specific users.According to words of Kevin Weil(product manager),advertisers are now able to tweet at users based on their geographic location.Quote:"Today we're introducing targeted Tweets, an enhancement that enables brands to reach specific audiences on Twitter without first sending a Tweet to all followers".Feature also includes an option for global brands to send tailored messages at different times, customised for the users in each country.Twitter said that it has tested this enhancement with advirtises such as British Airways and Coca Cola and it worked well.Another development of Twitter that has been unveiled is the Follow Button. This follows their Tweet Button which is already in use on thousands of websites across the web. While the Tweet Button was great for sharing individual pieces of content, the Follow Button is used to build more social connections on the service.So the main point of the Follow Button is to establish connections with other Twitter users at a distance.Twitter also improved its navigation system so it has become easier to obtain an information than earlier.The main navigation part has been shifted to the left position, earlier it was in the right side of the page with less to define who acts how.Anyone can now easily get all the information about an update by simply placing the cursor
above the tweet.There is also a new Discover part added in Twitter which is a great way to find stories within specific interest someone is concerned with. The interest search helps a lot in getting the best results.Twitter also launched a new option ‘who to follow’ which helps getting in touch with particular people.Twitter also developed the embeddable Tweets feature which has become a decent plus for the users, especially for the bloggers.With this latest achievement anyone can get connected to the tweets which induce an interest.The embeded tweets have the power to connect to everything else.So we can make a conclusion that Twitter is interested in new enhancements to keep their prestige and to be competitive with other virtual networks.
Homework Assignment #1
Petteri Salmi
www.startrigger.com
In my homework assignment I will be analyzing a relatively new online website that is very useful for students. The website is www.startrigger.com. In a general view startrigger.com is website where students with grades within the top 15% get exclusive access to internships around the world in top companies. While students have access to the internships and may apply, the companies also have access to the student’s profiles where they may review them individually and even contact the student for an interview if they want to do so. This is an excellent website for students in bachelor and master level studies as they can find top internships through the website. Therefore this can be a large impact on their career as it may all begin from here. This is because if internships are carried out with positive results, the companies often want the intern to come back and work for them later on after studies.
The website managers check through each individual sent application to check through their academic records to maintain the top 15% of the students. This is based on their GPA. As this website is fairly new, not so many people know of it yet, but it is increasing with more and more companies signing up for it as well as students.
The advantages of this network are that if you qualify for the 15% you may have exclusive access to top internships around the world. And just by becoming a member the amount of applicants have been reduced as only the top 15% are accepted. Another advantage is that if you really shine through, the company has an opportunity to easily access you as the companies have HR personnel going through the applicants. By being a member of this website, already part of your application process is made easier because of the views you get of the available spots (it makes searching for internships easier) as well as getting views by companies directly.
The negative side of this network is that if you do not have a GPA within the top 15% you will not be accepted to join as a member and will not be able to qualify and find internships in these companies (at least not through this website).
Homework assignment #1
Laura Mikalauskaite
Network : www.Spain-internship.com
This is one of the networks that I am interested in since I am looking for an internship. Therefore I believe it could help fellow students as well. This student network connects people who want to improve their skills, get practical knowledge, try living in Spain and just have an internship. It works all through Spain and in Islands that belong to Spain. This is how it works:
• You register to the website and submit your CV and cover letter.
• You arrange skype interview with people working in the company so they get to know you and to understand what kind of internship is the most suitable for you.
• You get a list of positions that are available and suitable for you.
• You choose and have an interview with the chosen company.
• You start your internship in a company with international background.
This is good opportunity to students, because the company offers internships even where you are not required to speak Spanish language, that way student can try working and living abroad, working in different community than their home country without the limitations of language.
It is also good because the company offers help with accommodation, documentation, looking for and getting a job, therefore it is easier for a student to make first steps towards his career goals.
It is also good, because this website offers forums for people who has participated in the program, who are willing to participate and for those who are participating in the moment. So you can get acquaintance with the program, its challenges and be well prepared for that step.
However, the program is usually paid, therefore it is not suitable for all the students, since not everyone wants to pay someone just to get a job. Although, the internships are paid, so in the end of the internship you might even able to bring some money back as well as a lot of high-appreciated experience.
Pinterest
Pinterest is a pinboard styled photo sharing service that has become one of the fastest growing social networks online. It is a social bookmarking site where users get to collect and share photos of their favorite hobbies, events and interests.
When looking at Pinterest quickly it looks like a big collage of photos but behind the photos, there’s so much more. Most of the photos are pinned from some website to the service. If the photo is repinned, this digital print stays and the link to the original source is still available. This offers a new way to find interesting content. If there’s an interesting photo it is very likely that the actual content of the picture is much more interesting. For example if you see a picture of something that is hand crafted, behind the picture there might be the instruction how to do it yourself. Much of the content comes from blogs and by clicking the images you can find favourite blogs to follow. Even though people add and repin photos, the copyrights of the images are a bit gloomy. If you add a picture to Pinterest, does the service own the rights then? When you create your profile on Pinterest it can be found on Google when typing your name. Some may consider this to be inappropriate.
Pinterest offers completely new opportunities for marketing, whether you’d like to market a company or personal brand. Nowadays people don’t want to search, they want to find. With the help of Pinterest a client can see your picture and want something that he didn’t even knew he wanted. It doesn’t require a huge effort and the learning curve is very flat. You don’t have to bring anything new to the table. You can just recycle something that already exists unlike in most services in social media. Through Pinterest company can encounter with totally different public. It’s a visual servive and if you’re a text-oriented marketer you may find new prospects. The service can also attract shy customers. It might be a big stepping-stone to comment on something for example on Facebook but repinning a photo is easy.
Hanna Nurm IntBBA-2
http://www.linkedin.com
LinkedIn is an international social network for work professionals worldwide. Members can look for jobs around the world and join work-related groups. Members can connect and communicate with specific industry groups and gain knowledge.
Groups often let people know about upcoming events related to the industry or profession. People can read about related subjects or have forums where they can participate in.
It is possible to get job offers also. Companies look for potential candidates from LinkedIn and ask to apply for a job or to a job interview.
Also companies can offer products and services through LinkedIn. Personnel managers get offers from companies that provide services related to personnel managing.
Some people may find business partners from LinkedIn.
Anyone can join into LinkedIn. In this kind of social network people are able to create false identity or pretend to be someone else. Also anyone can give false information regarding themselves, professions or companies. You can’t fully trust people in social networking.
Netwic - Staffing Program
Netwic is an opportunity to book gigs and show interest about working hours. It is a webpages, where employees can make a profile and give details of themselves. The basic point of the staffing program is to make the life of extra workers/employing easier. Employee has own Netwic ID and she or he can give the knowledge of their selves as much as they like. Employers are able to find suitable persons for the jobs, who have comfort the working hours and days when they can work.
The person whom wants to be hired starts with making a profile for himself, in other words it is called Netwic ID. The details of the person are name, phone number, e-mail and home address. He or she can also tell where he or she have worked before and after that the updating can start. It is a necessary to keep the profile updated. Simplicity, the program works like a calendar. There is one calendar, where the person seeking employment puts the dates and hours when he or she can work. The person seeking employment may also write a comment there if he or she wants to.
At the employers point of view the program is easy to use and the hiring process also called booking is quick. That is at least how the program is marketed. Several YouTube videos also shares the information that by keeping the profile updated helps booking. Employee is booked for work only when she or he want it. The confirmations are sent via SMS and email. The program tries to make the hiring progress clear and simple by offering alternative option. No more phone calls, everything is done online. The program also claims that it is possible to find the right person for the right job in less than a minute and there is always available co-workers. The employer must only put to the search section, when and where she or he wants staff.
The following paragraph is purely writer's own opinion. Although the background of the analysis is factual knowledge of the program, it is still purely opinion and how it works in practice according to the writer.
As an employee’s point of view there is positives and negatives sides considering the staffing program Netwic. It must be a simply and quick solution to hire staff according to employers. I want to believe it is a useful in several areas. As a restaurant worker I feel the program does not serve the customer, in this case the employee. The program does not work helpfully and the updating of profile is frustrating. When restaurants want extra workers to work for them, they usually book directly by phone or e-mail or they have their own staffing program. In restaurant area the Netwic program is a third wheel and therefore communication breakdowns are at higher risk. With the third wheel I mean that recruitment in the restaurants are done usually directly between restaurant and employee or by outsourcing to staff recruitment company and they send their own staff to the customer, in this case the restaurant. Restaurants in Finland are using a lot recruitment companies, because they cannot afford to keep all staff. The restaurant area is an area of seasons, for example January in Finland is one of the calmest months and it is usually done with skeleton staff.
Imagine a situation where restaurant needs to book five (5) employees for several weekends. They send a staff request to HR (Human resources) company and HR company sends request to the staff. Already at this stage the risk of communication failure exists. If the HR company decides to use yet the Netwic program, at this stage Netwic becomes third wheel and the risk of communication failure is even bigger. So, I personally think that Netwic is not the right program for hiring restaurant staff.
Fiercer Media
The page that I am closely following is called Fiercer Media. Fiercer Media is a Finnish consulting company that focuses on Internet marketing and they are specialized in Facebook marketing. I have been following them for around a year now, and I have learned a lot from them. They focus on helping companies to get as high ROI (Return On Investment) as possible for their Facebook advertisements. In order to keep their own Facebook page as healthy as possible, using the same techniques as they suggest their customers to be using, they post a lot of useful information regarding Facebook advertising and how it actually works. With the new changes having an interactive Facebook page is the cheapest and most effective way to reach your customers through Facebook. Facebook is changing rapidly and Fiercer Media is keeping up well, they often post articles regarding new changes and comment them with their own thoughts and ideas. Following their page has been very beneficial for myself, and I have not only learned a lot from them, but also become more interested in Facebook and Internet marketing in general. Unfortunately the page is in Finnish and all their posts are as well, but finding a similar page in English would be really interesting, as then one could compare their thoughts on a international level and see whether there are some different opinions on the matters discussed.
Studentforums.biz
Studentforums.biz is an internet forum, where students can share study materials, ask questions and offer help. The forum is mostly concentrated to secondary level education and especially taking various types of final exams, such as IGCSE, GCSE, O-level, A-level. The forum also includes as section for university studies. For some fields of subjects the forum includes lots of discussion at the university level. For example, there takes place frequent posting activity on topics about medicine and health science. At the same time there are very little topics discussed about economics and finance.
The main value of the forum is discussion about different subjects like math, physics, and chemistry and so on. There are several problems and solutions posted in the forum as well as sample test. For me as the university level student, the math help is still relevant as some topics overlap with math applied in finance.
There is some discussion about career choice and universities. Still, this section of the forum is not very active.
The forum has a Facebook page, so it is possible to keep in touch with the latest developments through Facebook.
There is a section for book reviews, which is good in itself. Unfortunately, the number of books reviewed there is low and it seems to be that this part of the website has died out as there have been no new reviews during the last 6 months.
There are also several blogs on the website, but they are not much use of. The content of the blogs is mostly irrelevant to studying and it includes mostly users’ personal life and entertainment.
The visual design of the website is outdated; it looks like forums were 10 years ago. Still, it does not decrease the value of the content posted there.
To sum it up, it seems to be a useful forum for high school students and medical university students. It also has some additional value to university students of other areas. Some parts of it are not very useful, but there is a lot of activity in the main section of it.
Heli Pesonen, IntBBA-2
www.facebook.com
I chose Facebook because it is only one I use myself and it is most familiar to others as well. Facebook has over 1 billion users around the world and it is the most popular social networking site.
For business networking and marketing Facebook offers good opportunities with affordable prices. Companies can make their own pages in Facebook to advertise or create an image and to stay in touch with customers or users. This is very convenient for B2C companies. Companies can also advertise using Pay Per Click advertisements which are visible for Facebook users on their page.
Users can add their previous work and work experience to Facebook so it can be good for employers to find interesting employees from there but that requires a good online manners and semiformal behavior from the users on Facebook.
I believe that Facebook affects even more in business life in future when companies will learn to use it right in business meanings and people will find each other more easily because networking has come so much simpler via Facebook.
Facebook should develop business networking to be more convenient and effective because job-hunting and hiring people is not limited in land borders anymore. Facebook could offer a solution to find international professionals from all around the world.
43 Things
www.43things.com
By: Mikael Karhula
43Things is a social website in which users can cheer on other users on achieving their hopes, dreams or goals. The user can set up to 43 dreams or goals, which he or she would like to achieve. After setting the first goals, the user is encouraged to explore other people’s goals and to cheer on them. I personally have not signed up to 43things.com, but I see the allure that so many people have already seen – over 3 million of them. There are many goals to cheer on and definitely goals for every liking. I can see the fact how the networking site modifies the values and actions of the users. Some of us are motivated from outside (by other people) and these people are those ones who I could see using 43Things.
Whether it is motivation or ideas looking for making your own life better I can see the success of 43things. Actions of the users are more impulsive than rather well planned actions (–compared to LinkedIn.) Users are more likely to achieve their goals, if they are cheered on by other people and seeing other people’s goals and cheers. You never know if you might come up with a new business plan when exploring people’s goals and dreams or you succeeding in the little goals you have earlier set. Or when you have the same goal you can team up with other people and find help and information from them.
Advantages:
+ Free
+ Fun
+ Encouraging/motivating
+ Many users
Disadvantages:
- Lack of central area documentation about the website
- Relies heavily on RSS
Severi Loiv
IntBBA-2
Overview of Hattrick
Hattrick www.hattrick.org, is manager game where you coach your own football team and trade players with thousands other players from all over the world.
At the moment, Hattrick has 128 countries represented and there are over 730 000 managers from all over the globe.
Playing Hattrick is fun, after registration you get starter team in the poorest league and you have to start from the bottom with weak coach, players and with small fan club, stadium, staff.
After that, you as a manager are able to manage your own team, plan training scheme, buy and sell players, and the list goes on. To be successful in this game means proceeding to higher league, this means winning your current league in a four months long season.
Playing Hattrick is free. Basic service of the game includes functions to fire and hire your staff, sell and purchase players, set tactics for the upcoming matches, run a youth squad, and overall run football club like a real football club owner would. Hattrick also has forum for managers to discuss on different areas of the game. Being football manager means also deciding on strategy and tactics of the team and assigning positions to players.
Hattrick is updated constantly and new features are being added and old features are being enhanced in the game all the time.
Playing hattrick and being football club owner helps you to understand how to run a business in many different levels:
• How to manage different team members the best way. Developing a player takes patience, knowledge, skills, experience and time.
• How to handle financial staff of your team.
• Proceeding and being successful in Hattrick takes lot of time as in real business.
• It helps you to understand the nature of competition, because other players are often as passionate about the games as you.
• My team has currently 23 players, playing this games helps me to understand the dynamics of team working.
. Meet and understand diferent kind of people from all over the world.
. Learn how to trade, by buying and selling players.
Raul Ratsep BeBsv-2
italki - www.italki.com - World wide site for people, who really want to success in learning languages.
Aim of this internet resource is obvious and simple, we can understand it from the title of the site or just on the bases of it name - italki - with means: i speak.Site make learning processes much more easier, and people (members) make learning even fun and attractive.
After registration, you need to fulfill your profile with the information about your purpose on this site, your languages knowledge, and etc...
When you describe your knowledge of different languages, you have a scale bar with show other the level of your knowledge. This is very comfortable, and it makes process of partners searching much more easier. Also, italki interface has supporting tool. This tool automatically searching for you potential partners, partners with suitable characteristics. two minutes after registration, you already receiving a few message about invitation in friend list from others members.It means, that italki has a lot of people and very cozy atmosphere. After you find your partner, you start interact with him, talk and the must important thing - language exchange.Two people start languages symbiosis, for both sides benefit. Also, italki has diary. You can write there a text for language practise and then someone (native speaker or just a advance level speaker) can check your text, underline yours mistakes and comment it. And the last thing i find handy on this site - it is teacher system. You can easily find professional teacher, and start practising through the skype. Of course its not free.But italki has a lot of guarantee you will not lose money and teacher will not abandon you with yours money.
All we know, that the world today is integrated and linked. For good business development, we need to communicate with people of different religions, languages, traditions and views. Itaki makes it easier. For example, you need to send abroad very important business email and impress the receiver.You decided to write a message in mother tongue to make impress. And dont know how to write it correctly. Italki will help you with that.
bandcamp.com. Decided on this one, as no one mentioned it. A network not quite aimed at business, but rather self-development.
"Bandcamp" is a digital distribution platform for music. It is a publisher and an online store mainly aimed at independent artists. It was started in September 2008 by Ethan Diamond. At that time, an artist had choice of either hiring an programmer/designer and renting out servers for a website, or uploading to ad-craving sites such as MySpace or its imitators, which would anyway offer a “sharecropping arrangement.” Bandcamp is designed to be a home for music, with your tracks, your identity, with the bandcamp staff taking care for all the technical issues. Bandcamp offers the transparency in cost transactions, which many tend to hide in the music industry.
Pros:
SEO. The website does necessary things to keep the link top-ranked in Google, so a searching fan will get your link to Bandcamp ahead of sites like “GarageBand”, “iLike”, “CDBaby”, “Rhapsody” and so on.
Design and graphic interface – easy, simple, frieandly, yet fully customizable. No need for large ads blinking constantly.
Quality. The tracks are available to download in almost every format, that would please any fan.
Selling. This is the most valuable perspective for a business person, as the ability to sell is more than simple. Your account can be linked directly to PayPal, so after a purchase has been made, the money flows directly to account you specify (Bandcamp doesn't hold the money). Artists set prices themselves, be it €4, $19 or free of charge. And you get all the data to keep a track of your downloads.
Website takes no ownership rights in the content the artist uploads. And it is Digital Rights Management-free.
Help & support. The help and support section is at it’s best. I had no need to contact the support by myself, since the help/FAQ pages had all my answers listed. Moreover, it is all written in a friendly and understandable format.
Finally, Bandcamp is basically free. However, it also offers premium services.
Cons:
Sections like videos, photos, the ones that can be intergrated with an official website or facebook page, aren’t developed yet. As owners say, that is “on the list” to be implemented, but for now the music itself is more of a concern.
No gigs/concert listing as well.
You have to upload in lossless formats (WAV, AIFF, FLAC), which are quite huge by size. But the quality and diverse choice of download formats compensates that. Besides, you only do it once.
Upload limit of 600Mb (hey, that’s like a full CD) for a free account.
With a pleasant environment as this, several artists have broken their contracts with major record labels, and moved on Bandcamp to promote their music. The site is also quite popular among game developers. Personally, it is better than Soundcloud – design, SEO and online store wise, at least. Plus, it is plain simple. I am indeed a member of the community, as I perform with several bands and use the service to hold accounts here. Moreover, I even run a tiny independent label as well.
Vladimir Drozdov BeB sv-2
Vkontakte.com or VK.com
About
VK is the most popular social network service in central and eastern europe. Because of its design and functionality, VK is often claimed to be a clone of Facebook, accommodating not only a similar concept, but also a comparable business model. However, its incorporation of other features makes it more like YouTube, Last.FM, Pandora and MySpace rolled into one, with an interface highly reminiscent of Facebook.
As of October, 2009, the network has more than 45 million users and is the leading site in Europe in terms of user visits, page views, data transfer per day. As of March 19, 2009, VK is ranked 28 in Alexa.com global Top 500 sites with a traffic rank of 25.
Functionality
The sites functionality includes personalized pages, easy access to friends' pages and news, a photo-, audio- and videohosting, a simple messaging system, groups that users can participate in, and notes. Almost all of the information provided by users is a subject to easy search, therefore people are able to look for those with similar interest, school, places of birth, etc. New features are being added to the website from time to time, such as ability to host audiofiles in groups and personal pages, "Opinions" function allowing one to express personal thoughts about a friend on the network anonymously, "Offers" to ask people whether one wants to do something together with the user, "Questions" to answer the question that is asked by user and "Applications", containing Flash API based games, tools, chat rooms etc.
Privacy
Users have the ability to control the availability of their content, for instance it is possible to hide one's pictures, videos, and entire pages. Users can also choose who can invite them to join groups, write personal messages, write on their wall, and so forth. It is claimed that the site content is not indexed by the search engines. Google and Yahoo not only don't link to privacy-locked VK pages, but also do not link to users who choose to open their pages to the general public; in fact, search engines provide no indication whatsoever that any user is registered on VK. Unless users post external links to their pages elsewhere, the only way to find a VK page is by using VK's own search protocols.
Popularity
The number of registered users of the site is consistently rising.
VK has never been advertised in any fashion. Its popularity has grown entirely from people sharing it amongst each other. VK has an option for users to delete their accounts though the number of the accounts is rising every second.
Statistics
VK is the most visited Internet resource in Central and Eastern Europe. VK is the leader in all aspects of the internet:
Internet Resource No. 1 and the most visited social networking site in Central and Eastern Europe.
Over 1,500,000,000 pages are opened weekly (liveinternet). This is more than all of the other large websites in Europe together.
The largest photo hosting site in europe: over 12 million photos are uploaded weekly.
The largest video hosting site in europe: over 1,800,000 new videos uploaded weekly.
The largest music hosting site in europe: over 1,400,000 new audio files uploaded daily.
The most popular way to keep in touch in the central and eastern europe: over 80 million messages are sent weekly.
As of October 2009, over 45 million users were registered in VK.com.
What:
AngelList a.k.a Angel.co is a leading platform for start-up founders and investors to communicate, follow each other, get updates and apply for funding or invest accordingly. At AngelList there are thousands of entrepreneurs, designers and developers, investors, marketing people and other industry professionals who are forming the start-up community. AngelList’s goal is to facilitate funding opportunities and help start-up founders make the best teams that could help companies on escalating their values and growth.
Value for business students:
Get connected with the best VC funds, angel investors and entrepreneurs in the 21st century start-up scene, get recruited by the coolest start-ups and apply for jobs. And of course list their own profiles and company profiles, if they have a start-up. Also possibility to apply to different accelerators and incubators through AngelList.
Positive sides:
- following VC funds, investors, entrepreneurs and companies latest investments, updates and activities
- Integrating angelList profile with other social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc.)
- Being exposed to prominent employers and potential co-founders
- Applying to incubators and accelerators
- Finding people to start new projects with, or even companies
- Finding people by college they attended, by industry, by role, by investments made and by popularity on AngelList.
- Always being on the top of latest investment and start-up news in the industry
- Can invest in companies for certain share %
Negative sides:
- Cannot directly message investors until they have been introduced by AngelList admin Team
- Creating accelerator or incubator page only through AngelList admin Team
- Nothing one can do to directly influence the behaviour of AngelList admin Team
- Requires a lot of time, effort and practicality to get noticed and followed by people
Task rabbit is a mobile market place that allows users to out source tasks and jobs to people in their neighborhood. The company was founded by Leah Busque in 2008 and has received €37 million in funding from private investors.
The service consists of a web site and smart phone app. The idea behind task rabbit is that you can post small tasks you need done and place an offer on how much you are willing to pay. These tasks can be grocery shopping, mowing the lawn, Ikea furniture assembly or cleaning. Basically anything some one is wiling to pay for.
Companies are also able to use this program to find seasonal workers. This brings the employer and worker relationship to the next level. Potential workers are able to see available jobs as soon as they are submitted. Companies also save on not having to pay labor rental companies who charge high prices for their workers.
This program is aimed at young people and professionals with skills that that are expensive if ordered from companies providing them. Young people especially students are good workers for task rabbit. Students are usually unable to commit to regular working hours, but with this program they are able to work when they have the time and help out people in their neighborhood.
This program also works the other way meaning that people are able to make an account and promote their skills. A 14 year old can offer babysitting services or perhaps offer to go grocery shopping to people in his/her neighborhood. People are then able to contact him/her threw the application and arrange her employment.
Mico Bergmann
I decided to my homework about tumblr.com. This is a site that I use daily. Tumblr can be used on web and as a mobile app. But what is tumblr?
Tumblr is a blogging platform for people, brands and businesses that want to excel online. It’s unique because it’s also something of a social network, where rapid viral sharing can take place. There are over 64 million blogs on Tumblr, so there’s no doubting that it offers many benefits to the business owner. The success of Tumblr is that it has raised $85 million in funding and sees 13 billion pageviews a month. Tumblr isn’t really a blogging platform in the same way that WordPress and other similar services are. Or rather, it’s more than just a blogging platform in some fairly crucial ways. it’s more like a cross between Twitter and a blogging tool than it is a simple blogging platform. While you can create a blog and just post content to it the way you would with WordPress or Blogger or Squarespace, you can also use it just to “re-blog” posts from those you follow, in the same way that some Twitter users just read and retweet. If it is as easy as possible, you will get even more people to do it. So while the number of people who want to maintain a full WordPress or Blogger blog is relatively small by comparison, the number of people who are happy to use Twitter or Tumblr primarily to share the content of others is huge.
Benefits
1. Tumblr is great for SEO - because Tumblr is indexed, and contains lots of social sharing – it has the power to attract a ton of traffic to your websites.
2. Microblogging on Tumblr - it allows you to microblog, which means that you can share your posts quickly and easily with your social communities.
3. Shorter posts - Tumblr allows bloggers to post small snippets of content for the world to see. It’s a great platform to use if you only have time for 250 word blog posts.
4. Post mixed media as they are - if you use Tumblr, you can post images, videos, links and more, directly to the platform – without having to add in any content.
5. Use Tumblr to source great content - Tumblr can be used as a research tool, where you can find great content in a matter of minutes. Just browse through the blogs on offer, in your select category.
6. Content curation on Tumblr - using Tumblr allows you to curate content, or collect it, by ‘reblogging’ or reposting blogs on your page that you’ve enjoyed. This is great for traffic and SEO.
7. Tumblr is 100% free - unlike WordPress, which can cost a bit of money to put up properly – Tumblr is a completely free platform that doesn’t require any financial outlay.
8. Track your progress with analytics - you can connect your Tumblr account to Google Analytics and actually track your progress. This will help you improve your blog, your SEO and your brand visibility.
9. Build interactive communities - tumblr was built to encourage interaction, like a real social networking site. You’ll find that getting people to respond to you is a lot easier here.
10. Improve your business network - guaranteed to find some of your niches biggest bloggers using Tumblr. They’re super simple to become friends with, and that means better business networks.
I also have my own blog in tumblr.com. It is about interior design. I post pictures about interior design and architecture. This blog is a daily source of inspiration for me and I also hope to inspire ohter people who follow me. Currently I don’t have many followers. Just something over 200 people. But I will certainly keep on blogging. I love tumblr mostly because of its simplicity. There are so many different kind of blogs which you can follow and I would really recommend it to everyone.
I decided to my homework about tumblr.com. This is a site that I use daily. Tumblr can be used on web and as a mobile app. But what is tumblr?
Tumblr is a blogging platform for people, brands and businesses that want to excel online. It’s unique because it’s also something of a social network, where rapid viral sharing can take place. There are over 64 million blogs on Tumblr, so there’s no doubting that it offers many benefits to the business owner. The success of Tumblr is that it has raised $85 million in funding and sees 13 billion pageviews a month. Tumblr isn’t really a blogging platform in the same way that WordPress and other similar services are. Or rather, it’s more than just a blogging platform in some fairly crucial ways. it’s more like a cross between Twitter and a blogging tool than it is a simple blogging platform. While you can create a blog and just post content to it the way you would with WordPress or Blogger or Squarespace, you can also use it just to “re-blog” posts from those you follow, in the same way that some Twitter users just read and retweet. If it is as easy as possible, you will get even more people to do it. So while the number of people who want to maintain a full WordPress or Blogger blog is relatively small by comparison, the number of people who are happy to use Twitter or Tumblr primarily to share the content of others is huge.
Benefits
1. Tumblr is great for SEO - because Tumblr is indexed, and contains lots of social sharing – it has the power to attract a ton of traffic to your websites.
2. Microblogging on Tumblr - it allows you to microblog, which means that you can share your posts quickly and easily with your social communities.
3. Shorter posts - Tumblr allows bloggers to post small snippets of content for the world to see. It’s a great platform to use if you only have time for 250 word blog posts.
4. Post mixed media as they are - if you use Tumblr, you can post images, videos, links and more, directly to the platform – without having to add in any content.
5. Use Tumblr to source great content - Tumblr can be used as a research tool, where you can find great content in a matter of minutes. Just browse through the blogs on offer, in your select category.
6. Content curation on Tumblr - using Tumblr allows you to curate content, or collect it, by ‘reblogging’ or reposting blogs on your page that you’ve enjoyed. This is great for traffic and SEO.
7. Tumblr is 100% free - unlike WordPress, which can cost a bit of money to put up properly – Tumblr is a completely free platform that doesn’t require any financial outlay.
8. Track your progress with analytics - you can connect your Tumblr account to Google Analytics and actually track your progress. This will help you improve your blog, your SEO and your brand visibility.
9. Build interactive communities - tumblr was built to encourage interaction, like a real social networking site. You’ll find that getting people to respond to you is a lot easier here.
10. Improve your business network - guaranteed to find some of your niches biggest bloggers using Tumblr. They’re super simple to become friends with, and that means better business networks.
I also have my own blog in tumblr.com. It is about interior design. I post pictures about interior design and architecture. This blog is a daily source of inspiration for me and I also hope to inspire ohter people who follow me. Currently I don’t have many followers. Just something over 200 people. But I will certainly keep on blogging. I love tumblr mostly because of its simplicity. There are so many different kind of blogs which you can follow and I would really recommend it to everyone.
http://muusikoiden.net/
Muusikoiden.net (musicians.net) Is the biggest non-commercial webpage for musicians in Finland. The page has 14 miljon monthy downloads and it has over 125 000 registered members. 2003 it won ”the best non-commercial webservice in Finland” award and has been a vital market-, chat- and meeting place to musicians all around Finland.
The page started with a ”Vanities” concept wich offered tablatures and lyrics for domestic songs. Soon after that a ”Wanted” section was added. There bands could search new members and vice versa.
The Vanities concept turned out to be too narrow and the profounder of the page, Markus Petäjä decided to launch the more profound”muusikoiden.net” 14.1.2000.
The page offers a ton of different forums and recources to buy and sell instruments, find new band members or bands, listen to unsigned bands and new music, announcements about small and big gigs, publish pictures (e.g. pictures of individual drum kits, upload music and, most importantly, speak about music.
The marketplace has kept its position as the major marketplace for used instruments and recordings in Finland. In spite of the rapidly growing web marketplaces, (Huuto.net and Tori.fi), the marketplace has succeeded in connecting real musicians with each other. It has maintained the valuation and pride between musicians and buying an used instrument from there is safe and reliable.
An example of a marketplace announcement: ”I’m selling my American precision Jazz Bass from 2006. Maple neck and active electronics. Hipshot tuners from Fender (lighter, better balance) This model includes a ”humper” bridge microphone, 2 jazz bass single coils side by side. Fully unhumming. Compared to a regular jazz bass, this includes clearer low tunes and more punch, which means that while the traditional roundness maintains, the active electronics expands the sound palette:”
The conversations forum has achieved a legendary valuation in Finland. The rules are strict and spam is strictly untolerated. This has kept the forum clean and functional. The topics vary from discussion about heavy music to classical theories and lessons to play guitar. People can ask anything between basic guitar chords to more ecperienced recording software problems. The more advanced musicians try to answer and share their wisdom. No one is despised and no arrogance is tolerated. On the muusikoiden.net forums people really get help for their problems.
When I started playing bass, I found a huge amount of useful information from muusikoiden.net regarding the adjustment of the bassguitar and the playing itself. I could achieve a comprehensive understanding about the instrument when relying on the general opinion.
Sandra Välikoski
Intbba-2
LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com
LinkedIn is a social networking website which helps to build together your professional network.
Unlike Facebook where people share more details of their private life, LinkedIn is the place to share your skills, former work experience, details of your education, upload your CV and also to connect with people related to your work.
Because nowadays business is more and more about networking is LinkedIn great tool for business students. A contact network in LinkedIn is built up consisting of direct connections, second-degree connections and third-degree connections.
LinkedIn helps also companies, employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates.
I use LinkedIn because feel it's easy way to build up my professional network, found information of new jobs available etc.
My online networking site I would like to introduce to you is Biznik.
http://biznik.com/pdf/flight_manual_infographic.pdf
Biznik is the community that connects people in a meaningful way with business in mind.
Biznik was created in May 2005 by Lara & Dan, five months after they were married, as a response to needs they had as entrepreneurs. Lara was a photographer. Dan was a web developer. They thought the traditional business networking options were stiff, not very helpful, and in Dan's words, "sucked." So Dan built a website and Lara started hosting events, and they slapped on the tagline, "business networking that doesn't suck."
Biznik is an online community that brings together business owners and entrepreneurs together so that they can share resources, opportunities, and referrals. This service cannot be used by multi-level marketers or network marketers - but, if you are a freelancer, independent business owner, or entrepreneur who would like to share ideas and customers with others then you will want to check out Biznik.
With Biznik you aren't going to be promoting to customers - they are not on this site - but you can get information on where they might be and the best ways to contact them. Think of it this way - you are a service provider (choose any service) and you are a member of Biznik. Another member may not provide that service but will recommend you for the job or give you the lead. Or you are looking for a certain product at a great price, another member may know a supplier than can help you out. So, it is basically building a network of like-minded people who will give you a hand when possible and appreciate it when you return the gesture.
That's about it. Hope it was useful :)
Helen Tahk, BEB-2
Hw 1, Mona Kurjenmäki
Why is Facebook the best tool for networking in business and study life?
Today, almost everyone knows what is Facebook. It has came a useful, valuable and profitable way of doing business, communication and the main, the most significant way of networking. If you ask people, what comes to your mind, if I mention a word networking, almost everyone says ’’it’s about Facebook’’.
Today, more and more, business life is dependent on doing business online. The tools for networking are improved during the years, as and when technology has developed. To doing business in networks, online, is a basic every-day tool for many companies in business world.
It gives an opportunity to network, make successful business deals and to keep relations going for many years throughout the world.
Now, we can match business and student life. Why Facebook would not be beneficial for students, if it is beneficial for business people? Similarly, it gives the opportunity for business student for networking than it gives to business people. There is not so many networking channels –as large as Facebook- on the Internet.
Business students all around the world have found the Facebook in last couple of years. A living example of Facebook among business students are the students of Estonian Business School. We use Facebook for getting topical information, sharing tasks and tips and keep relations going in our own groups on Facebook. Facebook is a way of communication for us, it connects us successfully, regardless of the fact that we are distance learning students.
All those opportunities are mainly positive, and useful for business students, but there is also some bad things to mention. If we use Facebook as the only tool for communicating, it reduces the value of face-to-face communication. Facebook should improve the communication as a whole, in addition to face-to-face communication, not to remove it.
As a short conclusion; use Facebook as the tool for doing business or study in network, but don’t forget the meaning of face-to-face communication in all kinds of business lives!
I chose to write this short analysis from a social network called Viadeo. You can find more information about Viadeo from www.viadeo.com.
Viadeo was founded in France in 2004. Nowadays, it is one of the largest business related social networks in the world. Viadeo has about 50M members, and in order to put this membership amount in to a more easily understandable context, 50M members is about one fifth of the number of members of LinkedIn.
The main goal and aim of Viadeo can easily be concluded from their slogan – “Viadeo, where professionals meet” (Viadeo homepage, 2014). As it is pointed out in the company’s homepage, Viadeo is a social network where people can connect with other professionals, bring up one’s expertise while searching for various job opportunities, and grow and promote businesses or different ideas to other companies or potential partners (Viadeo homepage, 2014).
Viadeo is a user-friendly, easy to join and valuable network for various business professionals. Like said, Viadeo enables business people to be connected with others or to search for different working opportunities all over the world. Moreover, Viadeo is a network that helps companies to expand their operations or to search for talented employees for different job functions or projects. From the student’s point of view, however, Viadeo is a valuable and useful tool mainly after graduation as then one is interested to find a job and start a career in some global or local organization. All in all, easy and effective networking is what Viadeo can offer for different people.
In a way I think it is important to highlight the fact that Viadeo’s main threat in the current market is surely its biggest competitor, LinkedIn. This is due to the fact that these two companies operate in the same field and offer almost the same services. Also if we compare the number of members that these networks currently have, LinkedIn is almost five times bigger than Viadeo. This means that it is significantly more used and more popular in the current markets. This makes you wonder why someone chooses to use Viadeo instead of LinkedIn.
Like said in the class, networking is really important now and its significance will surely become more important in the future. Nowadays, as LinkedIn is the most commonly used network in business, my opinion is that the main task of Viadeo is certainly to come up with something new and overtake its main competitor. The company is growing all the time and it remains to be seen whether or not it is able to gain more members than LinkedIn somewhere in the future.
Based on my knowledge, I think that all in all Viadeo is a really good business network site and I cannot think any significant flaws in its actions. I personally do not think, however, that it will ever become more used than LinkedIn. Still, it surely has its place in the world of networks.
Toni Surakka, IntBBAk-21
References:
Viadeo (homepage). 2014. www.viadeo.com (21 March 2014).
Tuomo Myllykangas IntBBAK-21
As an user of Hattrick, I have found the management game very useful when talking about understanding business world in which we operate. So, what is Hattrick actually and how are business studies related to it? (Link to the main page: www.hattrick.org )
Hattrick is the leading online-based football management game which has about 450,000 users (1th November, 2013) around the world, translated to 53 languages and completely free. In Hattrick, your job is to build and coach your team you manage from the very beginning, competing against other managers. The key in success in this game is all about choosing the right strategy how to accomplish your job. Ongoing presence is not required. To be successful and advance in this game, you have to win the current league you’re playing. While playing the game, you can socialize with other managers around the globe at the game’s own forum where you can:
1) influence on the game 2) interact with other users 3) receive tips 4) improve your social network.
As a manager, you improve your team by selling and buying players or train your own youth players. You decide the start-up lines, how the team trains and with which tactics it plays its games, etc. and the list goes on. Basically everything, which has to do when running a football club, you’re in charge of it.
Just like a manager in a company, the basic idea is the same. The game can be closely identified with real business world and has a lot to give to business students how to run a business. Different stages that help to obtain business-related knowledge better comes from:
+ Changing strategies and tactics, depending on situations
+ Handling the club’s economy
+ Monitoring and improving teamwork of the players
+ Buying and selling assets (players)
+ Being responsible of everything
- Although the concept is good, people who don’t like football won’t naturally be much interested of this kind of game. Competing against others isn’t for all, and the game requires patience.
As a conclusion, I see Hattrick as a bright game and a virtual community I consider to be useful to business students. The recommendation to join it goes to those people who enjoy the atmosphere of owning a club, managing it, and are competitive who want to experience the feeling of winning. The manager game gives it user good prerequisites to understand and to do business, combining with the fun Hattrick offers.
Anniina Reis IntBBAk-21
The idea for the network I chose to discuss came from watching an episode of Shark Tank, in which they introduced Notehall, which has since been acquired by Chegg. The concept is interesting because it is useful for students.
Access Chegg at: http://www.chegg.com.
Some students launched Notehall in order to provide a marketplace online where students in college can sell and buy lecture notes. [1] It gained a lot of users because some could post their notes as a way to earn a little while others could benefit from purchasing them. The obvious concern was whether the intellectual property rights of professors are violated especially because students profit from someone else’s work [2].
Chegg is slightly different to the original Notehall as it is an online network where students can sign in and get guided solutions for help in homework 24/7, sell unnecessary books, access dictionaries as well as take notes and see what other students have highlighted as important etc. Additionally, there is a blog to which students and others post and people can comment, so it is interactive. In the blog there are for example tips for job interviews and other relevant knowledge for future careers. Students can also get solutions to questions in numerous textbooks, rent or buy textbooks and read eTextbooks etc. Downloading the Chegg application enables students to do the above-mentioned things easily.
Also, because experts such as professors provide the 24/7 study help, one could assume that the concern of intellectual property rights has been reduced because experts can benefit from their work themselves. Chegg also has its own program (CHIPRO) to make sure that intellectual property rights are protected.
Chegg seems to ship only to the U.S. but even so, there is the possibility to use other features such as the 24/7 study help or eTextbooks internationally. Obviously, one major downside is, that renting or using the books as well as getting solutions and help for homework costs. However, to some students, they may be of invaluable help as they enhance learning. Moreover, the books are often cheaper than new ones.
Because we study in English, most of our textbooks are from the U.S. etc., so this may be a useful network to help studies. Also, if someone wants additional material on some topic, this may be a good place to start looking for sources and study guides in order to gain relevant knowledge for doing business in the future. The site includes numerous subjects such as calculus, physics and business. I even found some of our books there too, e.g. Intermediate Microeconomics by Hal R. Varian. All in all, I think that Chegg is quite a useful student network, or “hub” as they call it, with the most important network features being the study help and sharing of information. The other aspects are of additional use and enhance the networking experience.
References:
Chegg homepage http://www.chegg.com (accessed 21 March 2014)
Chegg Study homepage http://www.chegg.com/study (accessed 21 March 2014)
Chegg blog http://blog.chegg.com (accessed 21 March 2014)
[1] Shark Tank Clip: http://sharktankclips.com/season-1-episode-8-notehall/ (accessed 21 March 2014)
[2] On intellectual property rights: http://news.ucsc.edu/2010/11/course-notes-notehall.html (accessed 21 March 2014)
Ida Anttila, IntBBAk-21
The network I chose to introduce to you is called InternMatch.
http://www.internmatch.com/
This network is focused on helping business students find themselves internship places, as well as give the companies an easy channel for finding internship workforce.
Internmatch offers paid-internships, as well as hard-to-find non-profit positions for internship.
On the site you can filter you search by the area where you live, what school are you in and what is are you majoring in. Therefore it connects the students and companies near each other.
InternMatch site also provides the students with helpful tools for writing good resumes, practicing the questions often asked in interviews for internship places, and other useful tips for finding an internship place.
In addition to open internship position the site also offers forums and blogs for business students. In the forums and blogs students may discuss issues related to internships, college life or the work-life that follows.
The downside of this network is that it is only for students in the United States, therefore I will not benefit from it, unless I decide to go and do my Master's degree in states for example.
On the other hand, everyone who has watched American movies, or has friends over there knows how import role internship plays in the American education system. As well as how hard it is to find one. Therefore I would think that anyone studying in the states may find this network very useful.
WWW.ETORO.COM
Etoro is an investment social network. It was started in 2007 in Tel-Aviv, by brothers Yoni Assia and Ronen Assia and David Ring. It allows its users to trade in real time different kind of commodities, currencies, indices and stocks. The registration is absolutely free and nobody asks you for a deposit unless you feel ready to trade on live account with real money. But before that you have an option to try yourself on practice account, where you can test different strategies and use all futures that real account has.
What makes eToro so unique is that it allows you to follow other people and just copy their trades. It is very useful tool for people who does not want to go deep inside into the financial world in order to stay profitable, but just copy other, more experienced or even professional traders. Etoro is not a financial broker itself, but a platform and software provider that is cooperating with third party brokers systems.
It is over 3 mln registered active users in eToro community. People can communicate with each other, share their experience and see the history of their trades and be able to follow each other. Etoro platform records all the statistics of trades, which is shown in the charts, where you can spot the best traders and then follow them. There is possibility to copy traders automatically or you can spot trades in real time yourself and put trades manually.
In the conclusion I can say that eToro is an investment social network which allows you to spend your time efficiently and share your knowledge and experience with other people. At the same time you have an opportunity to step into financial world with less risk and create some confidence, which will bring you a lot profit in your future professional career. Very good social network for people of business world !
By Oleg Panov
The networking site I chose to introduce to you is Networking For Professionals http://www.networkingforprofessionals.com/
The core is obvious. It is a networking tool for professionals. The site tells that its idea is to bring together successful, motivated professionals and help them become even more successful by creating connections that will take their careers to the next level. But the site also includes face to face meetings with the virtual ones. So by first connecting with the members of the site virtually all kinds of real life meetings are arranged and through those meetings the members can get a better idea about what kind of people those profiles actually have behind them.
The added value for business students is that the site contains also useful information on how to make a good professional networking profile for example. All kinds of information regarding to being a successful virtual networker is provided.
One example on how this site has led to doing business is how those face to face meetings has led to one member to gain one client, three firm appointments and 16 new contacts. And this is through just by joining one of the meetings arranged by this site.
Roni Kiuru
CliffsNotes-virtual network for student self-development
CliffsNotes is study guide at Internetat http://www.cliffsnotes.com/. It contains the texts and notes on many different topics. Real teachers have written these texts and therefore they are very reliable.
Today, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt owns CliffsNotes and CliffsNotes works on the side of HMH community. HMH Works, therefore, as the basis for CliffsNotes. HMH is involved on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and YouTube. This community includes solutions for 50 million students in 150 countries. The company's values are Curiosity, Commitment, Effectiveness and Reliability, Learning, Performance, and Best in Class. While the CliffsNotes provides free notes, HMH provides payable books and eLearning.
Plus of course is that the page encourages students to find out about things and to facilitate the improvement of performance in school. At CliffsNotes you can browse free articles or purchase books and training materials such as the SAT-materials. Only shopping requires login. CliffsNotes is really a comprehensive package because it is also on facebook, twitter and youtube and has its own blog.
The biggest minus is definitely the fact that extensive study modules are chargeable. If a student wants to study a larger whole, it must be paid, and I think that at this stage many students go on to another forum to deepen their knowledge.
Another big minus is the fact that the website does not have any chat for the students, where the students with the same major can discuss with and to expand their network with other students.
In conclusion CliffsNotes is definitely useful for all students and as a business student, I can say that it has helped me with my self-development.
Monster Finland (http://www.monster.fi) is a meeting place for job-seekers and employers. It is a part of a bigger mother company called Monster Worldwide INC which was one of the first digital recruiting sites. Every month there are over 100 million job seekers using Monster INC.
Monsters mission is "to inspire people to improve their lives". This is basically done by providing a meeting place for job seekers and employers. Every week about 90 000 people uses Monster.fi to find jobs. Besides job opportunities, Monster also offers guidance and other information services both to employers and employees. Added value can be reached by putting a job advertisement to Monster.fi. Without any extra fees, the advertisement can be seen in many other networks for example in Jobstep.net and in the website of Suomen Ekonomiliitto.
One interesting fact of Monster is a service for employers to reach potential talents even though they are not actively searching for a job. Monster.fi has a online database of people's CV’s and by paying little extra employer can have the possibility to look for potential talents through this database. This database includes almost 36 million job seekers and rises every day with 55 000 CV's.
The only minus of Monster is that there is not a simple forum where individuals can communicate. The only way to communicate with others is through Monster’s Facebook page or via announcements. Of course potential co-operation can be found through the databases and communication done via other methods but a forum would be useful.
That said monster is a great place for students or graduates for gathering information, finding job opportunities , sharing potential ideas and for employers to look for potential talents in order for better success. Through this easy channel it is made very easy to individuals and companies to generate new co-operation and partnership.
Matti Ruohisto
IntBBAk-21
For this task, I decided to explore the social networking site Google+. It might not be a new site, and it is very popular (ranked 5th most popular social networking site on the eBusiness Guide website: http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites) but for me it is new and I didn’t have any experience from it before. The primary social networking site that I use is Facebook. I have a Twitter account, but haven’t used it, and also a Pinterest account but that I am just starting to learn how to use and I have LinkedIn account but I do not like the LinkedIn site, I feel like it is not very user-friendly. I haven’t visited other social networking sites, such as Tumbir, Instagram, Flickr or MySpace, so for this assignment I will primarly compare Google+ to Facebook.
First of all, I must say Google+ is a lot like Facebook. It looks the same and the idea is similar. Personally I think Google+ is actually more user-friendly, clear and easier to use than Facebook. It is very clean-cut, and it is easy to read and looks good on a computer screen. I also liked the fact that you can form ”circles”, that is you can add either friends or family or work related contacts in certain circles, and when you publish something, it is only visible to members in that certain circle. This is a very good feature, because when you publish something in Facebook it feels difficult to narrow down the audience to which you want that publication to be visible. In Google+ this feature of circles is very prominent and seems to be one of the main aspects of the site. Some things that you publish on these social networking sites you really don’t want your family or work colleagues to know about, soi t is good that you can keep some things personal.
Google+ seems very similar to Facebook in that a user creates an account and an account profile, joins groups that interests him or her, create your own gorups, can share stories, pictures, websites etc. and chat online. Google has made it easy to participate on several websites, because when I am signed in to my gmail account, I am automatically also signed in to Google+ and Youtube. It is easy to share information between these different sites when you are signed in. This might just be my personal opinion, but to me Google+ seems more professional than Facebook, but not as professional as LinkedIn. By this I mean that Google+ can be a serious site for a person to introduce themselves to potential employers or business partners.
Google+ was opened in June 2011. Today, according to Google, it has 540 million active monthly users, but half of them don’t visit the website (New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/technology/the-plus-in-google-plus-its-mostly-for-google.html?_r=0). Now, I can understand this, because although I use a gmail account, I wasn’t really aware that I am also signed up to Google+. I only fully realized it when I started doing research for this task. The reason why Google+ might have so many ”users” is that everyone using gmail is automatically added as a Google+ user, though they might not ever actually visit the site. Google+ is not a competitor for Facebook, at least yet. Still, I like Google+ very much.
Pros:
-If you are a gmail user, you don’t have to seperately sign up for Google+
-interacts with gmail and Youtube
-clear
-easy to use
-good privacy settings
-ability to form circles
-all the most important features are the same as in Facebook
-chat and video chat features
-adding people to circles is easy (straight from you gmail account)
Cons:
-not as popular as Facebook or Twitter → less users, less interesting content
-as with other social networking sites, if you are not a member, it is very hard to find information about the site from anywhere else than wikipedia
Google+ website: http://www.google.com/intl/fi/+/learnmore/
DeviantArt (http://www.deviantart.com) is a graphics/art based community. It was first launched in 2000 and it’s now based in Los Angeles, California. The idea of this site is to help artist to share their knowledge, show their work and get resources for their designs. There are different categories, like web design and digital art. You just choose what interests you and start learning, or even hire designers. Currently there are over 25 million users and almost 250 million submissions. It is the 13th largest social network.
Today when the appearance of your business website and products are held in high regard, it’s good to keep in mind that there are people that are happy to help you with your designs. DeviantArt is a place where you can seek tutorials to make the designs yourself, or hire someone to do them for you. You can have your own showcase there where people can comment on what they think about the design and how they would make them better. Here are some +’s and –‘s of DeviantArt
+Large, active community
+A lot of tutorials available to learn yourself
+Great place to get new ideas for your designs
+If you’re not the most creative person yourself, you might be able to hire someone who is
-Some of your work might get stolen or used without permission
Different companies have seen the value of DeviantArt and use it to their advantage. There have been different contests where they have asked the community for designs for their products and logos, they have given cash item prizes for best submissions. Even large car companies, like Lexus and Dodge, have used DeviantArt to get designs for their new car interiors and appearances.
I use DeviantArt myself to get new ideas for my graphics. I have used Photoshop for about 10 years now, but still I manage to find new techniques and things that I didn’t know about Photoshop. DeviantArt is also a great place to get resources like stock images, just make sure to get the permission from the artist.
Heikki Ojala
IntBBAk-21
reddit, www.reddit.com
Reddit is an entertainment, social networking service and news website where registered users can create content by using posts or just direct links. The registered users can vote posts by “up voting or down voting” the amount of voting determine position of the post on the site. Content entries are divided to “subreddits”. Reddit consists of about 390,000 subreddits so you can imagine there are discussions from side to side.
The main idea of reddit is to provide platform for people who want to know what is happening all around the world. And if you want to find something special to related area “x”, you will most likely to find it from the subreddits. So you can look into sports, business, news or any topic.
As you can make topics about anything it provides business students with good source of information and at the same time people will provide their own insights to topic, but in here comes the tricky part as you can’t believe everything that is written by users as they can give you false information so you need to think critically about what you believe. Also reddit can be used for marketing startups as in last the year there was guy who posted about that he started a candle factory by accident, after posting about it to reddit he has got increased amount of customers for his business.
I’m mostly using reddit for reading about new stuff that happens around the world as reddit gathers people from the all around the world under the same hub and this helps to find some interesting articles that you can’t otherwise find or at least aren’t easy to find if you don’t know what you want to know.
Joonas Törmänen, IntBBAK-21
Pinterest (pinterest.com) is an Internet site, which is meant for any human to collect and share different visual bookmarks. These visual bookmarks are referred to as “Pins”, from which the sites name also comes from. The users collect these “Pins” on to self-created boards, which can have the theme anywhere from beauty-products to gardening-supplies. The “pinning” is made to be really easy and simple, and this is why Pinterest has gained huge popularity.
From a business student’s point of view I see Pinterest as a great channel to promote your own business and ideas. Anyone can add a new “Pin” to the site and every time it is “Pinned” by someone, the original source is visible and relevant. The opportunity in this is that in many cases the users of Pinterest open the original links through the “Pins” and so, you get your product visible. The site is free-of-charge for everyone to use and in July 2013 Pinterst had over 70 million users worldwide.
There have been numerous researches that Pinterest is an effective marketing tool. One research showed that users visiting a certain fashion store through Pinterest spent approximately $180 compared with users visiting through Facebook and spending only approximately $85. This reflects on the visuality and attractiveness of Pinterest. It is easy for businesses to e.g. share prices of clothing, recommendations of movies or books and lots of more.
Laura Tamminen
Intbbak-21
Peter Piela, IntBBAk-21
The network I chose to introduce to you is The Economist and more closely its job search site:
http://jobs.economist.com/
First of all the Economist is one of the most well-known newspaper on its field and read all over the world by business professionals and students. The aim of the site is to find professional work force for all kind of expertise from baking and finance to healt care. You can seach and browse different positions and countries to even salary level to find the job that suits you best.
Value for business student is that you can find various jobs opportunities and finding you top position on your field and letting you challenge your self in international job potitions etc.
The author comments the site as following:
Welcome to Jobs.Economist.com, the no.1 site for jobseekers looking to secure their dream job. Jobs.Economist.com specialises in matching the right person to the right role and provides all the tools and functionality a jobseeker will need.
Peter Piela
IntBBAk-21
I decided to introduce the network called Doodle. (www.doodle.com)
Doodle is a network where people can arrange meetings without middlemen. It is very easy to use as its slogan tells: “Doodle simplifies scheduling”. The basic idea is to invite people to the site where possible meeting dates are expressed by both or multiple sides. This allows recognizing the free times which benefits all sides. It also has a feature where you can sync your calendar with the network to make it even easier.
The network has also two special features called BookMe and MeetMe. BookMe is aimed more for business related appointments for example hair dresser. It allows the customer to book an appointment through the network without having to contact them otherwise. MeetMe is for personal appointments where your friends can see when you might have some free time to meet them.
I think this network could make arranging meetings much easier than it is done now. For business students this network could be useful to see the schedule of others so rearranging your own schedule for meetings could be easier.
I have not used the network for business related matters, but I have tried it couple of times for meeting friends and I found it to be extremely easy and efficient.
Mikael Ovaska
IntBBAk-21
The Professional Pilots Rumour Network
http://www.pprune.org/
The Professional Pilots Rumour Network is an online forum for pilots and other aviation staff that has around 250,000. Most of the registered members are pilots but the website includes a separate section for cabin crew and ground staff as well. The forum lets anyone start a new topic related to aviation and people log on to the site to read interesting discussions, get tips on open positions and to gossip about recent happenings in the aviation industry.
Functionality
The website is very easy to use. Different topics and sections are immediately displayed on the homepage and it is easy to navigate. The discussions have been separated by topics including flight deck, military aircrew, cabin crew wannabes, engineering and technicians etc. By clicking the topic you are directed to see the full list of sub-topics. To be able to reply or to start a new thread a registration is required but currently new members are accepted only by invitations.
Popularity
With registered members of 250,000 the website is a commonly visited by almost everyone who works in aviation industry. This has made it one of the most popular gossip websites.
Pros:
- Allows interesting discussions and possibly some inside information
- Allows networking with other people around the world in same work positions
- Inside tips for job interviews or open positions in aviation
- Easy to use
Cons:
- To be able to register you must be invited by the administrators
- Anonymity: anyone can post anything
- Information is not always correct
Suvi Koskela
IntBBAk-21
I chose to introduce you a website called Nimenhuuto.com (http://nimenhuuto.com/)
The site is mostly used by amateur sports teams to manage their everyday schedules and keep in touch with the team members.
Here is some statistics for you to realize websites popularity;
Nimenhuuto.com has over 250.000 users in Finland and it is visited every week by 180.000 users. (Alexa.com page rank in Finland is 797, 19.3.2014 http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/nimenhuuto.com)
The website is extremely popular because it has so many essential features that make managing a sports team efficient. For example sports team managers are able to administrate their training and match schedules, send messages to team members and create automatic notifications. Users can also easily create an own home page, import/export calendars, manage squads etc.
Even though the site is not directly related to business students I saw it worth for introducing. In my opinion Nimenhuuto.com is a great example how a simple, non-commercial website idea can turn into a great business when the site is designed well and it brings real value for its users.
Here you can find more information about the features:
http://nimenhuuto.com/esittely
Tuomo Salminen
IntBBAk-21
VisualCV, http://visualcv.com
I chose to write about VisualCV because it was something totally new for me. Since I thought it looked interesting I thought I could learn more about it. Basically, VisualCV offers a multimedia resume, which may help you to stand out and show a more personalized, professional image of yourself. You may use VisualCV for example to network, to develop your business, or to search a job. VisualCV also allows you to add multimedia such as videos or various certificates in your Portfolio. There are a number of ways you can share your profile in social media and you can also control who can see your profile and what information is visible.
VisualCV provides you an opportunity to create a dynamic presentation of yourself as a potential candidate for a job. Employers can search candidates by selecting skills needed and wanted for a job. In VisualCV you may highlight your strengths and special skills so that your possible future employer will find you. But the downside of using this website is that the main point really is branding yourself. This is not what all the employers look for, and also there is a chance your profile may seem unprofessional. The appearance is somewhat outdated and clumsy, but at the same time it is simple enough.
I decided to write about Pingstate ([http://www.pingstate.nu/]), which is the largest virtual meeting ground for creative professionals in Finland. While it started just as a message board for creative minds, it has developed to the largest place for reqruiting new workforce, presenting accomplishments or commenting about the new trends of the industry.
The main reason I wanted to spread the knowledge about Pingstate was its usefulness for business: I have witnessed several cases across different fields of business where Pingstate has been the channel to link individuals (and their companies).
Pingstate probably belongs to a minority of networks because it is operated on a voluntary base without almost no advertisements at all. This means that every person publishing content on the site is equal. It could be described as a meritocracy, where only the earned respect of others will make the difference between people. This is both apositive and a negative thing: you will probably need a lot of time and effort to gain respect in the network, but after that there can be major benefits.
Let's take a real life example: a founder of a company is searching team to make his/her idea happen: via Pingstate it is easy to find graphic designers, but there are also people having expertise in the fields of software developing, sales, marketing and general business. Same has happened between companies, and there are long lasting business-to-business co-operations started originally there.
Kalle Elo
IntBBAk-21
The website I choose to introduce is Kilroy (www.kilroy.fi)
The reason why I chose the particular website was that I have recently become familiar with it and have been extremely satisfied with its services.
Kilroy is a website that offers multiply options and information in two fields, travelling and education. Kilroy Travel section includes all you need for making a trip of your life. From the travel section you are able to find plane tickets, different activities and much more. Kilroy Education on the other hand offers multiple options for exchange studies abroad, full time studying abroad, internship programs and scholarships.
Kilroy Education is extremely helpful for students in different fields of major because it offers you opportunities that are challenging to get, like an internship place in the top company of your field. Kilroy Education offers internship places and exchange studies in universities for example in North America, Australia and Europe. The clear and informative introduction sections of different programs offered helps the student to decide what suits best for ones intentions in career or education field.
My own experiences of Kilroy education have been successful. Kilroy offers help and information for every person individually and helps to deal with bureaucracy and different challenges that might come along the way. For business students Kilroy education is the place where to find something extra value to add to your degree or work experience. When the world becomes more intercultural and business is done in international markets more often it is also important for business students to gain experiment outside their own country to understand better today’s global business world.
GoinGlobal(http://www.goinglobal.com) is a provider of country-specific career and employment information. Its database features 38 Country Career Guides, over 450 000 corporate profiles for companies and more than 16 million job listings around the world which are updated daily. GoinGlobal is used by more than 600 organizations worldwide
Networks object is to encourage and ease employment by providing all necessary information job seeker needs to know to make rational decisions.
GoinGlobal’s Country Career Guides provide professional advice on things like different ways of searching a job, employment trends, professional and social networking connections, CV guidelines, interview tips or cultural advises.
The Key Employer Directory provides corporate profiles in industries like consumer goods, consulting services, finance, and information technology. It also provides information about companies data on sales, revenues, brands, officers, key contacts and more.
Networks value for business student is that he or she can find international jobs and internships, have expert advises related on searching a job or for example use corporate profiles to prepare for interviews.
Kasimir Holopainen
IntBBAk-21
If you are into trading stocks, bonds, ETFs, commodities and other investment vehicles, or simply enjoy following the markets and global economy, you might want to check out a website called Seeking Alpha (seekingalpha.com).
Seeking Alpha is simply a stock market analysis website founded by a former Wall Street analyst David Jackson. Since its inception in 2004 Seeking Alpha has drawn up over 7 000 contributing authors and roughly 20 000 commenters to date.
I find Seeking Alpha to be a very user-friendly website as it is pretty straight forward without any unnecessary functions of gimmicks, just type in the ticker symbol (e.g. AAPL for Apple Inc.) of the stock you want to follow, hit search, and you're good to go! After creating and signing in to your account you're able to create an e-portfolio so that you don't miss any important news, articles, or interesting comments regarding your favourite stocks. You are also able to follow an author or a commentator whose articles or comments you enjoy reading. Vast majority of the articles are well written with informed and sophisticated insight and discussion, thus making them interesting and useful reading. Seeking Alpha can also be used on your mobile device by installing an app that is offered for both Android and iPhone users.
Seeking Alpha may not open doors nor create important contacts for business students entering the labour market, but I believe that the site can be very useful, educating, and entertaining for a person who is interested in improving his/her expertise in the field of finance, especially when it comes to investing and managing wealth.
-Mikael Strandman IntBBAk-21-
IntBBak-21
Katri Peippo
Odesk is a leading global workplace (online) for clients to hire freelancers in various fields.
https://www.odesk.com
The name Odesk is a short version of online desk which describes the company’s
philosophy to enable anyone to work anywhere, anytime. The idea is basically that the clients post jobs and the freelancers a.k.a contactors are able to bid jobs after creating a proper profile. There are several work categories involved, to name a few,; sales&marketing, web development and writing & translation. Currently Odesk has over 5 million registered freelancers and over 1,5 million jobs posted.
(https://www.odesk.com/info/about/)
This is a great concept and there is obviously demand for this kind of workplace, as can be seen in the number of registered users.
Pros
- Easy to use, registration and bidding for jobs are free, registration via Facebook or LinkedIn-account is also possibly which gives reliability.
- A great tool for a career springboard especially for international, by creating several international contacts.
-It might be a valid learning step toward an entrepreneurship; to get a touch of working independently and the ability to find pontential clients and contacts.
-It is a great way to learn how to market yourself and your skills according to that you should be able to somehow stand out from the other applicants.
-When applying a certain job you are able to see how many others are applying the same job and some applicants even have a public profile, so you are able to see their previous work history in Odesk, which helps you to define the skills required for the job and to define your current ”skill level” when comparing to others.
There are also some defects preventing Odesk to be fully professional:
Cons
- As there are so many qualified freelancers applying the same job, it might not be the most qualified person getting the job, more likely it will be the one who is willing to do the job with the lowest payment.
- If the work is paid low, the freelancer might not use all his potential and skills to conduct the work in the best possible way.
- There might be fraudsters in Odesk, even though the work is not conducted but ”the contract of employment” has been done Odesk charges 10% of the deal.
The website I choose to introduce is Instagram.
Instagram (instagram.com) is a social networking site, where it´s users can share photos and videos, follow other users and comment and like their photos. Photos can also be shared to a variety of other social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter etc. It also allows the users to apply digital filters on their photos. With using hashtags (#), users can easily discover each other and different photographs.
Instagram is created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. It was launched in 2010 and has today over 100 million users around the world. Instagram is available for Android, iOS and Windows Phone.
Many celebrities and bloggers use Instagram for promoting themselves. Like other similar social networking sites, Instagram can also be used for advertisement and is an effective marketing tool.
Jemina Seppälä
IntBBak-21
Xing
Xing is the social network designed for business professionals to interact around globe. Xing offers a platform where professionals from different industries can meet up, find jobs, colleagues, new assignments, cooperation partners, experts and generate business ideas. Users can exchange opinions and point of views with each other and organize meetings. Xing has approximately 14 million members. Xing helps its members to find contacts, specific expertise and knowledge from all around the globe. For a University student Xing offers easily accessible information and contacts regarding for example interesting job opportunities.
With Xing it is possible to get in touch with the knowledge of those experts that might not be familiar names to you but whose input can be crucial for a certain project or an idea. A student who is going abroad, either to study or to work, Xing helps them to find native professional and this way a student is able blend in with the new business culture by having a familiar contact.
Members can upload documents about themselves and control the information what they wish to share for other users. A possible minus might be that the members are usually highly skilled professionals, so for a student the competition regarding the open job positions might be tight.
Sign in up for Xing is free, but in order to become a Premium Member you need to pay starting from 6.35€ per month. Overall Xing combines functions from LinkedIn and Facebook offering a highly useful tool for professionals or for upcoming professionals.
-Camilla Stenvall IntBBAk-21
Telegram is a secure messaging app from the founders of VK, Russias largest social network, VK is similiar to Facebook by many ways.
Telegram is a new messaging app that offers speed, security and features such as secret chats with end-to-end encryption and self-destructing messages.
Telegram was launched 18 months ago and has been improved at the same time because of the NSA problem and the creators want to keep it really secure, but also easy to use at the same time.
The app’s secret chats, a separate feature from its ordinary chats, use end-to-end encryption.
Telegram wants to earn users trust by operating as a non-profit, open platform initiative.
Telegram’s founders say the app will remain non-profit because that enables them to avoid commercial and legal pressure. If they eventually need funds to scale up, Telegram will ask for donations from users or make additional services available as in-app purchases.
Telegram’s team wants the messaging app to stand out by offering speed and security, as well as reliance on crowd-sourcing and community-driven efforts. This is important in future as now when Facebook owns also Whatsapp there is no way to know where the messages go in the end.
The future of the company lies in voice communication and it will be interesting to see how Durov brothers will figure it out so it is functional.
Marko Savela IntBBA-3
I will be reviewing BranchOut. BranchOut can be accessed via https://branchout.com/ using one’s facebook login credentials or via facebook using the BranchOut application.
The concept behind BranchOut is that everyone one of us has business connections whether we realise it or not. Only by being aware of those connections can one hope to benefit from them. BranchOut parses through the user’s facebook friends list and the users friends’ friends lists and by doing so, creating a vast network of first and second degree connections containing information on everyone’s place(s) of employment and job title(s). The user can then search his network of connection for people, job titles and companies.
The greatest strength and highest added value of BranchOut is that it taps directly into the world’s largest social networking site, facebook, and turns all of your friends into potential business contacts. As a result, BranchOut currently has over 800 million profiles. This is especially valuable to (business) students, who meet new people and forge many connections throughout their studies. Upon graduating, students will end up in all sorts of jobs, in all sorts of companies, all over the world. Keeping up with everyone on their past and current jobs would normally be impossible, but with BranchOut, its users will always have access to accurate information on valuable business connections and no user will have to think twice on which of their connections to turn to in a situation.
A student could use BranchOut for finding a job in a specific company or a specific job in some company. The student would search his BranchOut network either for the company or the job title. BranchOut then displays his first and second degree connections that are associated with either the searched company or the job title. If the connection is a first degree type, the student can directly ask his friend for advice, help, a (letter of) recommendation, etc. If the connection is a second degree type, then BranchOut will show him which of his first degree connections he could approach for an introduction to the second degree connection.
By: Eetu Rantanen, IntBBAk-21
Edublogs.org is the world's most popular blogging service. It has been created for education purposes only and it is safe and secure. Your blog can be either private or public. There is no advertising and no inappropriate content involved.
The main idea when Edublogs was founded in 2005 was to find a way for students and teachers from all over the world come together and start collaborating with each other. To share your ideas and learn from the best. Make use of blogging, share your ideas in the classroom and to encourage learning. In addition to Student blogs, teachers can also use Edublogs for professional development. Edublogs offers teachers different challenges in which an educator can better him-/herself.
Edublogs has an co-operation agreement with some of the biggest education institutes in the world including Stanford University, Cornell University and City University London.
The best thing about Edublogs is that it offers you a chance to collaborate with students from different parts of the world and to learn from your peers. Of course when you read the blogs you have to be critical towards the information as they can contain inaccuracies and false information.
Edublogs has come a long way in the last decade now it hosts over 2 million weblogs from all over the world.
I decided to do my homework based on a networking site named Quora.com
Quora is a question-and-answer website where questions are created, answered, edited and organized by its community of users.
Quora requires users to register with their real names rather than a screen name. Quora users may also log into Quora with their Google, Twitter or Facebook accounts using the OpenID technology. Quora users can upvote or downvote answers, they can also suggest edits to existing answers provided by other users. The largest group of Quora users is located in Silicon Valley, followed by New York City.
I think that this is a very useful website for everybody. Noted to the fact that questions are also answered by professionals who know their field so you can really rely on the information you gain.
Quora is also a very good way to find quick answers either by asking the question yourself or just by searching the answer from available ones.
I think that this site is beneficial to everyone!
Monkey Tie
I will introduce you a new recruitment website in France (but they try to enlarge it worldwide): Monkey Tie.
I chose this website because it is not a classic recruitment site, they don’t ask a resume!
To create your profile, your basic information is asked, but then you have to do 2 personality test in order to understand exactly who you are and what you are looking for. Firms can also edit there profile and fill what kind of candidate they want.
Some job offers are posted and you can apply!
The positive aspects of this website:
- They want the recruiters not to focus only on studies and experiences (even if you can add it in your profile). This is a new way of thinking (especially in France where the diplomas are really important).
- Personality tests are offered for free. It can be a good value for young students who don’t have the opportunity to do it. It can be the moment to ask you the good questions about who you are and what do you expect.
- This website is growing really fast and won several prices
- It is easy and quick to subscribe and edit a profile (less than 30 min)
The negative aspects:
-It is not famous enough to have a lot of job offers
- The personality tests can be wrong (and you can only do it 2 times)
- Most of the offers are in France at the moment (because this start-up was created in 2012)
Because the design of this website is good, I like to visit it often and look for a job. This service is free so it is easy to develop your network and to be in contact with firms.
The link of this website: https://www.monkey-tie.com/dashboard_candidat?lang=fr
Even though I am an occasional user of Facebook, I have to say that I was not aware of the existence of this network until I read this short analysis.
Judging from the analysis written by Eetu, BranchOut is really easily accessible network where people can connect with other professionals and companies. Different companies can also find new employees and people are able to search various jobs. It is easy to conclude that all the above mentioned is just what student and different professionals look from a good network. Due to the above, it is also very likely that I will use BranchOut somewhere in the future.
Toni Surakka
IntBBAk-21
Through reading Anniina's analysis I learned that such networks as Chegg are combining on a single webpage the ability to sell books, find internships and e-textbooks, attend on different online courses and get 24/7 study help.
In regards to my own studies, I think Chegg would be really useful network for me if I need to search solutions to some study problems or if I need to find an internship. I also think that it is really useful that through Chegg I have the ability to read various e-textbooks. It is likely that I am going to visit and utilize this network somewhere in the future.
Toni Surakka
IntBBAk-21
Posted the home assignment to OIS instead of here.
Here it is,
Jaakko Jääskeläinen
BranchOut
BranchOut is a virtual networking site that utilizes Facebook. Purpose of BranchOut is to employees and employers to find possible jobs or employees. One of the good sides of BranchOut is that it is very easy and conventional transition from Facebook to Branch out. It is very convenient way to start your job search. BranchOut utilizes your current contacts via your Facebook account and you might find someone familiar to you who are looking to hire new employee or the other way around. I see this as a good recruitment tool for especially part time jobs or one time only gigs. It uses your already existing profile and your contacts to search for jobs.
One feature is that it automatically transfers your profile data such as work experience and profile picture. It does not show your conversations or status updates which I find very good feature. One downside of this shared information with Facebook is that people often post pictures and write about their leisure time activities. For some employees, this can give too carefree image in my opinion and can tangle your job searching. Another problem with BranchOut is that it relies heavily on your current contacts. If your network is starting or still growing, it might be hard to land that job spot you are searching for.
Most of the jobs that were available seemed part time or one time gigs only. Also many full time jobs were available after some more searching. This network site is a great idea to for young people turning 18 or looking for summer jobs. I feel like this can be very useful tool for young people who want to become active in work life. This can bring you the essential experience in some areas that can separate yourself from other applicants in your first “serious” job search.
Matti wrote interesting stuff about Monster.
I've never used website like that before for searching a job. I feel like trying the site out and see how easy it is to approach employees.
Eetu brought out interesting facts about BranchOut that I didn't consider in my work.
I found Reddit as very useful and interesting, which was introduced by Joonas. Instant upload! Topics are current and easy to use.
I haven't heard about VisualCV, which Pihla wrote about, so it is new and interesting. This description is good because it includes the most important features, which explain what the website is about.
A question that came to my mind was whether this signifcantly differs from LinkedIn. Additionally, does VisualCV provide some additional value and should it be used instead of LinkedIn or in addition to it?
I think the website was desrcibed in a concise and clear way. It was also mentioned that the site is slightly outdated and other potential limitations were pointed out, so aspects were discussed well. Perhaps the use of VisualCV is if additional aspects such as videos etc. want to be included in order to create a more diverse and dynamic profile.
Anniina Reis
IntBBAk-21
Katri's choice of topic Odesk is also something I had not heard of. I think this desricption of a network was interesting in the sense that it was something different. Perhaps a freelancer job is not relevant to everyone, but then again you never know. In such an environment in which people telecommute a lot, it may indeed be useful to have a website, which enables working anywhere and anytime.
Perhaps some work is simply contracted out for the duration of a single project, and then freelancing is a good option. Maybe it also helps to have a specific website aimed for this, instead of having to find something among other jobs.
All in all, I think the description of the network was well presented. Pros and cons were also clearly described. I don't know whether this is of immediate use for me personally, but it is good to be aware of different possibilities.
Anniina Reis
IntBBAk-21
In response to Pihla Seppälä’s post regarding VisualCV,
I found the idea of creating a multimedia CV an interesting idea. In case an individual is applying for a job in a creative industry, submitting a creatively savvy CV will surely put the applicant ahead of others. As for the other elements of the VisualCV service, they appeared to be more or less the same as in other CV oriented websites, i.e. upload your CV, send it to potential employers or search for potential employees CVs.
In response to Katri Peippo’s post regarding Odesk,
Odesk sounds like an interesting opportunity for freelancers, however, its use might be fairly limited temporarily freelancing individuals. As Odesk is about short term employment, and by taking into account the cons that Katri mentioned about its operations, I doubt it will host truly talented freelancers for long before they move their services elsewhere. I, however, find Katri’s argument about learning to market yourself a truly viable one. As the job markets are becoming constantly more saturated, it is vital to learn how to differentiate yourself from the rest. I believe that Odesk will not only help to differentiate yourself, but to also learn from others’ mistakes and how to avoid them in your personal and business life.
By: Eetu Rantanen, IntBBAk-21
Eetu Rantanen wrote about BranchOut which felt like a useful tool in the future since if we manage to keep our FB friendship we would probably end up finding someone useful in the future through this service.
Anniina Reis wrote about Chegg which was a new tool for me. The best part of it is that there is help for homework. Probably a site that I will actually use.
In response to Eetu Rantanen's post about BranchOut:
I find this network very interesting since I usually don't spend that much time on LinkedIn. BranchOut seems like a way of combining my Facebook network in a similar way than LinkedIn.
In response to Marko Savela's post about Telegram:
The one detail caught my attention was the ability to use end-to-end like encryption while chatting. It also seems like more secure from NSA, since it isn't developed by an American company. This is definitely a service worth testing for me.
Kalle Elo
IntBBAk-21
I was not familiar with Chegg before so I decided to comment on Anniina's post about it. Her post was very informative and the different aspects were well considered. The overall impression is that Chegg is very useful for business students and therefore relevant for the topic.
Pihla Seppälä
IntBBAk-21
There were two sites that I had never heard before and I see them very usufull to know; Doodle.com and BranchOut.
Mikael Ovaskas choise for network was Doodle, which is a great network for business students to manage their schedules.
Eetu Rantanen introduced us network called Branchout. It is a great network for business students to start their job search. I recommend all of you to take a closer look at it.
-Tuomo Salminen
I found Jeminas Instagram very interesting and a good way to contact new people and business contacts since many people that post their photos and videos also offer their contact information.
Facebook is also a good contact center for many thing. It also has it limits but still offers a good environment for finding new business contacts.
Peter Piela
INTBBAK-21
Peter's The Economist job search seemed very interesting. It is good that you can sort jobs by salary etc.
Kasimir Holopainen
INTBBAK-21
I think Anniina Reis’ review of Chegg was interesting, the idea was not totally new for me but it differs from other similar websites by offering multiple other services than just homework help.
I think there might be some "misuse" of this network, though obviously it is not fault of the network but some individuals.
Something other that I found current is IternMatch for students to find internship places. The site looks professional to me, have not yet have time to actually tried it out but Ida’s preview araised my interest to consider it as a useful tool, for searching internship places in the future.
Branchout review written by Eetu was very insightful and brought out interesting facts about the website. It sounds like a truly useful tool for all students and since it can be used via Facebook it should be easy and simple to access.
Pihla Seppälä
IntBBAk-21
I have not heard of StudiVZ page, it seems to be really good social media but certainly can't compete with Facebook, which is also originally a student network.
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