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:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 400 of 414 Newer› Newest»Eetu introduced us a website called BranchOut. I find it very interesting. The idea that "everyone of us has business connections whether we realise it or not" sounds almost too good to be true! It seems easy and useful but I was thinking about the privacy. If you do not want to be seen in BranchOut, is that even possible?
The other network I was not so familiar with was Xing. The idea seems to be pretty similar than the Monster Finland's idea that I introduced. However the idea that Xing combines functions from LinkedIn and Facebook is a positive difference.
Matti Ruohisto
IntBBAk-21
Anna Pavlova BEBsv-3
Name: Odnoklassniki
http://www.odnoklassniki.ru/
Odnoklassniki is Russian social network service and it is really popular. As I know all users are Russians. The main aim is to find old classmates or friends. Mostly it is for people who finished their school/university quite long time ago that they already lost contact with classmates, so through this social network they could find them.
I would like to tell about my experience. I used my page on this social network about 5 years, but I didn’t really need it. I mean we have facebook, vkontakte. This is more for young people. My opinion that Odnoklassniki is really very interesting social network for people I would say who is older than 30 years old. For example, my mother don’t use any other social networks as much as Odnoklassniki. It’s kind of Russian facebook for people after 30.
How is it working? It’s easy you just need to make registration, put some information about school you finished and when did you finish it. After you can search people, who have been studying with u in the same school and time. This is how this social network works. Additionally, you can make a lot of things there as writing status, gifting online present to your friends, chat with them or play in different kind of games. Finally I would like to say that the main lesson from this social network is that it doesn’t matter for whom you are doing social network, if it is good. Young people don’t use it, but still it is very popular.
Viadeo http://us.viadeo.com/en/
Viadeo is a french professional social network presents worldwide with more than 55 million users.
Viadeo is a social network that aims to bring together professionals where there are mainly 2 types of profile; people looking for a job and people looking to expand their professional network.; seek business opportunities, find new contacts (searching for new customers, partners, suppliers, etc).
It allows create a profile, to come into contact with other users; recommend a user to another, etc.
There are:
- "Groups": discussion forums, which allow members to discuss and express their views on professional issues, the uses are many and varied, the groups can be associative, professional, student, entrepreneurial, cultural ... Example of community on Viadeo in Estonia could be "EBS".
- Experts: allow users to ask questions oriented business. Professionals acquire the status of experts based on the relevance of their answers.
The value for business students: is to get in touch with many other workers, create a network describing his career and his interests.
To make the best use of membership in such community is to have a complete profile, to participate to the groups and to be active!
Pluses:
- You can determine who can see your profile, very useful for espionage mode (competitors) or that way prospecting (customers, partners).
- Viadeo is friendlier and it is easier to start a dialogue.
- Many recruiters use Viadeo
- It is an excellent space to promote work done and a career.
Minuses:
- Mainly French
- Similar to Linkedin but smaller and less international.
I choose the website “Kickstarter”, this American website was launched in 2009 by Perry Chen. Kickstarter allowed people and entrepreneurship to realize their project.
The aim is to post your business idea and the Internet users can put money on your project.
Each idea is based on different categories for example movies, video games; science, food, social etc. There is a deadline for each project and a certain amount to reach.
If this amount is not reached until the deadline, the “investors” will have their money back.
The investors don’t attempt any return on their investment on the project, but usually the owner of the project send to his investors the first product of his production or some T shirt with the logo of the company and of course a letter of thanks.
About the website, this one make profit by taking 5% f the investment of each project.
In my point of view this website is perfect for students who have an idea about a project but don’t have enough funds of investment, here they can have a chance to create their own business with the help of random people. And obviously this is a business with virtual network.
My webpage http://letmewatchthis2k.com (http://classes.gregorylea.evitae.org/)
Quentin
Delgado
Pinterest (http://www.pinterest.com)
Pinterest is a virtual playground for adults and children alike. Getting its start in the winter of 2009.
When you make an account on Pinterest, you pick out subjects which you are most interested in such as, " Recipes, Fashion, Home Decor, People", etc.
Once you have selected your interests you are pointed into the direction of people that like the same things and you, in turn, following them and what they are pinning onto their boards.
Once it is re-pinned onto one of your own boards you may go back to it at any time and see where that picture came from and similar ideas or items. With your online boards, you name them any way that you would like.
Pluses :
- allow to have unlimited boards, so you could have a cookbook board, home improvements board, outfit board etc. and have all of your new ideas neatly in one place.
- can start to follow anyone you want, if you like what they are pinning and have similar styles. When you invite someone to join Pinterest, they will automatically follow you.
Minuses :
- Pinterest is not enough developped currently to be sure make a profit in return.
- There are not enough notifications to stimulate the user and allow to use Pinterest daily.
As for business on Pinterest you can create special accounts that makes it easy to inspire your community. If you are an established brand, small business, non-profit organization, blogger or publication, you can join Pinterest and also learn about what works for businesses on Pinterest, view case studies, and see our website widgets and buttons.
Businesses also use Pinterest to connect with their audience. There you will find Pinterest tools and resources relevant to you, and see examples of how other businesses are using Pinterest.
As simple as it sounds, best practices for using Pinterest for business purposes center around Pinning like a regular user. Most importantly, this includes:
1. Pinning from various sources rather than one specific site.
2. Pinning from within Pinterest to engage with others – Pinning is one of the most social activities on Pinterest and it is how any user really builds his/her network of followers.
3. Creating at least a few boards that cover a broad range of interests, rather than maintaining a single board devoted to one topic.
For businesses, Pinning can be a great way to highlight aspects of your brand that may not come to mind at first when people consider your brand. Pinterest can also be a great tool to learn what your audience/users/customers want and like.
The use of groups on LinkedIn.
I chose LinkedIn because I think it is the best virtual network for professional and networking goals.
LinkedIn is a social networking site that allows registered members to establish networks of people they know and trust professionally.
A LinkedIn member’s profile page, which emphasizes employment history and education, has a limited number of customizable modules. Basic membership for LinkedIn is free. Network members are called “connections.”
A member can enter as many groups as he wants to.
Some groups are open, others require to be accepted by the group manager.
I will here highlight the use of LinkedIn groups because they represent efficient communities inside LinkedIn and a good opportunity to develop e-reputation regarding a key subject and to meet new people linked to this subject.
I also think LinkedIn groups are by far the most powerful aspect of LinkedIn.
I have seen people build their entire business, market a number of products and services, sell out their paid events, and become thought leaders in their niche all around a single LinkedIn group.
Pluses of involving into LinkedIn groups:
- Leverage on your documented profile to find relevant connections within your professional field
- Develop your expertise and leadership in one field
- Increase your reputation regarding your peers
- Easily become a content publisher
- Drive traffic to your profile and website
- Get updates and news
- Receive job offers
Minuses:
- I take times to get involved as a content publisher
- You have to make sure what you say is relevant because it will impact your reputation a lot
- Many mail notifications to open if you want to follow what’s happening
I would like to introduce a business website www.enterprenuer.com. So it is a forum-based site for entrepreneurs and small business owners who are passionate about promoting business for themselves and others from all over the world. This website is also extremely useful for young enterprenuers because there they can make really essential aquaintences there which will undoubtedly help them in their future to succeed. Moreover there they can with an extremely wide variety of start-up basics, business ideas, instructions how to make a valuable business plan to attract the investors. In addition to that this website gives an opportunity to create an open forum where already successful businessmen can consult you on your questions and support your business ideas. Moreover you can find investors there. If you have a well planned business plan you can upload it there. If somebody becomes interested in it he will absolutely contact you and may by finance your project.
Although the site map is not really bit you can find there a lot of information connected with some specific fields in business. Also, there is a possibility to by a franchise and follow the latest news. For example the most growing once, the most successful once. Because of all this information you can make a brief forecast of the business weather for future in order to make the right plans and to succeed.
To conclude I would like to say that from my point of view this website is really useful for young enterprenuers and very easy in using. So I recommend everyone who is interested in making valuable aquaintences and gain very useful information connected with their business questions.
Veniamin Musarov
Int-BBa-1b
Anna Pavlova said...
Only now I realised how many great business networks I didn't know such as BranchOut, startupgarag....
I think some of them should became as every day using networks, because it's giving a lot of job and business opportunities not only in Estonia, but also abroad. (Started to use linkedin)
Solomon Luoma
Social Networking
I’m making this social network home task about Xing. Xing is social network for business communities in order to connect different people who are in business of seeking employment, new business ideas and development. It also offers group discussion, own personal profile and arranges events. Xing was founded in Hamburg, Germany in 2003 and it also has it’s headquarter there. It has user from more than 200 countries but main activities are happening in Europe. You can sign up for free but, but free account is very limited unlike premium membership it is also available in smartphones. Xing is very similar with Linkedln and Viadeo.
I personally have been using Xing for last four months. To access is very easy and the way how they have developed the page is also very simple and easy. Basically everything is just one click away. Unlike other sites that are promoting how easy it is for them to connect the employer and employee. The homepage is basically divided with six different links that are going to serve you home, projects, jobs, groups, event and companies. For example if you are going to open the group’s link you are going to be able to find many different business groups i.e. banking club, IT connection and selling group etc. As you can see it is very well organized in various sections in order for you to find exactly what you are looking for. I must say that Xing is very useful network tool for business people and not just in terms of founding employers but because of this group possibilities it would be very good for example for the ones who are seeking joint ventures and so on.
However I do find it very funny how they have separated the free membership and premium one. The premium costs about 4.95 for month for three month membership and if you take 12 month membership then it is 3.95 per month. If you look what they are going to offer you for this membership is rather ridiculous. The advertise that if you join this premium membership then you are going to be able to see who has visited in your profile, faster searcher thanks to the filter, send messages to non-contact and ad free profile. Are these thing worth of paying? No! All of these should be caverned in non- premium version, because the premium version is not basically offering anything that has something to do with actually job seeking or networking or creating communities. I personally don’t see any reason to pay for something which should already include in order to make me comfortable to use this site. This company has a revenue of 53.4 million and actual profits 7.2 million. I strongly believe that they should have capacity to innovate some other ways to make money.
I also must say that if this web site was founded in 2006 they have not but much efforts to innovate this site. Regardless of any of the networking possibilities it still remains mostly just job seeking web site. They have not really brought it down to the social networking level. I must acknowledge the fact that this web sites is very capable to connect you to the job market all over the world. Personally I believe that they should try to improve the social mechanism even more so that that social networking would be much easier and faster
Hugo Bastide
Benefits of LinkedIn
It allows us to meet new people often sorted by groups, categorized and enables employers to find potential employees without going through headhunters, announcements, or any business, which can save them a lot of money.
LinkedIn also allows you to build relationships between customers and suppliers and have information on companies, products and people. It can also be part of many groups that exchange on topics of interest to users.
Generally you can build your professional profile and ensure that your name appears in the top search results. Create and maintain a wide network of reliable professionals. Find and connect with colleagues and alumni. Find some information on other companies. Access to powerful search engines to identify and contact the people you need. Making the most out of your network. Discover new opportunities.
Disadvantages LinkedIn
We can have a bad management of our personal page. One can be a disadvantage since there showing too many details about their private lives or irrelevant information, they can get a bad reputation and have more difficulty finding a job using the site.
In addition, some companies feel it is necessary to be able to see the profile their future employees. Thus, they do not will consider applications from people with no profile on the site.
In summary, social networks bring us a considerable number of benefits and have completely revolutionized the relationship between individuals. However, the user should always keep in mind that there are disadvantages to using social networks and we must be careful in the information they are revealed.
Recent development
When a user clicks on the News heading in their LinkedIn toolbar, they now get a splash screen that outlines the different categories or channels of news they can subscribe to. There are some fairly obvious examples such as Economy, Entrepreneurship and Leadership, as well as broader categories such as Healthcare, Technology and Social Media — and a few somewhat more unusual channels too, like “Things I Carry” and “My Best Career Mistake.”
LinkedIn may not have created a “massive media empire” — as one rather breathless piece posted (on LinkedIn Today, of course) described it — but there is no question the site has media-related ambitions, and it is following through on them. And its ability to target specific users based on their interest graph gives it a potentially powerful weapon that other media entities lack.
COMMENTS ON COLLEAGUES’ POSTS ON SOCIAL/NETWORKING PLATFORMS
By Pierre Collura IntBBAk 21
BRANCH OUT
During our class on Saturday 5th of April 2014 our colleague Mr. Eetu Rantanen introduced to us the recruitment and job seeking platform BranchOut. The functions and the concept behind this resource are astounding. I was particularly interested and fascinated by the function that allows job seekers to leverage on their acquaintances’ contacts to identify the most suitable job opportunity. Furthermore, this technology enables the parties involved in the interaction to receive and share all the adequate information, and consequently enjoying the benefits grated by an extremely transparent environment.
ODNOKLASSNIKI
This example provided by Ms. Anna Pavlova is a brilliant testament of a social network that targets an extremely precise niche market. It is interesting to note that nowadays we can identify a trend in which the number of social media platforms designed for a nice market is growing exponentially. Moreover, an increasing number of users are moving away from the more established choices, such as Facebook and Linkedin – in Europe and US – and are opting for social platforms that target a niche market. Furthermore, another interesting remark is that the users of this platform are people older than 30 years old, which means that the target market of this platforms is the population that is defined as non-digital natives.
COMMENTS ON COLLEAGUES’ POSTS ON SOCIAL/NETWORKING PLATFORMS
By Pierre Collura IntBBAk 21
BRANCH OUT
During our class on Saturday 5th of April 2014 our colleague Mr. Eetu Rantanen introduced to us the recruitment and job seeking platform BranchOut. The functions and the concept behind this resource are astounding. I was particularly interested and fascinated by the function that allows job seekers to leverage on their acquaintances’ contacts to identify the most suitable job opportunity. Furthermore, this technology enables the parties involved in the interaction to receive and share all the adequate information, and consequently enjoying the benefits grated by an extremely transparent environment.
ODNOKLASSNIKI
This example provided by Ms. Anna Pavlova is a brilliant testament of a social network that targets an extremely precise niche market. It is interesting to note that nowadays we can identify a trend in which the number of social media platforms designed for a nice market is growing exponentially. Moreover, an increasing number of users are moving away from the more established choices, such as Facebook and Linkedin – in Europe and US – and are opting for social platforms that target a niche market. Furthermore, another interesting remark is that the users of this platform are people older than 30 years old, which means that the target market of this platforms is the population that is defined as non-digital natives.
ANALYSIS OF A SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORM
By Pierre Collura IntBBAk 21
ISport Connect (http://www.isportconnect.com/)
ISport Connect is a platform that combines business networking with niche broadcasting and information services. This site was initially designed to create an environment in which sport executives could find and interact with each other. However, the founders of this platform saw an opportunity in implementing additional functions regarding niche broadcasting and information services.
Today, ISport Connect is platform that is enjoying an exponential growth. In this environment you can connect with other sport executives and receive the latest news regarding the sport and entertainment industry. Furthermore, this platforms offers to its users the possibility to find a job or recruit qualified professionals.
The platform does offer a great variety of interesting and useful functions, however due to the constant improvements that the professionals from IT department are implementing the registration process may suffer of bugs hence the registration experience can be severely stifled at times.
The goal of this company is to dominate the sport industry business networking industry and based on their predictions they could be able to reach this goal in the foreseeable future.
I wanted to write about Meetup because I hadn´t heard of it before although it is among the top 15 most popular social networking sites. I also liked the idea and found it very easy and useful way to meet new people in the same area.
Meetup is a social networking portal which was launched in 2002 in the U.S. It has about 40 million monthly visitors and it is 11th most popular social networking site in March 2015. The idea of this website is to find and join groups unified by a common interest such as education, profession or leisure time activities. Users can look for the groups by entering their city and topic, and Meetup shows them all the groups related to their topic and location. People can also search for the interesting groups without any specific topic and set up their own groups. Meetup charges some monthly fee from the groups´ administrators.
Meetup is a good portal to get know new people and create social networks. It can also help people to share their knowledge and learn new things and skills. It links together people with common interests and might be helpful to find potential business partners. Meetup is also a good website to find new people at new places. For example exchange students could use it to socialize faster and create new friendships. Meetup can help people to create even stronger networks than many other social networking-sites because it is based on face-to-face communication and personal meetings. I believe that this website includes huge potential in getting know new people and building important relationships that might help also in professional purposes. Meetup is also very international networking-site because it operates in various cities around the world.
By Viivu Virtamo IntBBAk-3
I am a member in social network called Levo League http://www.levo.com.
Levo League, founded 2012 is one of the leading social networks. It has 9 million users and 100 companies on board, clients such as Pepsi and Walt Disney Co. The founder Caroline Ghosn was named as one of the most creative people in the business in 2013 and one of the 44 female founders every entrepreneur should know. Levo League has created buzz in the media; it’s a start-up social network that raised 8 million capital from angel investors. Few of the well-known investors are also involved as mentors, such as Sheryl Sandberg ;Chief Operating Officer of Facebook.
One of the best functions of any social networking sites is the passion of sharing. Levo League is producing career advice and sharing job opportunities, yet focusing on connecting young business women with mentors. The mentors share their personal experiences and give advice, building real-life relationships in virtual networks. They publish articles about the professional benefits of sorority membership and a weekly video chat called “Office Hours” with business leaders from various industries. They also have 30 Local Levo Chapters that connect local chapters offline. They host real-world networking events worldwide to foster connections between the members. This is especially useful for women business students who are deciding their major. To a company, Levo League creates an opportunity to strengthen their employment brand.
Levo League is not only socializing but also networking in a business sense; it has huge opportunity to grow internationally. Their future plan is to develop the first virtual mentor for their mobile app. They want to “ put Sheryl Sandberg into everyone’s pocket”. Keeping in mind that 80 percent of all jobs are found through personal connections it is vital to students to network as early as possible; it might be a key to success. Experiencing the work environment in forehand is a great way to learn how to apply the knowledge you have learned at school into the real life.
Comments on colleagues’ posts
ISTC
Anne-Mai Kivimägi wrote about The International Student Travel Confederation (ISTC) which I myself found very interesting.
I would like to elaborate that since most of us have The International Student Identity Card (ISIC), the information about the ISTC community is very relevant and useful.
All in all, I found Anne-Mai’s post helpful in terms of getting to know one of the many benefits of ISIC card and the information was clearly presented.
Viadeo
Claire Levi-Bouquet introduced a completely new network site for me. I hadn’t heard about Viadeo before, but the comprehensive information about the network and its functions got me curious in its activities.
The idea of making an own discussion forum on Viadeo for EBS students was excellent and invigorating. I personally would find it useful for example to bring the students in Estonia and Finland more together. Also, I think that it would be really nice to change opinions with each other with the help of virtual networks.
What is Linkedin.com?
LinkedIn is a social networking site aimed for the business community. It is the largest professional network and with LinkedIn you can connect with other professionals around the world and share your opinions, knowledge, and experience with other. LinkedIn is available in twenty four different languages and it has more than 347 million members in over 200 countries and territories. Over 39 million of its members are students or recent graduates.
Pros:
-You can get discovered easily by employers and business partners
-LinkedIn is a great way to stay up-to-date with the news from your industry
-Connecting with other social media sites users can link their Facebook, Twitter or other social media accounts to LinkedIn
Cons:
-Overwhelming factor – LinkedIn has so many components so it can be overwhelming in the beginning
-Weak privacy – Anyone can see who you worked for, where you graduated from and what you have done before.
-Search is often accompanied with your Facebook page – If you have posted something on Facebook, it may backfire you on your LinkedIn profile
-When a person adds you on LinkedIn, the person can have access to the other users in your network and they could contact them for their personal benefits.
-Lots of spam – Many users in LinkedIn use it as an advertising tool
-Time consuming - Beginning requires a lot of time and effort to get your connections flowing.
What is Linkedin.com?
LinkedIn is a social networking site aimed for the business community. It is the largest professional network and with LinkedIn you can connect with other professionals around the world and share your opinions, knowledge, and experience with other. LinkedIn is available in twenty four different languages and it has more than 347 million members in over 200 countries and territories. Over 39 million of its members are students or recent graduates.
Pros:
-You can get discovered easily by employers and business partners
-LinkedIn is a great way to stay up-to-date with the news from your industry
-Connecting with other social media sites users can link their Facebook, Twitter or other social media accounts to LinkedIn
Cons:
-Overwhelming factor – LinkedIn has so many components so it can be overwhelming in the beginning
-Weak privacy – Anyone can see who you worked for, where you graduated from and what you have done before.
-Search is often accompanied with your Facebook page – If you have posted something on Facebook, it may backfire you on your LinkedIn profile
-When a person adds you on LinkedIn, the person can have access to the other users in your network and they could contact them for their personal benefits.
-Lots of spam – Many users in LinkedIn use it as an advertising tool
-Time consuming - Beginning requires a lot of time and effort to get your connections flowing.
1 . Meshly, is a swedish App, that could be downloaded with iOS and Android.
2. This app has been created to connect business people in the same area (during events, meetups or in airports). It works the same way than Tinder (dating app) by using geolocation, but has to be connected to LinkedIn and not Facebook. People can “like” or “unlike” the profile of the other people. When two people “like” the profile of the other person, it says that they have a match, they can talk and eventually meet then.
3. Business Students can meet professionals and increase their network easily by using this app. It could be very interesting for students who created a start-up if they want to meet potential investors and for other students if they want to find a job/internship somewhere.
4. I personally used it at Slush event in Helsinki. Slush attracted 14000 people in 2014 from the business area, using Meshly to see people I could be interested to talk about was very helpful. For example, this is how I met one of the co-founder of Blablacar to discuss about a potential internship there next year.
http://www.meshly.io/
Meshly is a new business app for Iphone and Android. Meshly uses data from LinkedIn so when you sign up, your LinkedIn data with picture is in Meshly. Meshly is a new start-up company and the app was launched in 2014. The app is free of charge.
Main idea is that Meshly mixes up LinkedIn and Tinder. It finds you the best "matches" nearby based on user's interests and info data that user has in LinkedIn. Users can follow other users.
The point is, that it should be easier to connect with people since they are nearby. In events it might work even better when you can catch up with interesting business contacts right away.
In Meshly you can see business events nearby based on your location and sign up there as well.
Positive is that using Meshly is very simple, easy and fun and it also lowers the step to connect with new people. Signing up is very fast if you have LinkedIn account.
Minuses are that I'm not able to see who is following me and it little freaks me out since my location is available all the time. Not specific location but still.
I have used Meshly about six months now and many people are following me. Nothing special has not come up yet but I think that when the company grows a little it can be really a success.
Riikka Koskenohi, IntBBAK-21
The website I chose to describe is Tumblr, (https://www.tumblr.com/). It is a microblogging platform and a social networking website which enable you to post pictures, texts, music, videos and links. You can visit every user’s tumblr without subscribing. As well, you can publish users’ articles on your page or like it. Articles’ users you follow appear on your dashboard. Concerning publications, you can use the famous hashtag in order to make people unable to find your articles. For example, if you are looking for pictures, or information about Tallinn, you type “tallinn” in the research bar, and you will find all the articles about it containing “#Tallinn”. You can also find articles by theme (“Actors”, “Design”, “Beauty”…) There is also a special function “ask me anything”: Users can ask questions to other members. If a member answers, his response appears on his Tumblr.
Therefore, the main goal is to share our experience, ideas, trip, advices… and to find it as well.
Members are various. They are from every countries. There are famous people, there are students sharing their trip, girls giving their beauty advices…
It is interesting for business students because they find easily information about a city, about a restaurant they want to try… Moreover, they can ask question to know more about an article. It may be useful when you do not know the city you have just arrived in, looking for what has to be seen, which restaurant could be good…
For example, at the beginning of the year, I typed “Tallinn”, “Estonia” on Tumblr, to find what I could do in the city, and around it. I found a lot of information, and I went to some places thanks to the pictures, and the comments. So now, I post my trip on my tumblr and tag the name’s place to give people some ideas.
Furthermore, Tumblr is really simple to use, and really clear. Plus, you can use it everywhere thanks to the application on mobile phone.
To sum up, you can share a lot, make your articles easily accessible by adding tags. So it is helpful when you want something to known. Or if you want to find information
Joonatan Juuri IntBBak-21
localsnetworking.com
Localsnetworking is social network, started in November 2013, for professionals who want to co-operate with others in the same area. For example event planner should have good relationships with a catering company etc.
Signing in is easy. You make your own profile and put your profession and zip code into your profile. Then you write five professions that you want to network with. After this the website suggest groups to you to join in. Or you can start your own group.
The goal of this social network is to make referral marketing easier and more efficient. Right now referral marketing is happening in late night or early morning or weekend meetings. Small business owners or sole traders probably do not want to use their free time (such as little they have it) for these activities.
So there is advantages in this social network, but what are the disadvantages? First one is that localsnetworking.com is a quite new social network and it has not so many users that its competitors. Second one is that most of the users are from United States. Sure that could be an advantage also but none of the students of this class lives in the States at the moment. Third one and probably the biggest issue is that Linkedin also exists. Linkedin has so many users and offers similar service so it is hard to find reasons to sign in to localsnetworking.com instead of Linkedin.
Khan Academy https://www.khanacademy.org/
Khan Academy is an online tutorial website that teaches economic subject from math to humanities. Company’s mission is to provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.
They provide exercises, instructional videos and learning dashboards that help students to study with their own pace. The videos presented in the site are translated into 40 different languages and there is also Spanish, French and Portuguese version of the site. The site is free of cost and relies on donors and volunteers.
Students have to either sign into the site separately or through Facebook in order to watch video tutorials and get their own personal development dashboard. Participants can choose the subject they want to learn and follow video series or go to one specific video or different level. Under the videos students can leave comments asking more detailed questions and receive a guaranteed answer every time. Each viewer can also see all comments and answers related to each video.
One of the greatest benefits of the site is that it creates sort of the community among learners. People can interact among each other and generally get a sense that they are not alone. Learners may interact with tutors and see comments/questions posted by other participants and follow their personal dashboard/development. The site is a great tool for those who either study a specific subject in school and need some extra tutoring and even for those who want to learn individually from scratch. This is a great opportunity for a person who has no possibility for education everywhere every time, but the site makes it possible requiring only Internet access. Khan Academy accepts also interns for different vacancies as video producer or product design.
A downside of the site is that it does not always compensate a personal face-to-face education nor students can get a personal plan. However the site popularity grew mostly due to excellent video content and quality. Videos are known for explaining and education subject very carefully and in a way that anyone can understand. If something remained unclear, students may comment below and receive an answer to their question.
Reason for choosing this site is that I do have my personal experience with it. It helped me in many way when I studied subjects like macroeconomics and math. It's on the line whether I would have passed these courses without help of Khan Academy!
Lana Rynty
An introduction about Pinterest (published in comments on April 9, 2014) was interesting for me since I have heard many times about this specific social media, but never used it myself.
The post was a good and summarized introduction of main points of that network.
I also considered it not only for myself but also for my blog that I would like to expand.
The downside is that there are so many of different social networks and all of them are popular in a way or another. I think as a business should focus on few the most popular (instead all of them) social medias that would benefit them the most.
www.sunzu.com/register
Created by Lyndon Wood at the year of 2013, the SunZu is a site for business owners. It is not a place just to share CVs or to use it as a recruitment vehicle, the SunZu is about doing business. As Lyndon Wood puts it "SunZu encourages business owners to view the world a bit differently".
Those business owners who are singed in, are looking for the potential partners and getting to know their opponents in the market. The site encourages business owners to pass their knowledge and also learn from another. With the SunZy you can download adverts and brochures in order to make your own online business card.
+ your data is not sold or exchange with anyone
+ you can create teams with other companies not just individuals
+ great tool for project management
+ it is free to join in
+ you can invite your LinkedIn connections to join you with filtering them with different
+ great articles about different themes downloaded by the users
-there is still much to develop and link with other sites
-does the SunZu suffer from the reputation of the predecessor Ecademy
Kaisa Laukkanen IntBBak21
LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) is a social network focused on professional relationships. I allows people to create their own networks of friends, co-workers in the same company or the same school. In fact, you can have a virtual relationship with natural people (as you and me) but also with corporations (you can subscribe to company’s news). Those two kinds of relationships makes the research of work, internships, partnerships and so on, much easier.
As a student point of view, this social network is the second best way to be seen by the others in a professional way, because the first one is obviously the alumni network (even if it’s not a social one literally speaking). In order to make yourself different from the other and of course to sell your personality, you have to put your personal and professional experiences, your scholarship, and your level in several fields, such as languages, computing and so on. As a personal point of view, the network is as efficient as all the others in matters of finding former friends or partners. Indeed, it uses the people you are already in relation with to suggest other ones.
The best point about this website is the fact that you create an account in order to create opportunities for the future, because it’s your future career that matters, not with who you did study few years ago.
Quentin LE SOURD
Riikka Koskenohi's introduction about Meshly sounded interesting enough for me to google it. As they are combining Tinder and linkedIn I didnt quite understand if the consept of the idea is to find friends/dating partners or to attend business events only? Interesting to see if it will become a new hot thing or if it will fade away among the big social media leaders.
Bitrix 24 it´s a social network.It´s similar with facebook, but made for business purpose.It has already 400 000 different kind of organizations that are using it. It´s not still only useful for companies and organizations also individuals as an business students can benefit for using it.
The main idea of Bitrix 24 is that you can socialize same way than in facebook but in business purpose with business qualities. With Bitrix24 you can also link yourself to the Twitter and Facebook.When you create profile and log in to the Bitrix24 you can do it without paying anything as long as you don´t have over certain amount of people involving the group you want to create in business purpose and you can also download free Bitrix app to your mobile.
Another qualities Bitrix24 has over facebook are possibilities to create official documents and chart and create official reports online, where every group member or invited external user can see it. There is also instant messenger and group chatting possibility. You can also do free voice , video calls and conferences.
Eeva Mamia
https://about.yammer.com/product/feature-list/
Yammer
The aim of this site is to be a work place social network. It’s quite popular in big companies and useful for us to share information between people. Many people are calling Yammer the work version of Facebook. If you are working in big company this is very useful tool to use. You can follow people whom you work with and see what they post mostly information that is useful for you in your work. There is information about IT, HR, and courses the company has and also materials. All you need is a your work email address and you can log in. There is also chat like in Facebook. You can chat with people and you can see who is online in Yammer in your company. You can also upload photos of yourself so that people know how you look like. This a very good tool for big companies because you can ask from the hole company if you have a problem, but you also get to know the people working in your company better. You can share files and also you can get likes for your posts the same way you can get likes in Facebook and you can use hastags like in Instagram. Some people also like to post things, that they are unhappy with their work, which creates open discussions between employees in the company to speak their minds. It works in the same way we are maybe telling our opinions in Facebook to your friends, but in yammer we are talking work-relating things with our colleagues. This kind of open critic and positive feedback creates better environment and more open environment in bigger companies. We can see posts from people we don’t see everyday when we work because they work in other parts of Finland or in other countries. It is less formal version of Linked. It makes employees work more together with different departments. Problem solving becomes easier. You can find almost any solution in Yammer and you keep up with latest news in the company.
Developments with Yammer
Yammer is going to open a possibility in future also to use Skype at the same. There might be added a Skype option to chat. It might even become as useful as Word or Power Point in work places. Yammer will be united with other Microsoft products like Skype Office 365, and SharePoint in future years. Only time tells if Yammer will be standing alone like very popular application Lync and Skype or if it will be a feature in other platform. It might be, that there will be even Lync, Skype and Yammer integration. You can also upload a yammer application from App store today to your mobile phone. You can even use it when you go home. It will be very useful for business students to know this application when they start with a new job because they can get a lot of help from people there. More and more of companies have stated to use Yammer. Yammer is private so only employees of that company that uses yammer a can see information there.
KUDOZ - http://www.getkudoz.com/
Launch in 2014 by French entrepreneurs, Kudoz is known as the Tinder of the employment. The concept of this mobile app is simple: permitting to job seekers, to find the one of their dream thanks to a unique app and a LinkedIn account avoiding the formal covering letters.
Kudoz is a great opportunity for student self-development and business networking in because they are constantly connected to the job offers. Kudoz users have to register on the app via their LinkedIn profile, and then respond to three questions: what are you looking for? Where? What is the sector you are interested in? After answering to those questions your account is directly connected to all the best job offers that are related to your research. It works in the same way as Tinder does: An offer is shown; you choose to match it or swipe it according to your wishes. Notifications are also sent to you when your profile correspond to an offer thanks to an analysis of your experiences given on your LinkedIn profile. On the same way as job seekers do, the employers can like or swipe the candidates that matched their offer. It gives them the insurance of finding motivated and qualified employees that correspond to what they research. The app is free for the candidates, it is also for the employees, until the moment they are interested in a profile and they want to contact him/she and get its information.
The creators of this app were willing to create relationships that were not supposed to appear without Kudoz. The aim was to permit to candidates a great and fun tool to find a job without using the classical and boring job offers websites. Currently looking for a long term internship, I am connected to Kudoz everyday and spend at least 5 minutes per week on the app. It is easy, fun and quick. For the companies, the goal was to give them access to people that they could not manage to find anywhere else. Many advantages can be given to this new business network as the facility of use, the interactivity and the simple design. Plus, the fact that it relates Tinder app can also be seen as an advantage: When an employer hires someone, a relationship begins. This relationship is supposed to last a long time. Thus the Tinder comparison is interesting and well found. Kudoz can only be used on a smartphone. That could have been seen as a disadvantage, however it is also pretty smart: nowadays, students are always connected to their phone, it seems easier and more useful to use smartphone or tablets than a computer. People are missing time, they are always in a rush, they do not want to spend their day on a website to look for a job, they want to take 5 minutes during a break to look at what they can be interested in. This is the match or swipe concept. Companies know it, when they have a job offer, the best talented people are often employed somewhere else. But 68% of those people would like to change their job whereas only 8% of them are active in this research because they do not have enough time. Kudoz permits to stay active in the job research by being connected only a few minutes during the day.
Network is PartnerUp
https://plus.google.com/communities/105088976956808519330
Previously they had their own website but they noticed it would work better if they transferred the same service into google plus. PartnerUp is a site where you can, as a businessman/woman, build new relationships by connecting to other professionals. Find new opportunities that can not be achieved from your connections otherwise.
It is a virtual community much like facebook but only for business professionals. Once you log in you create a profile for you and describe yourself from a business point of view. You can also look at other people and look for their capabilities from their profile.
LinkedIn
There is so much potential in a social network like LinkedIn. The most visible reason for LinkedIn ruling out the competitors is the size of its user community. After Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn is the third biggest social network website. The huge amount of users makes it possible for LinkedIn to fulfill itself as it was designed to do.
LinkedIn can enable great possibilities in a professional way, as well as educational. Business students can start following different kind of organizations and businesses and after that, all the news of them are coming to their feed which keeps them up to date and teaches many new things. Also if you have contacts of the same field as you are, many people are posting news considering their own line of business. They have as well the opportunity to join for example international student groups, where can be made new connections and widen their network.
When a student has added to LinkedIn the information of the schools he/she is going to and has gone to, the website automatically adds them to the societies of those schools. From the societies can be contacted all the people who are studying with them, or have already graduated from the school. There are also crafts that tell in which places are the LinkedIn users that have graduated from your school working nowadays, which is a very interesting and inspiring quality. Also if you are joined in different academic or professional groups, of which both there are innumerable amounts in LinkedIn, you will get messages with news and other interesting information from the group to your LinkedIn mailbox.
As LinkedIn is purely work oriented, the core goal and dream come true is to actually get a job through the social network of the website. The information web that you can build of yourself to website is wider than any regular CV can ever be. In addition to the wide range of information about experience, education, skills, and so on, through LinkedIn a potential employer can also get in contact with knowledge about your former employers, all of your professional network consisting from your LinkedIn contacts, as well as all the groups you are in, firms you are following, and in general information about the kind of working you are interested in. A well-filled profile in LinkedIn can give an employer all the information he/she needs to know about a potential employee.
More and more employers nowadays consider LinkedIn as a potential recruiting channel. For example in the IT-field LinkedIn is a very important, if not the most important channel of recruiting new people. If you are not in need of a new job, LinkedIn can still offer help professionally. It is a great way to discover sale leads, as well as to connect with new potential business partners and clients.
Pros:
+ Online networking in getting more and more usual, and is now capturing professional relationships the same way as normal friendships via internet. This is why websites like LinkedIn are now very important
+ LinkedIn gives the chance to ask questions from professionals, and to get feedback from strangers and friends to your own ideas and products
+ You can find both work and employees from LinkedIn
+ It is a great way of finding specific information about individuals and companies
+ It gives also individuals and smaller companies the global access
+ It helps you to create a wide professional network
Cons:
- The biggest negative side in LinkedIn must be the privacy. It works for the purpose of the website to give all this information about yourself, and publicly, so that you would have the possibility to get a job that way. It must be remembered that at the same time anyone can see that information about you, and some might not be so comfortable with that
- Some people use LinkedIn for just advertising their own company by adding random people as their contacts to advertise it
- There isn’t so much direct interactivity with other users than in other social networks. On the other hand, someone else could consider that as a pro
Eveliina Kanervo
Elance (https://www.elance.com/)
Elance is an online platform connecting contractors and freelancers for different projects. Merging with competitor oDesk in 2013, Elance-oDesk is now the world’s largest virtual workplace, connecting over 2 million businesses and almost 10 million freelancers, with projects totaling an annual salary of $940 million. Companies utilizing the site include big names, such as Microsoft, Walt Disney, and Panasonic.
The site is ideal for building up an online resume as well as connecting employers with new talent. Being able to work together virtually on a single project can serve to showcase a freelancers abilities and lead to full time employment. It is especially useful for students, as well as recent graduates, to connect with employers and gain experience through small time assignments. The detailed search function and filters allow users to find specific colleagues and employments locally as well as internationally. While Elance lacks a social aspect, the business side focuses on building relationships out of employment and co-operation, as opposed to a social network which lacks actual substance.
Problematically, businesses will have to shift through countless prospective applicants, most of which are unsuitable for the task. This also means that it can be very difficult for a freelancer to get their name out amidst all the competition. The global scope combined with different living costs around the world also makes competition very uneven. Professionals from countries such as India and Pakistan can afford to compete with much lower wage demands. The focus on individual projects also detracts from building long lasting, mutually beneficial relationships.
Markus Peltonen
IntBBAk-21
Eeva Mamia, Yammer
I have never heard about Yammer, it sounded intresting and I like that it is for business people like facebook but not as formal as Linkedin. The information about IT, HR, and courses and different materials is a big plus that is shared on this site.
Veniamin Musarov,
www.enterprenuer.com, I have never heard about it, it looked very intresting, I like the idea since there you are able to find investers, have tips and ideas.
For me both of this sites are good combination to a person who is starting a business. From these sites I would find and have easy access to an information and new business contacts to help grow my starting business.
Name of the network,how to access it (URL of internet-based networking tools)
Aims and functions of the network and/or the community in this network
The social network that I will discuss is My Major Company. You can fin it at : https://www.mymajorcompany.com.
This is a French site crowdfunding. The paticipatif funding is to finance the project by the crowd. On MyMajorCompany, project creators from all backgrounds can present their projects to thousands users and collect funds for their realization. This process has allowed ten thousand of projects to emerge around the world.
Each designer defines the amount needed to complete the project (the gauge) and the duration of its collection (3 months maximum). The objective of the project’s leader is to fulfill its gauge before end date of collection. To convince users to support, he presented his project and he sets the counterparties offer its contributors if its collection target is reached.
If the project does not meet the amount of the gauge at the end of the collection period, contributors get their participation. It is automatically paid on their credit.
They can use that credit to participate in another project or request a refund on their bank account. However, there are transaction costs if asked transfer to our bank.
Internet users can support a project throughout its collection period even if the gauge is already filled. Often projects therefore exceed 100%.
Most of the time, the project leader explains how the amount will be spent beyond its tonnage. It must also ensure that it can deliver the additional investments related counterparties.
Added value for business students
This site greatly contribute to entrepreneurial development of students. In fact, students who have already projects ambitions to do but do not have the funds, they need to have such a site to finance their project. This allows students with a serious project to see their idea lead.
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.
I used this site in 2013 to complete a student project. Indeed, we created an association who puts artists of Marseille on stage (the city where I live in France).
We needed background to hire a first concert hall. So we ask € 3,000 in 3 months: € 2,000 was used to rent the room, the rest for safety, drinks, etc ..
We obtained the funds requested before the end of time. This has enabled us to carry out first concert to raise new funds to develop our association.
MARGUET Thomas
Erasmus B
Network name
Airbnb https://www.airbnb.fr
Aims and functions of the network
Airbnb app is your travel pouch: the organization of your stay is simplified, and secure mobile with integrated payment system, while opening your doors to unusual accommodation. For the holidays with family or friends, business trip, a trip on the weekend, you can choose between more than one million homes in 34,000 cities and 190 countries, tree houses to castles, sailboats the villas.
The Airbnb app connects you directly with the experience that suits you the most. There is always a ready host to greet you, anywhere in the world, to live like a local time of a trip.
Looking for a home quickly? Thousands of accommodations are available in instant booking. Narrow the results with all filters (price, type of dwelling, number of travellers, equipment)
Discuss with the guests and ask all your questions: integrated messaging allows smooth and fast communication with multiple hosts at a time.
Reassure yourself by checking the profile of your host before making your decision: his comments, the response rate and time, commitment...
If you are stuck for inspiration application offers "discoveries".
If you have a space available to accommodate travellers, you can also post your ad from your app to earn extra income.
Manage your ad and reservations, wherever you are: the creation of advertisement for managing your calendar via communication with passengers, everything is at your disposal!
Added value for business students
The Airbnb Company has just announced the launch of an offer for companies and their employees, a new growth driver for the company.
In fact, already 10% of customers Airbnb use the site to their business travel; this is what the company has decided to embark in earnest on the niche of professionals.
The specialist homestay offers a range of 500,000 homes in more than 34,000 cities.
To save time, the site will offer lists of apartments tailored for the needs of its business customers, such as Wi-Fi, or proximity to restaurants business. Another advantage for companies: they can rent apartments for meetings or starting pots.
My experience
I discovered Airbnb last year to go on a weekend in Barcelona since I frequently use especially this year I Erasmus, to travel in countries such as Finland, Sweden, Norway, where Germany, I always had good surprise I was never disappointed, the interface is simple to use, fast is an indispensable tool for travellers as of today, I highly recommend it.
Tanja: Even if I knew about the Instagram already liked that you mentioned about the Finnish company Billebeino because I have also noticed this in Instagram myself that everyone has the hastag #areyoubillebeino. I did not know the fact that Billebeino became famous and well know because of Instagram.
Rosa Eriksson:
I did not know about Levo League before this so it was interesting to know that there is this kind of social network for start-ups. I think this is very useful to me to know about this social network because the mentors share their personal experiences and give advice there and it seems really good tool if you are starting a business.
Bitrix24
Bitrix24 is a social network.It´s similar with facebook but made for business purpose.It has already users internationally 400 000 different kind of organizations.It´s not only usefull for companies and organizations also business students can benefit for using it. The main idea of Bitrix24 is that you can socialize same way than with facebook but with business qualities.With it you can also link yourself to Facebook or Twitter.When you create profile and log in to the Bitrix24 you can do it free and also download free Bitrix24 app to your mobile.
IntBBAk21 Taryne Kalima
1. Veniamin Musarov introduced (April 10, 2014) a website www.entrepreneur.com. I found that it is a great website for entrepreneurs and also for business students to seek for information and to get in touch with the latest news.
2. Lana Rynty wrote (March 25, 2015) about Khanacademy and I would like to agree with her about the usefullness of that website. Although it probably does not replace the lectures, you can find it very helpful when brushing up things or searching for another ways of teaching the same subject.
Kaisa Laukkanen
IntBBak21
I don't use any other social networking sites instead of fb so almost all of these websites mentioned here were new for me. Obviously I've heard before about LinkedIn and Instagram but it is quite surprising how many different possibilities people have nowadays. There are plenty of different networking sites and surely they might create new connections if people use them in an effective way. Social media is also a cheap marketing tool and reach a huge amount of people at the same time. If I had some kind of business, I would definitely use more social networks to boost my recognition. Now I don't feel it necessary mostly because of the privacy issues....
By Viivu Virtamo intBBAk-3
Student: Mike Palmes
Name of the network: Freeletics
URL: https://www.freeletics.com
Freeletics is a fitnessprogram. which is being offered by a same-named company, that uses calisthenics (bodyweight-exercises) combined with running units. Established in 2012 by Joshua Cornelius, Mehmet Yilmaz and Andrej Matijczak, all 3 are german students. There are currently 4.000.000+ users registered in the Freeletics network in more than 140 countries around the world.
The homepage is well structured and can be used translated into german, english, french, spanish and portugues. Freeletics is is also available on android and iOS devices to enhance the community feeling as well as the lifestyle experience.
Freeletics aims at the fitness interested community and brings them together in a facebookesk network where people are able to post their executed workouts and motivate other users by commenting and giving them a “Clap Clap”, which basically works like a “Like” in Facebook. The fact that you can use it on your computer and on your smartphone makes it easy to use during workouts and while at home.
As a user you have the opportunity to purchase a personal online coach which leads you through the first 15 weeks of your workout and then lets you proceed on your own. Within those 15 weeks you are lead to each exercise step by step. Given the opportunity to be able to invite friends and follow everyone who is using this program is a massive factor of motivation. Therefore almost the most important part of this program is the community.
As a business student there are opportunities do get an internship in or a fix job given the fact that it is a rapidly growing community and company.
A friend of mine recommended this program several months ago and I gave it a shot. I created an account 4 weeks ago because I was leaving for an Erasmus semester here in Estonia and wanted to work out a little bit. After some days I really got into the community and now feel somehow connected to this lifestyle.
1.
MARGUET Thomas
AirBnB
I already heard about this network a few times but had never had the chance to use it or at least was a little bit afraid what might happen. In my opinion this is a very good network regarding the student segment who obviously want to travel a lot with a small amount of money. Therefore I am really looking forward to use this network in the near future.
2.
www.sunzu.com/register
Another network I never heard about. To me it sounds like a Xing profile for companies and therefore is the next step in making cooperations. I think it is really interesting to see who your competitors are and what they are doing to approach new partners in their business sector therefore I will definitely have a closer at this network.
Topi, a start up to watch in 2014, offers a new networking app for pre-event planning. App users log in with their social media account and they can contact via chat rooms with people who are going to the same event. The website is http://topi.com/ and the app is available for iOS and Android.
The app has three strong sides:
Firstly the app user can help attendees identify like-minded peers before the event starts. In case of representing a business you can target a specific type of customer or meet a partner or investor. In the app there will be a photo of the person you were chatting which will help to recognize this person at the event.
Secondly all the people who took part of the event will be saved on the app. This is especially useful for international contacts for post event. In addition using LinkedIn to log in you can instantly add the person to your professional network.
Thirdly, the event planners can communicate with attendees through web site. It utilizes geofencing technology to know when the individual has arrived to the event.
The app has three weak sides:
Firstly networking on the app will not bring the trust and real connection with people. The first impression can say more than the first private conversation on the app. Perhaps the conversation will be less meaningful.
Secondly Topi offers Google Translate in order to break the language barrier, but it still will be difficult to engage in a quality chat and a lot of miscommunication can be created too.
Thirdly, relying on this app means that all participators need to use the app to be sure you can find everyone who you talked in the event.
As a summary, it seems an amazing app and as I have personally participated in international conferences where this app could be very useful.
Annette Sagri ÕBE-11
Student: Mike Palmes
Name of the network: Freeletics
URL: https://www.freeletics.com
Freeletics is a fitnessprogram. which is being offered by a same-named company, that uses calisthenics (bodyweight-exercises) combined with running units. Established in 2012 by Joshua Cornelius, Mehmet Yilmaz and Andrej Matijczak, all 3 are german students. There are currently 4.000.000+ users registered in the Freeletics network in more than 140 countries around the world.
The homepage is well structured and can be used translated into german, english, french, spanish and portugues. Freeletics is is also available on android and iOS devices to enhance the community feeling as well as the lifestyle experience.
Freeletics aims at the fitness interested community and brings them together in a facebookesk network where people are able to post their executed workouts and motivate other users by commenting and giving them a “Clap Clap”, which basically works like a “Like” in Facebook. The fact that you can use it on your computer and on your smartphone makes it easy to use during workouts and while at home.
As a user you have the opportunity to purchase a personal online coach which leads you through the first 15 weeks of your workout and then lets you proceed on your own. Within those 15 weeks you are lead to each exercise step by step. Given the opportunity to be able to invite friends and follow everyone who is using this program is a massive factor of motivation. Therefore almost the most important part of this program is the community.
As a business student there are opportunities do get an internship in or a fix job given the fact that it is a rapidly growing community and company.
A friend of mine recommended this program several months ago and I gave it a shot. I created an account 4 weeks ago because I was leaving for an Erasmus semester here in Estonia and wanted to work out a little bit. After some days I really got into the community and now feel somehow connected to this lifestyle.
Comment about 2 other network's description posted by students :
1°/ Rosa Eriksson - Levo League
This description of Levo league particularly catch my attention because it is about women carreer. Currently looking for an internship I'm aware of everything that could help me in my research and further carreer ! Rosa Erikson made a nice description of this community by describing it but also giving its opportunities of development. It made me looking for more information about it as I'm know interested in this social network.
2°/ Cécile Viansson-Ponté - Tumblr
The description Cécile made on Tumblr actually changed my mind about this social network. I had always seen it as a "useless" network permitting to create some funny articles and picture, or for young people to make a diary of their own life but I have never look for anything else on Tumblr ! From her point of view, and according what she said, it is also really usefull to discover new places, getting tips about what we like and connection can be made between the other account thanks to the hashtag.
I know see it as a usefull tool to discover and get to know more about our centers of interest, other country etc.
Philippine Jourdes
Erasmus M.
Viadeo is a Business social network made to find business opportunities (new clients, partnerships and suppliers), manage your professional network and gain visibility among other members and potential recruiters.
Viadeo was created in France in 2003 under the name Viaduc, to facilitate communication between club members. In 2007, it expanded to international horizons and became Viadeo. It is now available in 8 languages including arabic (first professional network to have this feature).
The most recurrent usages to the platform are the creation and management of a professional profile (CV, activities, skills…). The creation and management of one’s network (contact other members, recommendations between users etc.). Salesmen can also find potential clients. More visibility on search engines when looking up your name.
The features include groups, which allow members to talk about professional thematics, or student, associative, cultural communities. Viadeo has a mobile app, which they adopted very soon (before LinkedIn), and had their iPad-ready app in 2013. The mobile app allows user to manage their network, browse job offers and candidate. They can also see a newsfeed and their connections’ activity.
Since 2014, Viadeo also has a “Let’s meet” function, which facilitates networking with people you don’t know.
Viadeo has many partnerships (mainly in France), such as APEC (Association of the employment of Managers) to whom they provided a strong API allowing them to browse content from their website.
They also provide discount and free accounts in partnership with UAE (Union of Auto-entrepreneurs) and Orange (french telecom service)
Khan Academy (Lana) : I did not know this website, but this one looks really interesting. It is not so common that a website are translating in as many languages as it is. Therefore it is a really good way to get together many business students. They can exchange on many subjects; teach to each other. It is an original concept, that, I think a lot students are interesting in, it is another way to improve our skills without to have to pay. Lana succeed to catch my attention by emphasis well of this positive points.
Kudoz (Philippine Jourdes): Thanks to Philippine, Kudoz seems to be an efficient application which can really simplified our research in jobs. It is a modern way to seek jobs. We do not lose our time anymore to find a job as we are alarmed by notifications whether we have offers. According to Philippine, it is a really good way to be connected everyday into our job’s research but spend only five minutes in this one per week.
#startup community within www.slack.com
Slack is a world famous platform aimed for teams of co-workers to work on projects together. However the #startup community within it is a different story. Namely, its members are the brightest minds in the startup scene across the world.
It is a community where members can share anything that is startup related. Its main goal is connecting entrepreneurs while supporting them in building even more successful startups. Within the community they (as it is said on their homepage) want to bridge the gap between founders across the globe, and build a support network at the same time. But what is worth mentioning above all is that #startup is a social network built on a product with a totally different purpose.
For example, members can share their success stories, ask questions or guidelines and all that under various channels with different topics. The community is friendly and every post finds an answer or a constructive comment. There is even a channel for business students where students, who are also entrepreneurs, share their knowledge or just chat with each other.
In order to become a member, candidate has to fill in a small form so they can filter out who is worthy of joining and who is not. In addition, joiners have to pay a small contribution of 20€. In fact, the sole purpose of the fee is stopping too many people from applying.
To sum up, #startup would definitely be a useful network for anyone with business aspirations. It is vast, filled with tremendous amounts of inspiration and wisdom. In other words, it is a clever virtual network that is hidden inside a team communication tool.
@Eeva Mamia
It seems that Yammer is a great tool that helps employees orientate in large companies. But I bet you that this discussion board feature where people can post about problems with their workplace has since its introduction got alot of people laid off.
Best virtual network for business networking
Nowadays we have many sites where we can do networking. Most known are Facebook, Twitter, Linked1n, Instagram, Youtube, Pinterest. Which one of these sites are best for networking?
I recommend to use Facebook when you want to reach in the bigger crowd. Bigger crowd/ your Facebook friend list consist different people with different age, sex, skin colour, subcultures, different believes and different needs. When somebody shares your page it reach help a lot. It is easy to make Facebook work when you think create some kind of game where people need to share your post and like your page to win something expensive. When I say expensive I mean something that costs 500 to 1000 €. Main reason is that more than 70 percent of online adults actively participating in Facebook, it remains the most popular social media site by far. Not only does it have the most users, it is the most-frequently used, which demonstrates a high level of engagement. Facebook are engaging friends and family and if people who you know recommends something then you believe it more. You can write also what do you think like twitter, share your pictures like in Instagram, share Youtube video links. That’s why Facebook on universal. One big plus is that when you search something in google Facebook link is almost every time first that pops out. But there are disadvantages too. Many people even don’t read what somebody is sheering and just scroll over the news. And we all know that nothing lasts for ever. So I think it is time to look in the future and find some new alternatives.
To sum up, best virtual network depends about business that you are running. There is not one and only. But most multifunctional is the Facebook. So I would choose Facebook.
Ralf Pagil
profit.ly
Profit.ly is a network and a platform where traders (short-term investors) can generate and exchange ideas. And use the ideas to trade or to pause and consider the trade he or she is going to make. Let's say Trader X is thinking of buying a certain stock because his technical analysis has given him an argument to bet that the stock will rise and he will subsequently profit if his prediction is right. But if a more experienced Trader Y which have done a much thorough research of the specific trade, warns him of possible dangers that can occur, Trader X can save money avoiding potential losses. Trader X can accumulate all the opinions of other traders that have posted on his thread and then actually decide whether the trade is worth the risk or not. Furthermore, if Trader X wants to know more about his opinionated comrades, he can open their profile and actually see how long they have traded, whether they are winning traders, percentage wise on how many trades they actually turn a profit. This is just one example what kind of information can be exchanged on this platform. It was developed by a penny-stock trading legend Timothy Sykes, who turned his bar mitzvah into millions of dollars trading. After the creation of a training site where young traders are thought and challenged to make money trading, Tim Sykes created profit.ly, which one might say is a “twitter” like platform for traders and stock-market enthusiasts. Even though it serves to a very small niche, it is one of the most popular trading-based social network which I use almost every day.
Davis Modans
The dots
The dots is a professional networking platform, also known as the “Linked in for creatives”. It can be accessed via https://the-dots.co.uk/ .
It supports creative professionals and companies showcase work, find a job, network, collaborate and connect with commercial opportunities.
Originally the network was launched in the UK to start expanding all over Europe. Future plans are to expand overseas to the US and Asia.
The network is free for individuals and companies to join and set up a profile. Users can then choose to pay to headhunt talent or advertise jobs, workspaces and courses on the site, or earn free credit by inviting new individuals and companies to join the platform.
Especially for business students the network can be helpful for various reasons: They can follow the job postings of the “global players” and thus find out what is required when preparing, searching and applying for a job. Additionally a good overview over the job market in the specific “creative business” sector can be gained.
The huge number of famous, successful companies, e.g. Facebook, Squarespace and Tommy Hilfiger, seems promising with regards to the quality of the posted job offerings.
The different courses posted on the website are sometimes quite affordable but can also be very expensive. Unfortunately the majority of the courses takes place in the UK but having followed the development for a while I am sure this is going to change in near future.
The category “people” helps finding like-minded creatives and contacting them. It is interesting as well as important for a business student to build up a solid network of like-minded people that support him and the student can trust.
As a business student I am using the network to find inspiration and understand how this special job market is developing. I can follow the job development of important companies and can gain knowledge about future workplaces.
Being interested in human resource management I am especially interested in the development of the network with regards to the change in workplaces and interests of creative people in order to understand how to hire them best and arouse their interest in a job.
Hannah Brilmayer, ERASMUS B SPRING 2016
www.startnext.com
You are a student with an aspiring business idea but you have definitely no plan where to get your money from? How to support your idea? How to promote your product?
Startnext.com as a crowdfunding website might have the right solution. Students, innovators, people from everywhere can describe their ideas, projects or companies by uploading videos, information and pictures. The entrepreneur presents his start up to the community. He sets an amount of money and a time frame that is needed to fulfill the idea, and every single user of the network can decide on his own whether to support the idea or not and how much money to spend. As a special thank you the project owner prepares give-aways for the investors. This could be some advertisement, e.g. a cup or a shirt, or even some shares of the company depending on the amount of money. The given amount hast to be reached after the set time (normally 30-45 up to 90 days). If not, unfortunately, money will be lost. Startnext.com works with the slogan “All or nothing“.
Startnext.com started in Germany in 2007 and since then more than 28 million Euros were spend by people on projects and more than 3400 were successful (February 2016). These numbers show that there is a lot of potential for career pathing and business opportunities to set up or invest in your own business.
The special values for business students are very high. They can present their ideas to a community of potential investors. They can earn their requested starting capital. They receive feedback by analyzing how many people spend how much money. If people do not like the idea, they easily won’t invest. Due to its start in Germany and german-speaking countries there are a lot of ideas out of this area, but also international projects are funded. So this crowdfunding can be easily used for starting up in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and expanding internationally.
A project example is GoVolunteer. Help where you are needed- a project to support refugees. The time frame is 2 months, funding threshold 30,000 Euros and funding goal 120,000. People can inform themselves about what the entrepreneurs are doing, what their objectives are and what plans there are for investing the money. Investing 25 Euro your thank you will be a sticker set, for 50 Euros you receive a shirt and for 1,000 Euros you get a personalized certificate.
Brella https://www.brella.io/
Brella is an online networking tool that allows people attending different events to
connect with the other attendees beforehand and plan face-to-face meetings during the events. Brella offers free registration for individual event-goers and sells the service for event organizers. The main goal is to provide an opportunity for you to find and contact the most important people for you and your career advancement, among all the less-essential attendees.
I believe that this could be useful for any business student but especially for introvert students,
who might be shy in face-to-face situations, this service could be particularly useful,
because it allows you make the initial contact before the event, taking the
edge off from the anxiety of meeting a new person. It could also useful for those who are very busy and do not have
the time attend that many events, allowing them to get the most out of the ones they have time to attend.
It's a great thing that I found this service, since it could be a great way to discover new contacts to help me find an Internship place or to help me secure funding for my startup project.
Meet Up - http://www.meetup.com/
With this Network you can meet the people around you - people that share the same passion/ personal interests/ business-related interests as yours. You can create a group or join an existing group/community.
For business students, this Network is not only a way to find people with the same personal interests; it is also a way to join Startup groups, to attend business-related conferences or events (workshops, free lectures and discussions about a specific software or topic, etc.). Some Startups also share their job offers and recruit talents via Meetup.
For example when you go to MeetUp and search for groups in Tallinn, you can find the group “Startup DNA” that will allow you, entrepreneur, to meet other entrepreneurs, to share your experience with a very creative community and find solutions to your situations and issues. You will really be a part of a community with the same interests and issues as yours. You can also attend a programming discussion (in March 2016), and acquire new knowledge. If you are looking for a job in a StartUp, or are looking for talents, you can also attend a meeting (in May 2016).
My friends and I have been using MeetUp for meeting people to go jogging with, so there is so much you can do and share with this Social Network, it creates a very dynamic environment around you and your business.
Julie Roux
Kickstarter, https://www.kickstarter.com
Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform site for new business ideas and projects that need funding. Kickstarter can be used traditionally online or as a mobile application.
The business model is to gather a certain amount of money within a deadline. If the amount of investment is not gathered until the deadline the investors get their money back. Kickstarter charges a 5% fee of the total amount that has been raised.
Kickstarter helps self development because it is so easy to post projects and business ideas. Investors all around the world can find projects that pleases them. Kickstarter is great for business students because they can boost their own career or help someone else. With kickstarted it is easy to find different projects in different categories.
Kickstarter does not offer a easy way to communicate with the investors or the owners of the project. Kickstarter could have a system to help communication between the founder of the project and the possible investor.
After all Kickstarter is a great site for entrepreneurs and students, it is totally worth trying.
Samuel Eklund
IntBBAk-22
Linda Upeniece , Erasmus B 2016 spring
BASECAMP - Basecamp.com
What it is?
Basecamp is a project management and collaboration tool. It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to accomplish. Basecamp can manage any type of project: website redesign, community event, personal projects, corporate initiatives, construction projects, and a lot more. There’s really nothing it can’t handle.
How it works?
A Basecamp is a private, secure space online where people working together can organize and discuss everything they need to get a project done. See it, track it, discuss it, act on it. Tasks, discussions, deadlines, and files - everything’s predictably organized in this management tool.
Why to use it?
I find BASECAMP useful and good for knowledge sharing for business students because usually, during study process, students need to work on different projects, business plans etc., and it is sometimes difficult to rally people around a project and keep everyone on the same page. This management tool provides features that helps projects happen on- time, for example, to-do lists keep you honest about what needs to be done. Team discussions ensure everyone is aware what is happening. Collaborative text documents help you write guidelines, press releases, documentation or white papers. The Basecamp project calendar helps you assign deadlines and milestones to everything.
That Basecamp tool seems really useful. I have just proposed the use of this tool to a team I am currently part of. Thanks for bringing this to my attention :)
I am also a big fan of Kickstarter and I have participated in funding several kickstarter projects. However, crowdfunding here in Finland is not as easy as it should be due to Finnish money collection laws.
Resident Advisor, www.residentadvisor.net - the website is perfectly suited for businesses involved in the music industry (record labels, venues and artists) as well as for self-development purposes of people interested electronic music. I chose RA because I make music myself and I find these kind of online review platforms indispensable to promote oneself in this industry. In the digital age and ever-growing amount of DIY artists, reliable selection must occur. This is enabled by the community of RA.
PROS: RA is constrained to electronic music only. It provides a credible list of artists, record labels, tracks and events. For every city in every country there’s a list and description of the best venues. The process of creating artists’ or labels’ profile is quite complex in terms of confirming one’s identity, but unlike Soundcloud, where everybody can upload any audio file, RA makes the selection of music and artists more credible. Each artist’s, label’s, venue’s profile has a direct linkage to its profile on other social networks or websites. It’s also possible to sell and buy tickets through the platform. Every user can create his/her list of favorite artists, events (which can be added to calendar) and connect with other ordinary users. Resident Advisor delivers its own feed with daily news and reviews from the industry. It also provides pieces of advise on the musical equipment.
CONS: RA ranks artists by the popularity, not quality. Even if the artist’s profile exist, but it’s not amongst the top 1000 most popular ones, it is very difficult to find it. Besides, there’s always a risk that somebody else will run an artist’s, label’s or venue’s profile. Only few tracks can be streamed through the RA platform. Moreover, it’s impossible to directly connect with other artists/labels/venues – this has to be managed by the RA, which acts as an intermediary.
Benefits for business students: for those, who want to pursue a career in the music industry, it is a crucial source of information and a mean for promotion. RA offers festival partnerships, which aim at bands growth, increase in ticket sales and virality. What’s more, RA team connects entities of music industry locally and internationally, which often results in fruitful collaborations.
Natalia Wojcik
Crème de la Crème - cremedelacreme.io
Baptiste Mauguit - Erasmus M 2016 Spring
Crème de la Crème (the cream of the crop) is a french virtual network created by business students for business students.
It’s a platform enabling companies to draw on the expertise and services to students from the 10 best French business schools and universities
Whether a company needs a market study, a website or a social media strategy, one or more students will provide their services in record time
The network is a win-win situation : it meets the needs of students offering them responsibility and therefore an experience that will strengthen their position in the labor market while conceding them a competitive edge on their CV.
It also allows students to build on their skills to repay their tuition or their rent.
For companies, while expertise was entrusted for too many years to agencies and providers overpriced , it is now in the hands of talented and promising students for reasons as simple as bright especially with the pitch of the digital transformation that requires bold, modern minds can bring a new perspective on a project.
As companies get richer humanly and professionally, students will expand their professional skills and invest effectively in independent and rewarding missions.
However, there is some minuses about this network, mainly that you have to be on a top 10 school to be a member. Maybe if they open the casting to other schools they could have more clients and more missions for more students.
Pros and Cons of Linkedin Lassi Virtanen IntBBAk-22
http://www.linkedin.com/
Linkedin is very rich in content. It’s a great tool for doing background research on a company you are interested in to sell your company’s services or products for example. It allows business owners to research company information without spending any money at all. Linkedin provides interactivity with other users through the “Answers” section. It also provides global access to large and small company contacts easily.
There are many ways how you can use Linkedin as your own personal tool for brainstorming ideas, get valuable feedback on an idea, project or a product or you can simply use it to network with others who are seeking feedback for similar questions.
The search engine of Linkedin allows you to contact people who may be searching a new job in case you are looking to hire people. It is also easy to find companies you may wish to work for.
A couple of cons of using Linkedin for business: Other than the "Answers" section, LinkedIn provides limited interactivity when compared to other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Linkedin paid subscription may not be affordable to small business owners, because it is expensive. Linkedin’s “request to be linked” process is slow and not as real-time as connection request on a Facebook for example.
Pros and Cons of Linkedin Lassi Virtanen IntBBAk-22
http://www.linkedin.com/
Linkedin is very rich in content. It’s a great tool for doing background research on a company you are interested in to sell your company’s services or products for example. It allows business owners to research company information without spending any money at all. Linkedin provides interactivity with other users through the “Answers” section. It also provides global access to large and small company contacts easily.
There are many ways how you can use Linkedin as your own personal tool for brainstorming ideas, get valuable feedback on an idea, project or a product or you can simply use it to network with others who are seeking feedback for similar questions.
The search engine of Linkedin allows you to contact people who may be searching a new job in case you are looking to hire people. It is also easy to find companies you may wish to work for.
A couple of cons of using Linkedin for business: Other than the "Answers" section, LinkedIn provides limited interactivity when compared to other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Linkedin paid subscription may not be affordable to small business owners, because it is expensive. Linkedin’s “request to be linked” process is slow and not as real-time as connection request on a Facebook for example.
Maija Rantanen InTTBak-22
The Student Room
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/
The Student Room Group was originally founded in 2001 in United Kingdom, but its serving area is globally the whole world. The website was established for social learning for school and university students. It connects students with other students in order to get more informed education choices, get help with the studies and support with the student life.
All the participants have to create an account to get access into the Student Room. After the registration, all users are able to start own forum for a specific topic to discuss or attend already existing discussion. The users (new students, older students or teachers) can share the knowledge and information concerning universities and their courses, careers (for example helping to fill a CV), interests or different communities. The Student Room basically serves great basis for students to embark their career in work life or in academic life.
However, despite the Student Room provides globally an efficient environment for students with any complexities, it still concentrates mostly on universities in United Kingdom. It may not offer enough information about other countries' or cities' studying possibilities. So the website should enlarge its international knowledge and not only focus on persuading people to UK.
Viola Pesonen IntBBAk-22
Edublogs
http://edublogs.org
Edublogs is the world’s largest educational blogging network, where individual students and teachers can create blogs for educational purposes. It is a platform for publishing and sharing creations, together with learning from others. Students and teachers have to create an account to Edublogs and after registration they can follow blogs, write posts or comment others’ blogs. Common examples include blogs written by or for teachers, blogs maintained for the purpose of classroom instruction, or blogs written about educational policy. Students and teachers can be active in these blog communities and share their knowledge.
Edubloggers believe that blogging transforms the educational experience of students: it increases the ownership of learning, engages students and activates the classroom. Edublogs support students and teachers learning by facilitating reflections, questioning their selves and others together with active collaboration.
Criticism towards Edublogs is narrow, because there is very little research on student blogging available. However, there is a large amount of published research regarding to criticisms of student blogging or its limitations when using blogging in classrooms. For example, commentators claim that student blogs often include false information or encourages to online bullying. Commentators also complain that student blogs are difficult to archive or enumerate.
Roosa-Maria Holopainen
www.meetup.com
http://www.meetup.com
Meetup is the world's largest network for local groups. The aim is to make it easy for anyone to organize a local group or to find one to join. Meetup has over 25 million members in 181 countries. In the website you can join to a group, and eventually participate to an event organized by that group and meet people face-to-face.
The site is very easy to use. You can choose the location from which you are interested to find different groups. It is also possible to choose different categories- anything from career and business, education and learning to health and well-being. The site gives an interesting opportunity to find groups and join events that you probably were not aware of.
Especially for business students it is a great channel to find like minded people. For example many interesting business related Meetups are organized in Helsinki about marketing, entrepreneurship and founding start-ups. Attending these events is really good opportunity for networking and meeting people.
What is great is that it can be done almost anywhere in the world. Probably only downside of this site is that it is difficult to know what kind of people you are actually going to meet.
(Repost because not sure about the google' spam choices of my first post)
Crème de la Crème - cremedelacreme.io
Baptiste Mauguit
Crème de la Crème (the cream of the crop) is a french virtual network created by business students for business students.
It’s a platform enabling companies to draw on the expertise and services to students from the 10 best French business schools and universities
Whether a company needs a market study, a website or a social media strategy, one or more students will provide their services in record time
The network is a win-win situation : it meets the needs of students offering them responsibility and therefore an experience that will strengthen their position in the labor market while conceding them a competitive edge on their CV.
It also allows students to build on their skills to repay their tuition or their rent.
For companies, while expertise was entrusted for too many years to agencies and providers overpriced , it is now in the hands of talented and promising students for reasons as simple as bright especially with the pitch of the digital transformation that requires bold, modern minds can bring a new perspective on a project.
As companies get richer humanly and professionally, students will expand their professional skills and invest effectively in independent and rewarding missions.
However, there is some minuses about this network, mainly that you have to be on a top 10 school to be a member. Maybe if they open the casting to other schools they could have more clients and more missions for more students.
Khia Poranen IntBBak-21
Sococo - https://www.sococo.com
Sococo's main idea is to create personalized virtual office to suit many different needs. It doesn't matter whether it is a huge company with many branches abroad or just a small start up with only few people that doesn't even have a real physical office yet. Every employee gets their very own office and there are also different departments and conference rooms where people can gather. This actually reminded me a bit about Sims or HabboHotel that kids used to play with so why is this idea actually relevant? To refer their website "Distributed teams and remote employees go to work in sococo. It creates the personal proximity and functionality of a real office in an online experience". The reason why it differs from Skype/email etc lies behind the visual map of an office that encourages communication. It offers many tools to use at once which you can choose from. You can go and chat to your team mates in their office and get faster response than with email. You can also have these typical coffee pause conversations with people in the free areas or simply be in a private meeting. You can also share your screen if needed. The tool basically encourages employees to both formal and informal interaction even when not physically in the same place.
PROS right now (it's constantly developing it's features)
- It's quick, easy, fun and the first tool to actually mimic the real office
- Boosts interaction and flow of information between team members and other employees
- Allows quicker feedback
- you can listen, talk, watch, message, share your screen, white-board and dash/board with your colleagues (all in one tool)
- The tool makes it easy to see where people are and what they are doing and whether they are available or not. (some may be in a meeting in the conference room or some are in their offices on the phone or some have their door open so you can pop in and chat with them.)
CONS
- there is not yet a mobile app, however the app should be up and running in the mid of 2016.
-calendar integration not yet possible
- The ability to customize your avatar/office
- Money. There is a free, Starter plan for small teams and companies and Company plan for larger use that costs 15dollar/user/month
This kind of virtual office is great for projects/part time workers/new employees when you have tons of questions but don't really want to be constantly knocking someones door and asking for help. Or when on a maternity leave you could still be part of the office/projects/talk easily to your colleagues. It also made me think about our school and how it is sometimes hard to connect with your classmates because of the characteristics of distance studies - how cool would a tool like virtual school be? You could easily ask questions and talk and do your teamworks and lots of other stuff. It would also boost the feel of community with the allowance to talk randomly to people and see people doing their group projects. Things like library and a free hanging area and maybe a space where you could connect with the teachers would make the virtual space even more valuable.
Praxis, http://www.praxisnetwork.eu/
Praxis is the European Centre for Project/Internship Excellence. This Centre Excellence was created and is being run by the Praxis network, a consortium of higher education institutions, companies, associations, research labs and chambers of commerce, all committed to enhance your Project/Internship experience and to promote innovation in the field. Any one may benefit from the European Centre for Project/Internship Excellence at any time. You can also participate in the Praxis network as an Associated Partner to have a more active role in the growth of the European Centre for Project/Internship Excellence. Currently the Praxis Network includes 106 partners assuring a broad coverage of the European territory. Praxis addresses the needs of the academic and professional communities related to the Project/Internship educational paradigm. The main stakeholders include students, companies and higher education institutions and research labs.
Praxis offers for students
-Vast offer of Academic Projects and Internships that are being continuously submitted by many companies and higher education institutions all over the world.
-Search facilities that will point you right to the Projects/Internships matching your concrete needs.
-Valuable experiences and information allowing you to get the most out of your Project/Internship experience.
-Big community of peers, all facing the same challenges.
-Opportunities to join international teams, experience team work in an international environment whilst developing your ‘soft skills.
-Pick the Projects/Internships from around Europe that you are really interested in.
-Extend your CV with an international PRAXIS experience.
Personally I have not used Praxis before, but after I lately found it, I registered in and it seems really usefull and interesting for future purposes. They have very good contacts and the site is easy to register and use.
Small Business Forums https://www.smallbusinessforums.org/
This forum is very useful if you are new to the business world or perhaps thinking of starting your own business. There you can find much information about the topic you're interested in. Topics include pretty much everything you can imagine. People can tell their own experiences from everyday business and pass on their knowledge on various topics. Also business students can find valuable information for school projects, gaining extra knowledge etc.
The downside of this forum is that all information that can be found is not verified. People can write whatever they want under aliases and fake profiles. Also networking is pretty limited, as you cannot contact these profiles directly.
Jon Tolkki, IntBBAk-21
Reddit.com
Reddit is social news and networking website where users provide all the content. registered users can post in Reddit under subreddit that is related to the subject. registered users can also up vote or down vote on post made by others and this determines their position on sites pages. non registered users can browse Reddit and explore topics that they are interested in. Because each topic is located under their own page called subreddit, navigation in Reddit is extremely easy. Each subreddit has their own rules regarding posting so content inside subreddit usually is related to the topic.
Added value to business student
Subreddits like /r/Askreddit, /r/askscience or /r/ELI5 provide platform where users can post questions basically about anything and other users provide the answer how something works or is. for business students whom are for example interested starting business in foreign country they can post under /r/LegalAdvice how starting a company is done in United states. I myself use Reddit daily because it gathers world news under same page from various sources and ranks them based on relevance.
Facebook & Facebook Messenger
www.facebook.com
Everyone knows Facebook and everybody uses Facebook. Although Facebook has features for students networking businesswise and doing projects together, many uses Facebook mainly for spare time activities and being connected with friends.
One of the greatest things in Facebook is hidden and secret groups. During a project group can be in interaction with each other in a group which isn’t visible to others but a group member can still have his/her privacy and don’t have to show personal details to other group members if one chooses so. Using also Facebook Messenger a group can be connected 24/7 if needed.
Groups can be used in professional and job offering/seeking purposes. Usually in these groups there are limited number of members who are able to add new members or one can apply a membership which is then evaluated. These groups utilize transitivity and composability.
Pekka Saarelainen
Intbbak-22
Laura Helenius
IntBBak-22
Wunderlist
www.wunderlist.com
Wunderlist's aim is to help people to get their tasks done. This is a great tool for managing your to-dos. For business people Wunderlist is an easy way to communicate and collaborate with team members. Wunderlist can be used in several platforms which allows its usage with multiple devices and because of that the network can be used at any place at any time. The user can create assignments, notes, files and comments to the network.
For business student this tool is a great way to ensure that all tasks are done in time. As we all know student life is busy and recommends hard work. For example Wunderlist helps students in their projects and keeps everyone active without actual meetings.
I do not have earlier experience about Wunderlist, but I definitely could use this tool for some projects. Also it could help me in my personal life, like planning a holiday or my individual projects.
Wunderlist allows that team members can create great things together. Because best things happen together this is valuable tool for students and other business people.
LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com
In my Overview I will be focusing more on the consultation services that people can search and provide via LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is usually seen as a tool for enlarging your network in business community in order to find interesting job opportunities. For students this is beneficial in creating both professional and student network. It is also an effective tool for headhunters and employers for searching special talent and skills for a company. In addition to this there are a lot of professionals from different industries searching and offering consultations services.
There are many experts around the world who create the profile not to search jobs, but to offer specified consulting services.
Buying consultation services is a very effective and efficient way of dealing with problems since it is not always possible to hire an expert for every area. Today it is common that a company needs specified information for only a short period of time and LinkedIn is an excellent tool to find and offer it.
One individual I know has been offering consultation services at due diligence project for a global business. The company found the person via keywords written in his profile. Company found the needed expertise via LinkedIn as it has contact information of millions of professionals.
Paavo Kurula
Intbbak-21
Slack
www.slack.com
The newest thing in the startup-community is Slack.
Slack is a team communication tool developed for the 21st century. It is quite new company, founded in February, 2014 but despite it's young age, it has already valuation of $2.8 billion.
Companies like Airbnb, BuzzFeed and Blue Bottle Coffee use it. So do Fortune 500 firms like Comcast and Walmart. Teams at NASA and the State Department are on Slack. Slack is something you will definitely find running on almost every entrepreneur's MacBook.
Slack is designed to be more effective internal communication tool for businessess than email nowadays.However you can also join to general communities outside your own business, which usually consist of same-minded people who are interested in same kind of things.
Couple of topics which are covered in this field are for example:
- Startup
- TechFriends
- WomenInSales
- Remote Work
- Marketers Chat
- iOS Developers
Slack is a most natural fit for entrepreneurs, digital designers, marketers and developers. Those are the people within an organisation whose job requires them to be in front of a computer, making a lot of changes to all kinds of digital assets, all day every day. These are also the people whose job requires them to communicate quickly to be able to keep up with the flow of the market.
Find more communities on Slack at: https://medium.com/hamster-pad-magazine/the-top-75-slack-communities-for-entrepreneurs-and-developers-74dba4b279f
Niko Nieminen
IntBBak-22
EFactor
www.efactor.com
What it is?
EFactor is a large social network for entrepreneurs which provides its members with the people, tools, marketing and expertise to succeed and make real and lasting connections. It has nearly 2 million members in 222 territories across 240 industries.
How it works?
EFactor uses an algorithm that allows members to connect with right people and provides knowledge, funding access and resources to reduce business costs. It is designed to support an entrepreneur along every step of the journey, whether it is a growing business or an already established one.
Pros
- young entrepreneurs/students can save time and money by following the advice and expertise of been-there/survived-that entrepreneurs
- it has funding options which is always good
- it helps along every step, which can be helpful when suffering setbacks
- consists of some nice articles
Cons
- It is hard to locate specific content from the website - the search tool needs an upgrade, maybe even the whole page layout
- profile creation should be more regulated, since there are many fake or irrelevant profiles
I think that there is some potential behind the network, when it redesigns some options and layouts. At the moment it seems like an unfinished product with the idea being good but execution not so good. Members can probably find the network best useful when extracting the right connections from irrelevant ones and starting to share knowledge. I like how the website keeps me hooked to improve on any field concerning entrepreneurship.
Christian Anderson
BEB-2
The Scandinavian Investment Network
www.scandinavianinvestmentnetwork.com
Scandinavian Investment Network is an online platform connecting startups with a global network of angel investors. As a branch of the Angel Investment Network, Scandinavian Investment Network is a part of the world’s largest business angel community, connecting over 113,000 investors to almost 500,000 entrepreneurs.
The well-designed platform is a great place for entrepreneurs and investors to meet. The process from registration to submitting a proposal is only a few clicks away. Finding a suitable investor or business to invest is made simple by a user-friendly platform and by excellent search methods. The search can be done by different categories such as the business type, country, and the requested investment. After finding potential business partners, the first steps of communication can be done within the program. For these reasons, the Scandinavian Investment Network is a good platform to establish business relations and be up to date with the latest start-up ideas and trends.
However, there is always a slight chance that the potential business partner is a scam artist. It is the user’s responsibility to take this chance into account.
Scandinavian Investments Network is a great tool for young entrepreneurs and investors to find funding or investment opportunities cost-effectively.
Lauri Kivekäs
IntBBAk-22
Mehis Tambu
BEB-2
Investly, https://investly.co/et/
I chose Investly, because it is a rapidly growing company that solves a big problem for small enterprises and of course I chose it because it's Estonian start-up company. It is beneficial to business students, because they are giving out business loans without putting any buildings or property to risk. Which is a convinient solution when you are looking for a loan, but got rejected from banks.
Investly's main idea is to give out loans to small and medium sized enterprises, so that they could upgrade their machinery, sales or whatever they need the loan for. The proccess of applying for a loan is firstly submitting an apllication with the details. Then the Investly's team will perform an analysis where they evaluate if the company is efficient enough to pay back to loan. They don't have very high requirements for applicants but as mentioned above they don't want property for cases if the applicant is not able to pay back the loan. After the evaluation the loan is put to basically an auction, where anyone who has made an account at Investly can invest into the loan. It is much like crowdfunding platforms like Bondora, Estate Guru, etc. Minimum to invest in the loan is very small -5 euros. Intrest from the investment is being set by loan apllicant, but it doesn't guarantee that the applicant gets the certan intrest rate that he prefers.
Recently they came out with a new feature which is basically debpt funding. Various enterprises can apply to sell their debpt/bonds to improve their business. Idea came just after Investly got 600 000$ funding for growth in January 2016. And now they have the resources to go global. They already have an office in UK.
To summarize, Ivnestly is a good place to get loan if you got rejected from bank. And also if you are interested in investing, which is very easy on Investly's platform and the risk has been so far 0. Meaning that all of the loan applicants have been able to pay back the loan successfully and even some of these enterprises have already taken multiple loans from Investly and are very satisfied with the service they provide. In my opinion Investly has a great business plan, they solve a great problem and both types of their clients investors and loan applicants are happy it's like a win-win situation.
KOOM
http://www.koom.org/
I have chosen this french online networking site because of the idea, which is great and easy to apply for me. Indeed, all the people have already thought that's not useful to sort your household waste, to chose today to go to work by train (and not car), etc... The purpose of this site is exactly to allow people to see and save the earth easily and together.
How does it work ? A user of this website, called a "Koomer", can see all the koomers on a map and see the actions they are actually doing/or planning to do in order to save the planet ; in this way, that motivates you/or an other koomer to do the same actions, and all the community of "koomers" to achieve different objectives and see directly the impact of these actions on the planet. Furthemore, some companies are partners of the website, and can contribute (regarding the success of certain missions and the efforts of the community on one task) to give money for one cause.
To sum up finally, the aim of Koom is to create a collective emulation in society by showing that everyone can act and assess the collective impact of its small individual actions.
The idea is to gather everyone (people or companies, students like old people, etc.) around voluntary challenges, and because many people agree on such action, then such a company/city is committed to such other action.
Very easy to use, the site invites you to register and to engage on small green actions to do every day (re-use a shopping bag, turn off my appliances on standby, buy seasonal produce, etc.). For each action, you can discuss with community members about your experience feedback through forums and give new ideas of actions to lead. If everyone participate on this website, I'm sure 100% that will preserve the environment and reduce the contamination of the earth and make people more concerned.
Reddit.com
Reddit is social news and networking website where users provide all the content. registered users can post in Reddit under subreddit that is related to the subject. registered users can also up vote or down vote on post made by others and this determines their position on sites pages. non registered users can browse Reddit and explore topics that they are interested in. Because each topic is located under their own page called subreddit, navigation in Reddit is extremely easy. Each subreddit has their own rules regarding posting so content inside subreddit usually is related to the topic.
Added value to business student
Subreddits like /r/Askreddit, /r/askscience or /r/ELI5 provide platform where users can post questions basically about anything and other users provide the answer how something works or is. for business students whom are for example interested starting business in foreign country they can post under /r/LegalAdvice how starting a company is done in United states. I myself use Reddit daily because it gathers world news under same page from various sources and ranks them based on relevance.
Jussi Koivisto
Repost (March 1, 2016 at 8:47 PM)
Wilhelm Mansén IntBBAk-21
JODEL
What is Jodel all about? Everything students at your Uni are talking about right now! Jodel is an online community that shows you what is happening in your area in real-time and updates you on what's going on at your university! You'll see the most recent posts (we call them Jodel) and connect with fellow students without exposing your personal information. By up/down voting users Jodels, you have the power to decide what your campus is talking about. Collect Karma points and become a master in jodeling! Share and catch-up on news, events, funny experiences, discussions and jokes faster than ever! No sign-up or profile necessary (https://jodel-app.com/whats-jodel/#).
Jodel is a relatively new online community that is slowly making its way to Finland. Jodel is in fact already very popular amongst a smaller group of students along the Finnish coastline.
Jodel is based on gossip. People love to gossip but do that very seldom in a way that exposes them to a wider audience. The fact that Jodel is a completely anonymous online community has solved that “problem”. “Jodellers” are free express any political, personal or sexual opinions. Because there is no way of “getting caught” or judged personally at least.
Why is Jodel useful for a business student? Jodel offers the perfect environment for market research, due to the anonymity. When a person fills in a form containing a thousand questions, he/she is not being 100% honest. This is because there is this little voice in the back of every ones head, that tells us to keep the public opinion in mind. When you post something online with your mobile device using an anonymous profile the situation is entirely different. As a result we get genuine opinions and discussions.
People using Jodel are able to up/down vote the Jodels posted on Jodel. When/if a Jodel reaches a count of -5 it will vanish. If a Jodel gets positive votes, the user that posted it in the first place gains karma-points. So when only the Jodels that people concur with stay in the system, you get the perfect data for market research. Users take care of filtering the information themselves and the end-products are genuine, popular opinions about anything and anywhere.
There is also the possibility of commenting on other peoples Jodels. This broadens the spectrum of information. People might like something in the posted Jodel but not all of it, even if they up-vote it. This were the commenting function comes in handy for a business student. The comments on the average Jodels are similar opinions that people post in order to make sure that others do not misinterpret the fact that someone liked the post. Other average comments consist of opposite opinions, random shout outs etc. There is also the possibility of up/down voting comments, so one is able to alter the initial assumption which in this case would be that the original Jodel and its content in full represents the public opinion.
So all in all, Jodel allows business students and companies to gather honest information. On top of this, there is nothing that prohibits these individuals from joining the community themselves and kick-starting discussions that they feel relevant.
@ Laura, Wunderkind.com
Hi Laura,
I didn't hear about Wunderkind.com before but I will definitly try it. It could be so easy to handle everything for group works, networking and more. But it is not only very good for students, you could also use this in working life at a company.
Thank you for posting this website!
Hannah
@Julie Roux, www.meetup.com
Hi Julie,
this is a very good opportunity to meet new people. Especially for being on Erasmus this is very helpful to get to know others with same interests. Second thing is that you can share information about business ideas - maybe you can profit from that while working on your own start-up.
I think it is a very good opportunity for networking. Thank you!
Hannah
@ Lauri
I think this network is a good oportunity for both start-up owners and business people who want to invest.
I was only wondering if it is for free for users or if it costs something.
Best regards,
Sarah Keller
Second Life
1.Second life is a virtual world, where you can create an online version of you or a character that you would like to be, which are called avatars. You are able to interact with other avatars or even with your friends, places or with objects. People can explore the world, (since Second Life has a map and islands), meet other residents with who you can socialize, participate in individual and group activities, build, create, shop and trade virtual property and services with one another. It is a 3D-based user-generated content.
The users over there create items, clothes, buildings, skins and accessories for you avatar, vehicles and whatever somebody can imagine of. All these thing are being sold and people are actually making money.
The first person to earn a million dollars on Second Life was actually featured in Businessweek and a full-time reporter assigned by Reuters to cover that story. By 2013 Second Life had approximately 1 million regular users.
Second Life has its own virtual currency, the Linden Dollar, you can put money on your avatar by exchanging real world currency or money. $3.9 billion has passed through Second Life's marketplace in 2014, and from that profit the Linden Lab pays out "tens of millions" of dollars to in-game creators each year. Second Life is intended for people aged 16 and over.
It is really easy to join the world of Second Life, you just go to their website, create an avatar then you just have to download the game and you are able to access it straight away.
2. Second Life has also made a website my.secondlife.com, which works as a web-based version of Facebook for Second Life residents. It is connected with the in world avatar as well as your friends list that you have in world. You can post pictures or status and according to your setting if you have it public for everybody it can be view-able to everyone that will look on your profile either on the web or in world. When somebody posts something it can be displayed under the trending tab from the homepage and from there people can like it and follow your profile.
So it works really well if you have established a business on Second Life where you can place links to direct people to your store, blog, marketplace and so on, so people can buy your goods and services. Or set a teleport link so when people press and they are online on the game they can teleport to your residence or store.
It work as a great way of exposure, since lot of people when they go to places or events in the world people will love to look on profiles and see what they have shared in them. Also it is a great way for business people to communicate and exceed customers’ needs, since the customers can comment and give feedback on the posts. Also if a seller is going on a vacation and will not be reachable for a short amount of time, they can just leave a status update and that way anybody who will open their profile they can clearly see that the person will not be available for an amount of time.
Second Life is not only about selling products within the world, companies can even create and design how would they want their real life store or company look like. Instead of using programs to plan everything they can create it easily and effortlessly online. Also they can join groups where they can create new networks and meet new people to do business with or expand their ideas.
Also people can get a job online, you do not have to travel in real life to go to work but you can work from your home, for a company and that will pay you wages.
I wanted to give a comment about using Facebook and Messenger.
Being an active member of my schools student council, we have found Facebook as a platform for communication and management too. For instance, we have this secret group of Student Councils members where they can participate ( post, discuss, vote etc.) and of course,we also use messenger groups for active communication. But being a part of this managing process I have found one big disadvantage of using all this:
it is easy "to get lost" or to miss something, because every day we get so many notifications on Facebook and you naturally just miss the news from your secret group or messenger. And in a result things are not done and people are disappointed.
Linda
Jam (Facebook)
Jam is a French virtual assistant SMS that all the students have always dream to have. For use it, it’s very simple you just need an internet connection and then go on Facebook and write on the URL: Jam. Send a message and ask what you want. This is the way for fecebook messenger but you can also go on the website: https://hellojam.fr/. On this website you can find a phone number and you can chat without internet.
It’s a free service who help students people to find what they need, what they want thanks to a SMS conversation (Facebook messenger) and soon twitter and whatsapp. It’s a conversation that is done with artificial intelligence which is driven by humans. So you are able to interact with an artificial intelligence and if your question is too difficult it’s a human who take the control. The site doesn’t work only from 2 am to 7 am for the moment.
It allows students considerable time saving and help. Help for find a job, help for find a pub, a place for eat pizza, sushi, a flat, an internship, an idea of gift for a friend, for your parents… You can ask what you want and they give you an answers with an average of few minutes. I have try it in the past and they are very reactive and never stop to help you if you are not satisfy. Add to this the website in on Facebook and you discuss with Jam on messenger so you have also the advantages of Facebook and messenger for chat with your friends, your family, for business, homework group… and on Facebook you can find all the marketing of other company. On the page of Jam you can find some jobs, the news of the page Jam and some partner who offer gifts for the winner of games, contest. This is a good way for attract people and make them more loyalty. Jam is like a friend, who can tell him you’re problems to solve a duty, to found a job and it will help you. However, there are some disadvantages such as the fact that there are no recommendation for a particular job. For example we know that Jam help a lot of students to find jobs but we never hear the opinion of the students, how was the job, how was the enterprise, how many time he/she have works inside the company… like this we can have an opinion and another help for find a job or an internship. And it’s the same for find a restaurant for example because I think if they add like the same system in tripadvisor or rbnb with comment of people, they feeling, what they like, what they don’t like, the recommendation on a scale of 10 for example it’s can be a plus and a very interesting one because thanks to this we could have a better idea and a conversation between the users. Another disadvantage is that Jam exist only in France for the moment but you can use in Estonia for example. I have try it and it work but they don’t have the same sources of course.
A way to use the network can be for all the students who want help to find what they need, what they want, like we have say before but another way to use the network it’s can be for acquiring business-related knowledge by asking question because they give the answer of what you want, do internship and have new knowledge. Or it’s can be also for developing a new business. For example you have lunch your own business and you need more employee with specific knowledge and skills or not? What you can do is to create a partnership with Jam because you want new employee with specific knowledge and skills and Jam want to help people who try to find a job. So you develop your search criterion with Jam and Jam help you to developing a new business.
Marianna Grigorakis SECOND LIFE
I havent heard about it before but it sounds very interesting. I like the idea that you can create the avatar for yourself and you can meet people in "imaginary world"
Laura Helenius WUNDERLIST
I also havent heard about this before but it seems to be very useful tool especially for students and but also for other tasks.
Linda Upeniece, basecamp.com
Basecamp seems really interesting! It could be a very helpful tool for managing group projects.
Miia Juottonen, www.praxisnetwork.eu
Praxis seems like a interesting site especially now when internship is a current topic for second year students.
Wunderlist
Laura Helenius, www.wunderlist.com
Wunderlist seems to be very interesting and promising! I bet it is very useful tool for those people who don't have a lot of time available to organize their timetable and also it helps to get your work done more easily and faster.
https://www.brella.io/
Brella seems to be quite good way for entrepeneurs to find possible partners.
Student: Marko Pilisner
Program: Slack, www.slack.com
Slack is a communication program for teams to communicate with each other effectively. It means that it is very easy to use and has many aspects for better communication. For example, you can use Slack to personal talk, group talk, demonstrate charts, share files and much more. It is made to be an easy to use program, so people could save their time and meeting costs.
Business students can easily communicate with their team online, which is a really good thing. Most of the time during classes you can not talk on the phone or you can not just skip the important class either. Although being on the Internet is a common thinf for most of us, which makes it easy to use. You also do not need to download anything, it is all browser based. All you need is an internet device.
I have now used Slack for two month. It is a valuable tool for our team as we do not have an office. Our office is slack. We share everyrhing needed there and can discuss about it at the same time. It also has live notifications, so it shows when a person is typing something in the program. It is better than Facebook or Teamworks because it is simple. Everything is a few clicks and in the same place. The creators have managed to put together a easy, time-saving communication program, that will make meetings pointless. This is far the best communication program I have used and I recommend it to all teams for easier time!
Reddit.com
Reddit is one of the biggest forum based networking site currently in the world, and is still growing. What makes reddit so popular is partly because it's so interactive between the user's and also because the information is so easily available.
Reddit is based on the idea that user's can create so called subreddits, which are basically micro forums, topics ranging from whatever you could imagine. If you've created an account in Reddit, then you can add these subreddits onto your subscription list. User's has the choice to browse through these subreddits individually or browse the so called front page which gather's the most relevant topics inside of each subreddits.
The pros of Reddit is definitely in its wide range of information and how fast you can get a personalized answer if you have questions. The minus side of the website is how overwhelmingly confusing the site may seem at first, but you'll get used to it after a while.
flickr.com
Flickr is a website, where people can share their photos and videos and see and comment on others. Flickr is a good website for students and people to get knowledge on different places and locations. It helps students who travel to get knowledge where they can go and visit. If you go for example to Tallinn, you can before hand search different pictures people have uploaded from Tallinn. When searching for Tallinn you may find good restaurants to visit or sightseeing to go.
Pluses (+)
- free
- easy search engine
- you can search places,people or groups
- easy to use
- more based on land photos than ''selfies''
Minuses (-)
- Doesn't have a forum where people can talk
- Maybe a little too much artistic photos
- Lack of language options
The Flickr is a useful tool for getting the basic knowledge of many different places, such as Tallinn, but there is still a place for improvement, especially a forum where people could talk and ask questions.
Reddit is a forum based website where people can share their news, views and comments on different topics. The site can be extremely confusing when you first enter the site, because the main page, or front page, collects all the most discussed threads on the subreddits the user has subscribed. These so called subreddits are divided into categories for example: /r/politics, where you can discuss political issues. The pros with reddit is that it has a subreddit about basically anything, this makes its easy for the user to subscribe into variety of different subreddits and gain the subreddit most discussed threads to frontpage without needing to search separately, also the newsfeed spreads so quickly you get instantly info from the site. The cons with reddit is that the site is based on people commenting on the threads, so you can't be sure that the comments are credible.
Instagram
Instagram, launched in 2010, is a social networking service that includes mobile photo-sharing and video-sharing. The app allows users to take pictures and videos and post them either privately or publicly on their accounts. Instagram can be accessed by an app that is downloadable to most of the popular smart phones.
The aim on Instagram is to share information, feelings, thoughts etc. to your followers and to the public with media. It’s a great marketing tool for some businesses if they’re able to attract followers on the app to help increase recognisability. Many companies have discovered this and currently run their own Instagram accounts, hosting competitions and interacting with potential and current customers. Users can make their photos easier to find by hash tagging them, which enables people to find their pictures quite easily. This is convenient to companies, because they can hashtag their values etc. and so more potential customers are finding their accounts.
Personally I‘ve noticed that Instagram is a great marketing tool and it’s quite easy to attract new customers to your business just by creating an account. Often you can contact “Instagram-famous people”, those with tens of thousands of followers, and get them to advertise your products/services to their followers.
Henri Holopainen IntBBAk-21
Pinterest: https://fi.pinterest.com/
Mobile app is also available
Pinterest is an American social network founded in 2010. The basic idea of Pinterest is that after creating their own personal account, people can share their own media content, like pictures and videos for everyone to see. If another user finds your content interesting, he can "pin" your content so that it can then be accessed and seen from his own page or "board"
In addition, pinned content can also be directly sent to another user.
"Pinning" content to your own page isn't limited only to content found in Pinterest, as pinning is also available in multiple other sites, either by using a browser extension or by the sites having direct access to Pinterest's pinning option.
Pinterest is a very useful tool for businesses and business people. Just like any other social networks, Pinterest is a great tool for finding people with same interests and hobbies, making networking globally very easy.
Pinterest allows different businesses to create their own pages where they can freely promote their products and services. From these business pages, potential customers can directly browse through companies products, and make buying decisions. According to case studies, Pinterest is the most effective social network to promote products and services.
Just like other big social networks, Pinterest also allows companies to gather information about it's users, in order to use that information for marketing purposes.
KICKSTARTER
Kickstarter is a company which was launched in 2009, https://www.kickstarter.com/. The idea of the website is that you can introduce your idea or project that you have been working on, and when people get excited, they can fund it. It is basically crowdfunding activity. The company’s mission is to bring creative projects to life. Anybody can register to the website, you just choose a deadline and a minimum funding goal. The main point is that you need to get the money that you are asking for before the deadline. If you do not accomplish your goal before the deadline, no funds are collected. The difference between Kickstarter and GoFundMe is that the other raises money for projects and business ideas, and other funds individuals (raising money for health problems for example).
How Kickstarter works: You post a project description on Kickstarter, then you just make a pitch video. The video is not necessarily a requirement, but almost all funded projects have a video. You set a funding goal and a time frame for your project. After that, Kickstarter staff will look at your project and give feedback. Then they (hopefully) approve your project and it’s posted on the site. Then your project just goes live.
PROS
+Anybody can access
+Easy to use
+ Project creators keep 100% ownership of their work
CONS
- 5% site fee, 3-5% payment processing fee, and required backer rewards
- Many projects have been found to be scams
- The all-or-nothing funding model
BrandBacker
BrandBacker is a social networking site that connects brands and influencers. It is a great way to increase the brand awareness through social media influencers. The brands will send free products or shopping credits for their online store to influencers in hopes that the receivers will post about the products. There is also a possibility to pay for the influencers if they write a (positive) post about the brand.
Anyone can join as a influencer, but there is a better chance to make a deal with the brand if you have a rather large amount of followers in for example YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or some blogging platform. There is over 10,000 influencers in BrandBacker and 350M total followers.
It is a quite cheap way for brands to market their products. If for example a well known vlogger with a solid fanbase in YouTube gives a positive review on the product you have sent them, you most likely get a peak in sales on that particular product. Maybe even more than with traditional marketing. The influencer will get free stuff, or even money and also more content in their channel. People love to hear about new products to spend their money on.
However, this may lead to biased reviews so it isn't always ethical. Especially if the brand e.g. gives the Instagram user a specific caption that they have to insert in the photo of the product. Other minus in this network is that mostly only the residents of the US are eligible for the campaigns. This kind of network needs to be created for Finnish audience.
We have chosen the social network "VIADEO" which is a French social network.
Viadeo was created in May 2004 by Dan SERFATY, a Student graduated in economics in HEC Paris and Thierry LUNATI who was graduated in Centrale Paris.
The target of the network is clear: Enterprises, new entrepreneurs, students and workers. Actually, it seems to be the same network as LinkedIn but, the French local version. Indeed, it is totally unknown in foreign countries and it is focused on French enterprises.
The good point of this social network is that if you want to work in France, you just have to put your CV and Motivation letter attached and looking for offers proposed on the platform.
Thank's for reading,
Christophe AMEQUIN (christophe.amequin@hotmail.fr)
Louis-Emile GENTILHOMME (louisemile.gentilhomme@gmail.com)
Théo BADRE (t.badre08@gmail.com)
Whatsapp - https://www.whatsapp.com/
Whatsapp isn't only internet based app it's mostly app based for all common systems like Android, IOS or eaven Windows phone. Also there is possibility to use it from website on windows PC or Mac. It's very flexible for every device and over it's translated over 50 languages including Estonian and Finnish. Whatsapp has over one billion users all over the world.
Before end of the 2016 WhatsApp took a step to become a platform after the facebook - owned company revealed it will begin to integrate businesses services into its app. Their aim is to keep things useful, such as receipts, flight notifications and delevery tracking. Also they offer for business to communicate with each other throught order, transaction and appointment information, delivery and shipping notifications, product and service updates and marketing. For example you will get message when your delivery will be made or you may recieve flight status information for upcoming travel. They keep it as clean as possible and focusing to cut spam out of this app. Also there are possibilities to send files, pictures, voice recording and call people throught app for free, so if your partner is other side of world then you don't have to worry about phone bills...
You can create groups for every team you have so you don't have to worry about who from where is calling to you, it shows you what Team member is calling or sending you message. Also that gives really good change to be more friendly for your costumers because you can easily contact with them and they can contact with you.
I have use it by my own few times to communicate with chinese suppliers. First time if I used it it was a little bit strange but little time later it was pretty comfortable. I had much quicker to communicate with supplier than otherway. I didn't had to log in specific portal, send them letter like a e-mail also in WhatsApp you see is person online or not.
Pros and Cons
Advantages of using Whatsapp:
All tools are very easy to use
You can share your location, photos, statues with friends
You can send 100 messages per month to any of your friend who doesn't use Whatsapp
Video calls for free
No advertisements on screen
Free messages to any part of the world without any charges
Disadvantages of using Whatsapp:
You need to pay 0.99$ for renewal after every year
Your profile picture is visible to every person who has your contact number and using app, whether known by you or not.
You must have accsess to internet
You can chat friends only who have smart phones supporting this app
CANVA DESIGN SCHOOL BLOG
https://designschool.canva.com/
Canva is a free solution (with paid options) to make designs online intuitively, whether it be banners, visuals for networks or different cover. Halfway between tutorials, inspirations and tricks, Canva.com helps its users in the personalization of design of projects, presentations or works. The latter is easy to access via a computer. Furthermore, the community can interact via comments below the articles of the different pages present on the blog if people are log in.
The blog targets is therefore to reinforce the work of the users, who are not designers of trade to proposing to them a wide range and varied tools. The goal is to find the right color combinations, find free icons on the Internet, examples of successful graphic charters, follow a trend or use psychology in design. It is therefore important for the user to increase the presentation efficiency of his work. Canva goes beyond a "simple" design tool by helping its users make their visuals a true growth support for their work.
And that's why the blog has an interest for business students. This one can help to visually develop a project according to the precise codes in this field. In addition, the students can debate them on the site in order to bring another point of view. The objective comments will enable the community to seek the best possible efficiency.
The weak point of this site remains its low diffusion. Indeed, this tool cannot, at the moment compete with other blog, applications or software more famous in terms of attendance. As a result, the growth of the community can only be achieved through social diffusion (word of mouth, sharing on social networks), which clearly limits its spread.
BNI and BNI Connect
Business Network International is an American franchised networking organization with around 200,000 members in 7,500 local chapters worldwide. Members meet regularly to discuss business and support each other's businesses by sharing referrals.
The company was founded in by Ivan Misner in 1985, way before the rise of the internet or social media sites. However, the company has successfully integrated a virtual networking tool to their business model. From the BNI website, people with networking prospects can search and identify the local networking meetings held by BNI. Additionally, the company has created BNI Connect, a social media platform, which connects the members around the globe. The services offered by BNI are largely used by companies and especially smaller companies and their representatives locally to connect both locally and internationally to other businesses in different business sectors.
The strength of such network is its ability to connect the people physically in a meeting sparked by online activity. This potentially provides more tangible connections than a strictly virtual network would. Additionally, such activity provides more stable ground for making both business and personal connections with other people. However, the business model of BNI restricts the potential boom of users as it requires one to be present at the local meeting. In effect, this also restricts the possible potential connections to be made, especially internationally.
Emre Sola Intbbak-31
Marthen K.
BEB-2B
Amazon.com, Inc.
URL : https://www.amazon.com
Amazon.com is an American electronic commerce and cloud computing company, founded in 1994. It is the largest Internet-based retailer in the world by total sales and market capitalization. Amazon has developed a customer base of around 30 million people. Amazon makes its money by taking a small percentage of the sale price of each item that is sold through its website.
Business student can use Amazon.com as a online platform where to sell his/hers products. Amazon allows you to sell a number of different items. For exampel electronics, toys, games, musical instruments, books, CDs, DVDs, computer games etc. It can be used to sell new innovational product that business student have come up with or as a site to earn extra money. Customers describe Amazon.com very efficient, fast, reliable, no hassle, easy, personal and friendly site.
Advantages of Amazon.com:
with a base of more than 300 million active customer accounts and more than 170 million monthly unique visitors to the website resulting in over $100 billion in revenue, Amazon is the number 1 place to go for most shoppers
Since Amazon is one of the biggest and most trusted global selling and buying platforms, it’s very easy to start selling in different markets
Depending on your niche and how crowded the market is you can start selling from day one without any significant marketing efforts whatsoever
Disadvantages of Amazon.com:
High competition-when multiple sellers have the same product on sale, Amazon will decide which seller is the best fit
Amazon is charging retailers hefty commissions for every product sold through them
Hello everyone I have chosen to analyze Pinterest
www.pinterest.com
Pinterest is a web and mobile application company that operates a photo sharing website. Registration is required for use. The site was founded by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp.
How to use?
Pinterest is a free website that requires registration to use. Users can upload, save, sort, and manage images—known as pins—and other media content
through collections known as pin boards.
For example, it very interesting to use if you want to found a new photo for the development of a business or a start-up. there are a lot of picture without right of auteur’s so you can use for free.
Also everyone can participate. In fact, you can post something like an advices or something that your ant to share
So this is a very interesting way to found dome new ideas with new picture!
Finkeltin Lucas (finklucas@gmail.com)
SensCritique is a French social network created in 2011 which focuses on the culture. On the website, you can give a grade and comment on various cultural pieces: movies, series, books, comics, music and video games. All the pieces you graded constitute your collection. What is interesting with this network is that you can follow your friends on this website, to see what they thought of this new movie that you want to see. But you can also see how the movie was graded by the community, i.e. all the users of the network. It can also be interesting when you want to discover new things, because you just have to explore the collection of your friends, looking for movies you did not see or books you did not read. The last thing you can do is to create lists of pieces in the same thematic and share it with the community. The managers of the website also create some rankings about the pieces with the best grades.
At the end of 2011, the website has 35,000 subscribers, 200,000 critics were written and 6 million pieces were graded by the users of the website. In 2013, there are more than 400,000 critics, 18 million of graded pieces, and 110,000 lists. And at the end of 2014, there are more than 250,000 users.
Elina Myllyniemi IntBBak-22
Studentwork
Studentwork.fi is an agency and recruitment firm which has a website offering jobs for “young skilled workers” meaning by that university graduates. Beneficial is that it is clearly defined to who they are offering the jobs. Job seekers can create their own career account to the website.
Studentwork helps client firms and young people to find each other. Because it operates in
Nordic countries and Germany so that there is not too much options from which to choose, for example worldwide. Although there are no any other jobs to offer than Studentwork’s partner firms, so the range can be also too limited. Website is the most beneficial for them who are interested to work particularly in Nordic countries.
Jobs are categorized by location (region) and industry. If you want to seek from other countries than Finland, you must change to country’s own Studentwork website. It maybe would be better all the available jobs to be on the same international webpage.
I chose to share my ideas about YouTube. YouTube is a well-known video hosting platform that reaches millions of users across the globe daily. The website allows users to upload, view, rate, share, add to favorites, report and comment on a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media videos. It offers both networking and self-development opportunities to businesses and individuals. There is an opportunity to advertise your business, to promote yourself as a brand like a lot of vloggers do these days or to use it for research, studying or simply for entertainment. Unregistered users can only watch videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos and add comments to videos. YT is an ideal platform for every marketer to achieve enormous audiences for boosting their business. YT has become the second largest search engine with about 55% consumer traffic on the Internet in 2014.
Pros and cons from the point of networking and self-development
+ Virality and low costs for advertisment purposes
+ Discoverability
+ YT offers captivating and informative videos about everything business related
+ Videos are found to be extremly effective in instructing and educating
- Limited flexibility - not many possibilities to customize your page
- No guarantees
- Tremendous competition
The link of the website: https://www.youtube.com
Charlotte Pärt, BEB-2A, Estonian Business School
Analysis of Monster (Finland)
I’ve chosen to analyse a webpage called Monster. It’s a webpage that looks for workers to different companies and vice versa. Monster.fi has been active for a while now and it’s really popular. It’s a part of a much larger company (Monster Worldwide INC) and is accessible through: http://www.monster.fi.
The idea of Monster is to find the correct workers for the correct job posts. There is around 80000-90000 people each week visiting Monster looking for new jobs. The site itself also co-operates with different job-seeking sites, so if you post on Monster an open spot for a job post, it will also be reviled on other sites. Not only can you find new job offers here but the site also offers guidance and advice for individuals and companies.
The problem with Monster is that as an individual, you are not able to communicate on any kinds of forums, because there are none. If you find something that wakes up your interest, then you should be in touch with the company straight away instead of being able to discuss the job standards on certain posts in certain areas.
As for companies, the con part is that if you want to maximize your results to find a new applicant for a spot, you have to pay the site to be able to browse through their CV database and filter people from there.
In its whole, Monster is a great virtual network for all kinds of talents to find the jobs that they are looking for. You can filter very specifically for certain jobs on the site, so it won’t take you long to find the section you are looking for. I’ve used the site myself and I’m very pleased with the information it was able to offer.
-Christian Toivo
Monster.fi
The networking site I chose to analyze is a news aggregator called Digg. It has a curated front page and its main idea is to select stories specifically aimed at the Internet audience. These stories are mainly about science, current political issues, entertainment, technology, general news and all other viral internet issues. It is considered the largest and most popular social news Web site on the internet. Basically they want to be known as the homepage of the internet that has the best articles, videos and original content that is trending on the internet at that current moment.
Through Digg, one can share an article they find interesting with their friends, or alternatively, they can post them to the most popular blog sites directly, that Digg provides for you. You can access Digg through http://digg.com.
The added value that Digg provides is that people can check out recommended stories and can also recommend stories that they find important and interesting. Once a link has been submitted to Digg, other users can vote on the relevance and importance of a shared article. If people find your article interesting they can vote to “digg it” and if you share a link that gets the most clicks on the site, it will then be posted on the front page of Digg, giving it easier access for others. On the other hand, if the story you have shared is not considered worthwhile by others, they can instead vote to “bury it”. Another advantage of Digg is that one can search the site if they have a particular issue or theme in mind.
By using Digg, you can acquire business-related knowledge, since it includes nearly all trending issues that people find important. As Digg users can add friends to their networks, it is a social network as well. One can for example promote their blog through Digg. If you share lots of articles that others find worthwhile through your blog on Digg, you can attract traffic to it.
Gisela Silvola
IntBBAk-31
@hönö holopainen
I think you've done a good work analyzing Pinterests main characters. Even though I've used it quite often, there were some new things for me too in the short analysis.
@Sonja.S
You'r presentation of Kickstart was quite interesting. I've been wondering how it works in reality and thanks to your short presentation I now know how it operates.
-Christian Toivo
Intbbak-22
reddit.com
Reddit is an online forum which was founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005 and it is 24th in the list of most visited websites in the world. It has 542 million monthly visitors and the registered users create the content for the site.
Reddit consists from eight main categories which are.
-Educational
-Entertainment
-Discussion based
-Humor/light-hearted
-Image sharing
-Self-improvement
-Technology
-Meta
These categories are divided in to smaller sections known as subreddits. There is an incredible amount of topics you can discuss on. You can find a subreddit for almost any activity that you have interest in. Subreddits that I have found useful for my studies are marketing, digital marketing, business and business school.
In these subreddits you can discuss with people working in the marketing field or people who are planning to work in those fields. People also share information about the recent trends and news. "Any tips for a college student (marketing major) wanting to get ahead of the game before graduating?", "How can we generate website traffic with $0 marketing budget?" and "Nothing Is Free, Including Your Time" are some topics I have read and discusses about in the site recently.
That is how I use the site but it is easy to find the subreddits that interest you by using the search tool of the site. Hopefully you find information that is helpful and interesting to you!
Pros
+ Free and easy way to discuss with people working in the field you would like to work in the future.
+ Easy access.
+ Vast amount of content.
Cons
- It may take some time to get used to the layout and mechanics of the site.
- Anyone can write anything to the site so it is good to keep in mind.
https://students2mentors.com/
Students 2 Mentors is an online community where students compete for exclusive scholarships, make connections and discover career possibilities. Students 2 mentors also serves as a social meeting place where students can form groups, share ideas and hold discussions. it is a good platform for students who have just graduated or are looking for a place to do their internship in. Employers are also able to connect with student members through advanced recruiting tools and live online recruiting events.
The site's layout is clear and information is easy to find. However there is not a lot of information provided on the website and without searching for additional information on other websites the concept and its perks are a bit unclear. For example, it would be useful to know what kind of employers are looking for employees and in what field.
Sampo Kallio- Intbbak-22
Dooxe: http://www.dooxe.fi/
Dooxe is a service auction platform site that brings clients and companies/tradesmen together. It is very easy to use and it works by reverse auction. Jobs are posted to the site by clients, and companies try to outbid other companies in order to win the job. Client will decide which company will get the job based on the price, work duration, quality etc. After the job the clients may rate the company, and of course better ratings brings more clients and jobs for the company. The site has more renovation jobs, but once in a while there is also other job offers.
It’s quite simple to find a company for a job:
1. First you must post your job offer for free to the site
2. Then you evaluate offers and check the ratings/ basic information of the company
3. Then you select the company
4. After the job is done, you pay the company
Companies benefits from Dooxe is clear: Companies gets jobs, clients may contact them in the site and it gathers also the main information of the company.
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Efficient and fast to find companies
- Free for job requester/clients
- Companies may get jobs easier
Cons:
- Companies must pay a fee from getting a job
- Works only in Finland
- Service providers must be registered companies in Finland
Kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com) is a crowdfunding online platform that allows for participants to raise money to fund a specific project. People create a campaign by providing detailed information in effort to meet their financial goals. This online community allows business people to share their idea, build brand awareness and fund their dreams. It is composed of over 12.4 million people from across the world. This is a great opportunity for entrepreneurs who need financial capital. The downfall - only the good ideas with good marketing will be able to reach their goal. However, this is a great start for entrepreneurs to build their company.
Gust
Gust is a global SaaS funding platform for the sourcing and management of early-stage investments. Gust connects startups with a large pool of investors across the world to help raise early-stage funding from initial pitch to successful exit. Gust was launched in 2004 and in 13 years over $1.8 Billion has been invested in startups through Gust. Over 200,000 startups have already used the funding platform to connect and collaborate with over 45,000 investors.
On Gust you can browse startups and investors by location. However, investors are five times more likely to invest locally. There are currently 400,000 founders and 60,000 investment professionals on the site from 190 different countries.
Gust is not meant to be a crowdfunding platform like Kickstarter or Funderbeam. It only provides a full set of tools for both startups and investors to manage their fundraising and other investment activities. Gust provides startups with legal, accounting and financial tools and services. There are three different profiles that you can set up – for startups, for investors and for accelerators.
For example, a company applies for funding at New York Angels. For that, the company has created themselves a profile on Gust. After doing that, the profile can be shared by the company with individual angels to whom they can reach out.
The information that is provided on the profile is then wrapped with an entire collaboration environment for the investors, which allows them to review the company’s information, exchange messages and reviews, and indicate their interest in funding the startup.
Kerdo Pohl
BEB-2A
Discord
Discord is a social networking tool that lets groups interact with each other through voice and text based chat.
Thou the target audience for the app is gamers it is also a very good communication tool within small or even larger groups, with some management.
The app, both on mobile and desktop on most OS-es and even a web client, uses a server based format. A user must create a server, which is free, and or be invited to one. inside a discord server there can be multiple text and voice channels, their availability to users can be limited by the use of premonitions, so that a certain group may only see their text and voice channels even thou there may be hundreds or even thousands of users in one server.
The app takes a lot form programs like Skype and TeamSpeak3 and improve upon them, in some areas massively. the ability to have multiple call sessions at the same time and the possibility to switch between the seamless is a must in a modern enterprise who have employees all around the world.
It even has the ability to add friends, so you could privately communicate with them, without the need of using a dedicated server.
The Pros
+free
+management through permissions is a easy way tho manage the people on the server
+multiple voice and text chat possibilities
+Friends lists
+Text so speech
+ability to integrate BOTS to do certain tasks on the server
+intuitive UI
+multiple platforms
Cons
-management might be hard to understand
-no screen sharing ability
Aivar Peenmaa BEB-2a
Facebook as we know has one of the largest crowds in social media and especially in Finland. It is still by far the most used social media in Finland and Instagram comes as second. This got me wondering with all the ads running these days on Facebook that how much does it cost to get likes and views of a professional page on Facebook?
After extensive research I figured out that the cost depends on the the size of the target group and what market sector you''re in. The most expensive seemed to be if you had a specific profession and a narrow market sector you could end up paying over 1 € per click to your website and over 13 € per 1,000 view of your ad. The least expensive thing to advertise per click to website and per 1,000 view per ad seems to be Entertainment where you only seem to pay less than 0,15€ per click to website and less than 4 € per 1,000 ad view which is understandable because of the wide range of possible clientele would make it extremely expensive otherwise to advertise.
The positive side of Facebook advertising is that it is direct and you can specifically choose your audience and you will get clear billing on what the marketing campaign has costs and how many people it has reached. It has been said that with Facebook advertising you are able to reach more effectively your own market and that it would be cheaper and more effective than more traditional internet advertising
Mathias Selin
IntBBak-22
Soundcloud
https://soundcloud.com
I have been using soundcloud for few years now. It is network based music streaming service where every user can upload their own music to the network that others can then stream. Streaming music on soundcloud and using the network is completely free. Many popular artists upload their production on souncloud and you can stream their music free. If you prefer to have music downloaded to your hard disk you have also option to buy single tracks and songs in many cases. Soundcloud has a mobile application so you can stream music and use the network also with your phone. Users can create playlists, follow and send messages to other users. Users can also comment, like and share music uploads.
Although I don´t see any significant added value for business students using soundcloud, I see soundcloud as a valuable tool for music lovers, artists and those who seek to make a living in music industry. For example many upcoming artists have benefited a lot from using soundclud. Users of the soundcloud network have liked and shared music produced by upcoming artists, which have helped them to gain more visibility and recognition.
Nicolas Lipasti
IntBBak-22
Linkedin is the largest global community for professionals as well as students aiming to network. It enables the right people to engage with each other. LinkedIn can be diversified to all users wanting to connect and socialize within different business environments. It also enables the use of relevant information such as work history to connect with different colleagues. It is a much more professional platform compared to for instance Facebook.
What makes LinkedIn so important for students as well as for individuals looking for a new job or in a job is the fact that the platform is unique and has very high number of registered user accounts. Negative aspect is that it is quite hard in the beginning to find contacts and create an wide enough account if not having a lot of work experience.
Linkedin could be used more widely as a tool for students, there is only 3 million MBA graduates in LinkedIn. It would be easy for business students to network with each other already during the time they are studying.
Meetup – Online site bringing people with similar interests together. Meetup (http://www.meetup.com) is international social networking-site; there are 29.88 millions members from 180 countries using Meetup and sharing similar interests, hobbies, passions and careers. This online social networking portal allows its members to find and join different groups and communities with common interests, for example books, movies and careers, all over the world. Main goal for people using Meetup is to connect and meet new people, and it is easy to organize own local group or find an existing one.
The owning company, Meetup Inc. is based in New York City and Meetup is established in 2002 by two co-founders Scott Heiferman and Matt Meeker. It is available in English, Spanish, French, Japanese, Italian, Portuguese and German.
The online site is really easy to use. Just choose the topic you are interested in and find the group or meeting near you. Individuals are able to register in as members and use the online site free. Only organizing a new event or meeting is chargeable, but the charged fees are low.
Meetup is not only for fun; one can take part to start-up-business meetings, join to a group to learn a new language or to discuss politics. There you can also get some peer support and experienced advises through a messaging platform, or share your own tips or views. It is easy to everyone aggregate events and explore the event-calendar to find interesting meetings or groups for you!
Jenny Haapa Intbbak-22
Katri Siltala Intbbak-22
First I would like to state that I have generously chosen to add something both different and somewhat not usual to this home assignment.
I have chosen Tinder (https://www.gotinder.com / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinder_(app)), both because I have found it useful to not only finding a job (succeeded in a long term) and as an fun tool to communicate with people one wouldn’t normally come into contact with but to expect the unexpected. Most of the things we want take time, so it is crucial to build up a network… just in case.
This all can be explained by me answering to multiple questions throughout my journeys/adventures on the app which have so far been one of the most used and statistically profit proven ways possibly available. A summary on this topic may or may not be impossible to be written down in such a short novel.
To me, interaction in a good relationship (any kind) starts with two sides wanting to know each other and being mutually interested in what the other has to offer. The …-ship is based on trust and agreement, just as it is both in business and in life in general. That said I truly encourage people to use, not take advantage of nor manipulate, people on any kind of social platform.
The future is not known, many things can happen but it is important to keep yourself open to nearly everything. Tinder has given me the freedom to start off as a “regular woman as any another” and gracefully prove my points and wished outcomes upward.
I personally only match with men and it is clear that most of them aren’t there in order to have a lovely chat and discuss possible future business prospects besides a nice cup of tea but it’s also clear that: a) they are exactly the kind of people I do not need nor want, b) it’s their loss.
Life has never been both as easy and difficult simultaneously as it is now, I can’t wait for what the future may behold. My personal survey so far concludes that the connection between me and basically anyone on this planet is closer than I would have ever expected to be.
Mary V, BEB-2
The network that I have chosen is called “Trello”. It’s a website where student from a same work group can share their ideas, works, can distributing work and, like a dashboard they can follow the life of their work. This social network is very useful for student. It can allow them to be effective, making a homework in group but each one at home and divide the task easily between the members. For instance, this social network could be interesting for us in this kind of project, we must do in “Business in Virtual Network” class. Indeed, we will need of a platform to share and divide our tasks easily, because of the distance and because we will never meet together. But this website could be improved to make it easier to use. Indeed it’s not easy for new users to learn how to you it.
To be effective the students must be active and reagent. They need to go several times a day on “Trello”, to see if any change has been made or if new tasks have been assigned. To use Trello correctly the group must be assiduous and everybody have to see what is appended to the group work.
Sampo Kallio, Dooxe
The site Dooxe was new to me so it was interesting to read about it and how it works. The presentation was really informative and explained well the purpose of the site.
Henri Holopainen, Pinterest
The presentation of Pinterest was nicely done and interesting. It brings out well the ways Pinterest can be used in businesses and business people. There was new information for myself that it is the most effective social network to promote products and service.
-Alessa Koskinen, IntBBak-21
Alessa Koskinen, IntBBak-21
AngelList, https://angel.co
AngelList is a worldwide social network founded in 2010 in U.S that connects startups with investors to help raise funding. The site allows for browsing of jobs at startup companies and startups can find best candidates to work for their companies.
To use the AngelList website you need to log in. You can create account to the site using your e-mail or either log in with Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. After this you have an access to browse startup job, recruit startup talent or find startup ideas and companies to invest in. And all this is free of charge.
The biggest problems with AngelList comes from the perspective of investing.
- The risk is bigger for investors than the startup companies, obviously.
- There is a change that investors and entrepreneurs don´t get to know each other’s well enough because of the rushed decision making and over-hyping of deals and ideas.
- Everyone can be or become an angel investor which means that they don´t necessarily have enough experience or not enough money.
The AngelList has many positive benefits when used properly and carefully.
- Great way to market new ideas.
- The site allows startups to raise money from angels free of charge.
- Investors can invite other investors to share in the deals.
- The site has algorithms to help startup companies to find best candidates for their startups when recruiting.
- Startup companies have access to several talented job-seekers and vice versa.
By the perspective of business student, the AngelList site offers channel to present your idea to the world and possible find funding for it. The site also offers channel for the student to find a job from a startup company.
,,Gust” is a great virtual community for investors to connect and collaborate with startup companies. A company can create one profile and share it with several different investor groups in different countries.
Pluses:
-Your startup profile serves as a universal funding application accepted by all investors using the Gust platform
-A startup can choose which information to share publicly and which to share privately with accredited investors
-A startup can upload and selectively share business documents with potential accredited investors.
-You can simply manage your company ownership & stay tax compliant
-Gust has hundreds of open accelerator programs seeking motivated, high-growth startups. You can apply to an accelerator to build your network
-You can raise Capital from Top Angel Investors & VCs
Minuses:
-Gust is not designed so much to 'raise investment', such as with a crowdfunding platform like Seedrs or (for projects) Kickstarter.
How to make the best use of membership in Gust community?
The most important thing is that you take your time to fill in all fields in the profile and keep in mind that most investors haven't heard about your company before. You need to make sure an outsider can understand what your product is and why it is a great, innovative, and scalable.
If some of you is/are using "nordnet.fi" for stock trading, I'd suggest using the "shareville.fi" platform. It enables you to follow other investors and see their portfolios, in addition to being able to chat with them. It also has a facebook-like page where people can post news and shares they recommend.
The thing I like most about shareville is that it has a mobile app which can send the user notifications when someone has bought or sold shares. All though the mobile app feels a bit clumsy, it is actually quite alright.
What shareville could do to improve their platform is that it should be also open for other investing sites. This could give valuable investing tips and news from outside the nordic countries.
Samuel Johansson
Intbbak-32
@Kim Knaapila
Reddit is a social network that i personally wasn't very familiar with. Your presentation of it was very thorough and informative, i also liked the different ways to use it for business purposes.
@Christian Toivo
I liked that you chose a topic that wasn't very common in other presentations here. I got very good information about Monster, and i will certainly keep it in mind, when looking for potential workplaces in the future.
Henri Holopainen INTBBak-21
Marie Heleen Lisette Kikkas
BEB-2b
I am writing about Weebly site, you can find it www.weebly.com
In weebly you can create your own blog, store or official website. For me it is the greatest site where you can built up your own proffesional website and you do not need any technical experience. The drag and drop system makes it very simple and you can track your visitors, wich is impotant to see, what they liked and maybe even shared forward. Also, you can create your own store and sell your products online. Cutting edge mobile apps make it easy to track performance, interact with visitors and manage orders. My personal site is mariekikkas@weebly.com , there I am sharing my pictures, writing about health care and football.
Added value of business students is that you can sell your product online and make your official website fast. Weebly gives opportunity to make your own application for mobile too and like I write earier, you do not need any technical experience. There is Ecommerce solution to grow your business online.
I found VisualCV idea by Pihla Seppälä, IntBBAk-21, really interesting. I haven't heard about it before but it seems like a really useful tool and something I would use in the future when applying for a job in a creative field.
@Sonja Hulkkonen
I liked your description of Students 2 Mentors. It seems like a very interesting and useful network that is definitely worth taking a closer look at. You have clearly identified its most important strengths and weaknesses.
@Samuel Johansson
Your tip for using the shareville platform for stock trading was interesting and something I had not heard of before. You have also analyzed its features and pros and cons clearly and simply.
Gisela Silvola
IntBBAk-31
@Gisela Silvola
A very detailed and useful description of the site. I hadn't heard of it before so the information was useful and relevant for me. It was also good that you also explained how to use the site.
@Samuel Johansson
Good description of the site. It was good that you listed the pros and cons clearly and also told what you personally like about the site.
@Christian Toivo
Monster.fi
I was familiar with monster before reading your analysis but it indeed provided new and useful information as well.
@Henri Holopainen
Pinterest
I was aware of the Pinterest as a site but not completely aware how it functions. It is definitely good to know all the popular sites of today. This review was useful for me.
-Kim Knaapila
@ Alessa Koskinen
AngelList
I knew it by name, but after reading your description I know even more about AngelList.
@Henri Holopainen
Pinterest
I also was aware of Pinterest, but I didn't know the basics functions and how it worked.
@Samuel Johansson
I actually am familiar with shareville as a platform, but had never knew any further details of the site and it's usage. I agree with your notion that the site should be also open for traders in other platforms.
@Sonja Hulkkonen
Very interesting site. It's great that there is a community for students and especially students who have just graduated. This site could be useful for multiple purposes from finding jobs and business partners to just friends.
Emre Sola
Intbbak-31
@Sonja Hulkkonen
I never heard about this website, and I think it is really interesting and useful for students to have such a platform to find job opportunities and to create themselves a network before they actually enter the job market.
@Jenny Haapa
I never heard about Meetup and I really think that it is great idea in order to meet new people who have the same interests as you when you arrive in a city or a country you don't know.
My second comment is going to be about "BrandBacker" comment made by Susanna. I have never heard about this site but I found the idea very interesting. It seems like a useful site for brands who want to promote their products in a modern way.
https://www.happn.com/en/ (It is an application for phone)
"Why should we go on dating websites when we meet so many new people every day, in real life?". Starting with this very simple observation, Fabien Cohen, Didier Rappaport and Antony Cohen decided to create an app that gives an everyday superpower: the power to find a person you've crossed paths with again, and to get in touch with them. This is how happn was born in January 2014 in Paris.
Happn is location based, but what sets it apart from apps like Tinder is the proximity restriction. The entire concept of the app is built around finding matches with the people you have actually encountered, or almost encountered, during your day.
Any time another Happn user comes within 250 meters of you, her profile shows up in your timeline. You can see how many times you’ve crossed paths with her, and check out the time and place of your last chance encounter. If you notice the word “NOW” next to her profile, that means she’s currently within range. For privacy reasons, the app will not display the exact distance.
You can see an index of every user you’ve come across recently, listed chronologically and by the amount of time you’ve been near each other. If you’re interested in her, you can press “Heart” button with her. If she “Hearts” you back, then you’ve formed a “Crush” and you can exchange messages.
She won’t know you liked her unless the interest is mutual. If you want to guarantee she knows, you can send her a charm. Then she get a notification to her phone that someone is really interested in. People you don’t like will never be able to send you any messages before you ’’accept them’’.
Periscope
I chose to introduce Periscope that is a 2015 launched online video stream application owned by Twitter. Periscope enables to send real-time video either in public or in private groups. It enables you to look inside different countries, cities, companies, and even people’s homes. After the release it immediately got popular and attracted millions of people around the world.
In a nutshell live broadcasts are made with a smartphone through app downloaded on the phone. Video broadcasts can be viewed for 24 hours after the release. The viewers are also able to comment and like the ongoing streams. It is possible to determine the audience by sending either public or private video stream. As the app is owned by Twitter it is also possible to automatically share the stream in Twitter. This enables people in Twitter to receive the link and see the video stream without yet using Periscope themselves. The video streams are titled short so that others cans see what the steam is about.
Pros
-Free and easy to use
-Meet people and get to know new cultures worldwide
-Possible to search consignments based on location/ topic
-Possible to comment and give feedback –enables to hold “ask and reply” consignments
-Transparency -
Cons
-Videos are not saved; last only 24 hours before being deleted
-Invasion of privacy as others can see your location
-Inappropriate material for children
How to utilize in business world
-Periscope can be used to marketing purposes, holding conferences or other online events
-Possible to hold stream events –this way also those who cannot attend can follow the event online
-Possible to market products to a wide audience via Periscope
-Possible to ask/give advice
-Mia Salmelin
Xing :
Xing is a social networking site for professionals as well as LinkedIn or Viadeo. You can create your profile and interact on this site. There are various possibilities for this, it is possible to post statuses (job search, articles that may interest others, ...). One can also speak directly via private discussions to two or more people. The interactions between people can happen whether or not they are friends with the person, however, in order to access the whole profile of a person you must be "friend" with the person. It is possible to consult directly various vacancies, whether in our sector of activity or not. You can subsequently apply for an offer that interests you, this can then lead to a real meeting (an interview). In addition, you can submit your CV on your profile, this allows the hirer to know if you are qualified and if you have the profile to claim this job (or internship for example). The news feed allows you to see in real time what your friends are sharing, the latest news about your sector or an area you may be interested in. It is also possible to react to publications with a "like" or "comments" system. Interactions with your friends are notified to you if you wish, you can also ask to be notified for a page or for topics that interest you. Finally, the "my network" section is reserved for requests for friendships that are made to you, those who wish to be part of your entourage on this site network. It is also possible to find people or companies through a search bar specific to Xing.
The main difference between the Xing, Viadeo and Linkedin sites is at the level of the host country, namely Germany for Xing, France for Viadeo and finally the United States for Linkedin. Another key issue is the number of registrants. There is more than $ 380 million for linkedin, for example, and only $ 8 million for Xing. Linkedin therefore offers more offers and interactions whatever the country, which is a real competitive advantage for this company. A weak point of Xing was the fact that until 2008 it was only available in English, which can delay some people, who can register on another site later.
Finally, some key concepts:
-CEO: Thomas Vollmoeller
-Founder: Lars Hinrichs, Bill Liao
-Creation : 2003
Théo Badré
Linkedin
https://fr.linkedin.com/
It is a professional social network. It allows members to create professional links in order to increase their network, for instance to get a job. Members post their curriculum vitae on their profile, they can give a detailed description of their professional and school experiences and promote themselves.
Companies use Linkedin to promote their brand and to recruit, indeed, the search engine is more precise than competitors (Viadeo in France) and all recruiters use this social network to find potential candidates. Linkedin is not only a tool of the labor market, it is also a Business to Business marketplace, lots of salesman benefit of Linkedin to spot potential targets to approach.
We can compare Linkedin to his french competitor Viadeo (presented by an other student). Linkedin is bigger than Viadeo and Viadeo has more paid options than Linkedin while Viadeo's options are less effective, for instance the research engine is less precise and effective on Viadeo.
Business students have to use Linkedin, first to create a professional network, then to find internship and finally to discover professional world. Linkedin allows an international view of the professional world.
I used Linkedin during my internship as a recruiter and salesman. Linkedin was my favorite platform to search good profile and to find potential targets. Nevertheless Linkedin is not limitless, indeed if you want to work with it you have to pay a premium profile to get an unlimited access to the research.
Louis-Emile Gentilhomme
Franz (meetfranz.com) is new online networking application for using many communication applications in one site at the same time. Nowadays everyone are using many different chat services and applications in their phones, which means that their phones are full of chatting applications and it is annoying trying to switch between them all the time. Franz has created solution to this problem: it is really easy to use all those applications only on one platform and at the same time. There is no need to use many different messaging platforms by turns anymore. Franz supports many different and most-used chat- and social media services, for example WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Skype and Linkedin.
Franz has over 10, 000 active users who use it daily. It has been installed over 22,000 times. It does not store your passwords or read your messages: it is very similar to web browser.
Katri Siltala, IntBBak-22
I believe nowadays online business is going to be more viral everyday. Thats why i have started to work on Amazon business.
Im sure everybody knows that Amazon is one of the biggest online markets existing and it is growing every day. Probably everybody knows or atleast have heard about Amazon, but im sure that many people dont actually know how easy it is to do business in Amazon as a supplier. What is great about Amazon is that it has its own warehouses. So you dont need your own inventory, because amazon affers you to hold your products in their warehouses. What amazon also does is that it sends out products for you. So you dont need to worry about sending products or where to hold them. For all that amazon charges you 15-25% of your unit sales price. All you got to do is send your products to their warehouse, make an Amazon business account and upload your product to the website and then watch how the sales go. Ofcourse you can do some marketing for extra cash etc and more stuff.
SLACK
Tuomas Lindholm INTBBAk-21
Slack is a cloud-based networking channel that includes collaboration tools and services. Name of Slack comes from “Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge. Slack offers chat rooms, private groups and direct messaging. Advantages of Slack comes with the possibility for companies/organizations to create different conversation-rooms with different topics to be able to manage the information flow in an easy way. Slack also works in a many different platforms, and because of its cloud-based servers’ employees can access information anywhere. Slack can also be used as an efficient file-sharing platform, since you can send any type of a files to either channels or directly to certain people. Slack can be integrated with different web-services that companies use, such as GitHub, Google Drive and Datadog. Slack is also open for developers; it has an open API that basically means that everyone (with programming skills) can create new integrations and possibilities e.g. usages for payrolling and structure management. Inside organizations slack reduces significantly email traffic since also “unnecessary” -messages go straight to different channels, that users can either mute or archive (if unnecessary). At the same time, in a big organizations Slack can create a distraction to its users if all of the notifications are on; numerous beeps and flashes can create an illusion for users to check all the time what is going on.
Tuomas Lindholm
INTBBAk-21
EBS Helsinki
Language Exchange Budapest is a group on Facebook whose aim is to help people learn languages for free. Members of the group are foreigners living in Budapest and locals. The basic idea of the initiation is pairing up people where one of them wants to practise a language which is the mother tongue of the other one and vice versa. Finding the adequate language partners only requires writing a post describing the languages we would like to practise and those would we offer in return. If someone is interested in our offer, they will contact us, and we can start to get together and practise. Beside these independent meetings, the admins of the group also organise monthly Language Exchange parties in different bars where the members of the group get together, each receiving a tag with their name and the languages they speak, in order to make it easier finding language partners.
This group is very useful in every aspect. Needless to say that speaking foreign languages is essential in today’s world and with this group we can progress in our language knowledge for free. It has more than 7000 members, so the chances are high of being able to find someone to pair up with. By getting in contact with foreign people, we can also broaden our international network, making friends, business partners or even boy/girlfriends from foreign countries.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/678859092141327/
YAMMER
I have chosen the social network YAMMER. To access Yammer, we have to create a count with an email. There are also an application Yammer for the phone. (www.yammer.com)
Yammer is a microblogging tool proposing of an internal social network for a specific company or community. It helps to promotes collaboration between employees. Helps companies to communicate to groups such as customers, partners and suppliers by breaking the barrier of the domain name.
In addition to the classic features of microblogging, Yammer offers features:
Users can create events that can be repatriated directly to Microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar. Allow to share links, using the Tag Principle to group topics by keyword. Let’s know who is "online". To have statistical Tracking of Network Usage. Allows to offer simple "polls" to users. Follow-up of conversations as a conversation. Tag called Topics. Ability to create public or private groups. Communities to integrate external members. Sharing Files or Photos. Survey Management. Sending messages by mail. There are Twitter integration, Microsoft SharePoint, Windows Phone application, iPhone, iPod touch, Android and BlackBerry. Desktop application on Windows
Yammer also gives developers the ability to create applications directly to third party users around Yammer.
The Added value for business students it’s the collaboration with all company employees on projects, initiatives and events. Groups provide open and flexible workspaces for teams and communities by providing a central location for conversations, files, updates, and more.The student can also add partners, customers, and suppliers to group conversations for specific interactions. For ongoing collaboration, create dedicated external groups or networks to foster deeper relationships and sense of belonging to a community.
Look for experts, conversations and files to speed up the work.
For exemple in my school, we use Yammer for share articles on news from companies, applications, or simply to share business information. And everyone can like, comment, and share publication like in Facebook.
yammer has the advantage of allowing students to share knowledge and learn, to promote and develop new business initiatives, to communicate, take new contact… It’s a real benefit to self-development. We can share ideas, meet new people who are interested by the project. This social network need skills like written presentation.
But there are also disadvantage, it’s just virtual, we can’t see other person, we can talk but it is not relevant to work, it’s just to exchange ideas not to work actually. And we have to add people (like in Facebook) to share with us so the network is limited, and meetings too. it's more to communicate with our partners than to meet new ones.
So to make the best use of membership in such community,
it is better to have a team of work already defined and to use it to share ideas, information to be able to collaborate with each other.
www.meetup.com
Vesa-Matti Lindholm Extern Helsinki EBS
Meetup is a networking website for finding like-minded groups and meetup opportunities locally. Meetup was founded in June of 2002 by Matt Meeker, Scott Heiferman, and Peter Kamali.
Setting up a Meetup account is a simple affair. First, visit www.meetup.com. You can sign up merely by entering your name and email address, or you can sign up by logging into your Facebook account and giving Meetup access to it.
Before you create your Group, you should have some idea of its purpose and some details about your first Meetup. Then, login and click Start at the top. You will be directed to fill in where your group is located, and up to 15 topics that are relevant to the Group. After that fill in the Group name, group description, what are members called and web address form fields and payed the fees 19$/mont, then you are ready to begin organizing Meetups.
I think through meetup business students can easily find likeminded people who to connect with. Its actually more beneficial because you meet people and groups face to face and see more of how how they really are etc. There is a lot of different networking sites but I think the main problem of those are that you don’t see peoples in face to face situations directly and the main conversations are run by between computer screens only, if you don’t separately propose to meet face to face. This is different in meetup because people already knows in first hand when they start to use this application that the main ide of this is to meetup and connect! I personally think that you can learn and connect by people through face to face meetings so much easier than through screens only, because you can actually see other people and how they behave and what they really are. It is so hard to form accurate picture of someone if you don’t see the face to face and this can cause a problems because you can get a wrong picture of someone if you just chat them using your laptop.
I haven’t use this application personally, but few of my friends have tried it and the have said it to be very good and have brought them a lot of new friends, business contacts and clients.
Meetups can be used by firms to organize or participate in Meetups to engage current customers or potential customers in a much more significant manner than a simple Like or Follow. You can use Meetups to gain consumer, product and brand insights, as well as increase your real-world visibility. You can also use them to launch products, hold trainings, increase brand awareness through CSR events and other branded events, and generate sales leads.
There are in my opinion few negative sides of meetup
Meetup is nosy
It's important to remember that Meetup, Inc. is not a public utility; it's a venture-capital-funded, profit-making privately held corporation. The personal data the corporation collects from logged-in users is deep and wide and is a corporate asset. Your data.
Meetup Is Inflexible
The way Meetup.com achieves its Amazon.com-like ease of use is to do only some very specific things in a very specific way. It is not extensible and it has effectively zero integration with anything outside itself.
Meetup is expensive
Any organizer of a Meetup group is required to spend $10 to $19 per month, depending on the payment plan and limits on group sizes, just to keep running his/her Meetup groups.
Jaakko Röppänen
IntBBAk-12
I chose to introduce Gust (https://gust.com/). Gust connects startups with the largest collection of investors around the world, at the moment Gust has 500 000 founders, 70 000 investment professionals from 190 different countries. This network can greatly help you to set up your company in its early stages.
For startups Gust provides legal advice, accounting, financial tools and services on the same platform. Gusts main goal for startups is to help them set up for crowdfunding. They have service directed to this purpose which helps you to hone your application and tries to connect you to suitable investors.
For investors Gust provides easy ways to discuss, track, review and share deals. This allows you to contact the right persons easily and discuss directly with them to ensure you´re on the same page.
Pros of Gust include:
- Easy to set up profiles for both ends.
- Easy find investors & interesting startups
Cons of Gust fall mainly to the investor´s side of the deal. This is largely caused by:
- False promises from the startups end.
- Funding startups is very high risk investing
- Requires a high level of knowledge and experience for validating such investments.
- Time & patience required since most of these investments take many years to mature.
AngelList is a networking site for startups, angel investors and job-seekers looking to work at startups. AngelList is an excellent tool for those people to connect and learn about each other online. You can sign into AngelList through Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to automatically attach those networks. You can also create unique account and later connect your account with previous social media networks. If you are looking for mentoring or investors, you can create profile for your company also. Linking your AngleList profile with your other social media profiles allows you to easily follow same peoples on AngelList as well. Activity page on AngleList is like a Twitter or Facebook feed, it shows who’s doing what, who’s following who, where they are investing, who they are mentoring and whether they are hiring. There is also an option to limit your feed by fundraising, likes, updates or comments. You can also link your AngelList profile with your email, so you get notifications and messages people send to you if you are not actively checking those on AngelList. AngleList is like any other social network, but it is more targeted environment for entrepreneurs and investors, but don’t think you can come up with a business plan overnight and expect to have 500,000€ on your bank account next day. AngleList is not a short cut to success, it’s a great tool that allows you to connect with others that have similar interests.
Ville Korhonen
Opportunity is a business network that uses a matchmaking algorithm to connect people with other professionals who can provide employment, sales, networking and also relationship opportunities. It can potentially help to grow your business or advance your career. It is simple to grow your network, too.
Opportunity is definitely easy to use and you do not have to waste time scrolling through thousands of profiles to uncover opportunities. The website (and app) does that for you. Each day their system scans their network of professional profiles to match and connect you with people who have indicated they need your services, skills and more. They call themselves “an automated online professional matchmakers”.
Opportunity notifies you each time someone in your target market indicates they need what you offer. You can also discover employment opportunities – an alert is sent out each time a hiring manager posts a job offer that matches your job requirements (and vice versa). It is also easy to meet new people and build relationships (professional and personal).
Opportunity is also connected to your LinkedIn account and through that you can find people you already know to do business with.
I think that the networking site has both pros and cons. Firstly, I know from my own experience how hard it is to find programmers and if I had known about Opportunity before, I am sure I would have found someone. Business students who are just starting out with their start-up companies can definitely find professionals they need and maybe even mentors who can help them. Secondly, I think Opportunity offers an amazing chance to find jobs internationally.
The only con I can think about is the size of their database. If 2 million people are using it and it notifies you every time someone needs your services or a company is hiring someone with your job requirements, it could get a bit annoying.
Overall I think it is an interesting virtual network and I can definitely see myself using it in the future.
Debate is a network community where people from all over the world can participate in different discussions to share distinguish opinions, support or advices. The variety of discussed topics range from A-Z with thousands of business related issues. As this assignment focuses to business and economical themes, the following explanations refers exclusively to those topics.
On Debate are mainly two types of content. The first one are opinions of different themes where users can vote for „Yes“ and „No“ questions with a following discussion afterwards. The second one is a forum where people can create new posts with their opinions or questions about certain topics. Other people from this community will join the posts to give their statements to them.
Of course, like every other virtual network there are also here some advantages and disadvantages of using this community.
I think that debate is a good platform to find information to all business related themes just by using the search engine there. If someone wants different opinions of a very specific topic he can easily create a new post about that. The network is free for everyone and needs only a registration via e-mail to get started.
The biggest problem in my opinion ist the missing transparency behind the other users. You can be never sure if the person who writes about a certain theme knows what he is talking about. You don´t know their profession or their background story so you can´t prove whether they have the expertise or not. You can only be sure if many share the same opinion respectively unmask wrong statements. Nevertheless I think Debate is a great tool to learn and read many economical topics and I can definitely recommend it to everyone.
Trello
Trello is a popular project management and collaboration system available on the market. It works by allowing you to create cards for assignments that you need to complete. Those cards are moving on the Trello board, which is typically divided into columns such as To Do, In Progress, and Completed. When you create a task the card goes under To Do column, as the project goes on card moves on the board to In Progress column, when task is completed, the card will end up under the completed column.
Trello offers many project management and collaboration benefits. It is simple and easy to use. It holds things well organised. You can to put all the necessary information you need in the project into the card system. The website is accessible from any browser, whether mobile or web-based, smartphone or tablet. Trello also enables group members to discuss a project or a smaller task in real-time. This way the information reaches group members quickly, which reduces the amount of emails, which makes the project more flexible. When someone makes changes, the other group members get notifications of the latest advancements in the project, the new changes appear immediately on screen. This ensures that same tasks won´t be done twice.
Trello is a helpful tool for students. It has a calendar feature that you can use as your weekly schedule. It keeps track of all your deadlines, by doing so it helps you to complete all tasks in time. In case of a large group project, you can easily follow the progress of the project and see who is responsible for what and who has already completed their part of the assignment.
INTBBAk-22
Miikka Kohonen
Elance in business
I have chosen Elance. Elance is an online staffing platform based in California, USA. It is operated by Upwork. Elance first launched in 1999 and its name is inspired by review article “The Dawn of the E-Lance Economy. At first it was developed to as technology for supporting virtual work.
Elance economy focuses to the ability for different e-lancers, e-lancers who are individuals, the Elance should help them to find and create things without a company or anyone else. If there would not be Internet there also would not be Elance. Elance got a good start for markets and after two years they introduced a vendor management system for contractors and third-party services those were used by large enterprises. Elance focused later on its web-based platform for online.
Elance was used in 2013 by 500,000 businesses and they had 2 million registered freelance professionals. In 2014 Elance had a merger with oDesk which was another online staffing platform. They gained to 8 million Freelancers after that. In 2015 Elance-oDesk relaunched to Upwork. Elance is expected to merge into Upwork in the coming years, with that they could get 10 million freelancers and 4 million businesses.
Elance is definitely not a waste of time. It helps you to know your true value of your time. It is what value you bring on to the table on your price. Elance has lower fees, and they charge little bit less than other sites. They have good communication avenues. They update situation quickly through email and you can get almost daily information. They don’t have the biggest user numbers so they give you attention to right talent. Elance has a good reputation which is important to business.
Bad thinks about Elance, they block accounts. Not every blocked account deserved it. Freelancers have complained about the system. Many thinks that Elance doesn’t have enough wide connections to the world and they have too little of options for work. Also the bidding system is bad for freelancers.
Roope Lidman IntBBak 21
Slack, www.slack.com
This network is based on the share of lots of information between many users. I have never done a business but if one day I will to, I am sure slack will be one of the first network I will use. Here, each business could create a workspace where all the member of the team will be connected. This connection goes through different channels, where anyone from the team could write comments. Why this is really good particularly for students? Because we like social networks and we love comments everything. To have the chance to share directly our point of view is really cool and here to also have the opportunity to share like pdf or images (for example) gives lots of value to Slack.
This is a new way of collaboration and what is really good Is that we could just regroup everything on the same platform. I think compared to our elders we will not use emails anymore, why? because we are born with social networks, so we will more involved if we are working with it.
Shapr - Meet inspiring people, shape your life
Shapr is an app that takes a new approach to professional networking. For starters, users select up to ten interests such as #Entrepreneurship, #IT or #Marketing. People are also asked to add a few more personal interests such as #Yoga or #Singing. The app then uses a smart algorithm to provide a daily selection of 15 profiles to browse, making the networking experience highly connected, controllable and seamless. Basically, Shapr is Tinder for networking.
Another feature called the “Shapeline” offers a more public, collaborative feed where users can offer advice, share opportunities, and further build their relationships.
Shapr is very focused on being a professional networking app that opens new possibilities for its users. Strict moderators and flagging features ensure that anyone pursuing unprofessional interests such as dating or selling are reported.
“At Shapr, we promote a mindful way of networking,” said Ludovic Huraux, CEO and Co-Founder of Shapr. “Our goal is not to get your business cards into the hands of as many people as possible. Our goal is to spark mutually beneficial conversations that evolve into long-term relationships. We ask users to report anyone who tries to hard sell a service or a product through the app.”
The company competes in a space where a number of earlier professional networking apps have already tried to find new ways of making networking easier on mobile. The problem with many of these apps is that those connections you really want to make – like approaching investors – aren’t often available using apps like these.
Investors, in general, are already dealing with an great number of connection requests via other channels, and aren’t looking no more channels on top of the stack. So you may end up networking with a lot of people in the same situation as you – those in need of better connections, not those who have them to offer.
Zane Groshelle, Co-Founder of Shapr, acknowledges this challenge, saying “people who already have a massive rolodex are maybe less motivated to use the service, but we still think it could be very valuable. We know a lot of people with great networks who still need to keep meeting new people,” he adds.
Available for iOS and Android as a free app, Shapr now counts over half a million users and has generated more than 3 million professional matches in 2017 alone.
Jussi Hunnakko IntBBak 21
I have recently discovered the platform "The dots", https://the-dots.com/ , which deals with Networking, Creative Self Promotion, Creative Jobs and Creative Opportunities.
The Dots is an online community of creative professionals, designed to connect creatives with collaborators, companies and commercial opportunities. It's a networking platform where you can find top talented people showing off their work.
It was launched by Pip Jamieson in the UK in September 2014 to make the creative industries more open and diverse, and it spread throughout Europe soon after.
Its main purpose is to connect, support and champion people, teams and companies to create new projects and share creative ideas. Its main values are: creativity, diversity, collaboration and curiosity.
Subscribers have the possibility to follow the leading companies in the sector they are interested in, to keep up to date with their projects and latest roles, as well as share their own projects, to make themselves discoverable to the rest of The Dots community.
In my opinion, it can be useful for business students for many reasons: we can look for and apply for jobs in the creative field; we can start our own projects and look for people that share our interests and enthusiasm, who would like to collaborate; we can get to know more pieces of information about companies, from the most famous as Apple and Qvc, to smaller ones, and discover in which projects their working on.
Personally, I think The Dots is a great tool for young business students who would like to work in the creative industries, to be up-to-date with the latest projects and get inspired to create their own.
Slack https://slack.com/
A messaging tool, useful for different work groups, team members and general staff. It allows you to generate groups and different conversations within your team, depending on the topic using hashtags. It also has all the main apps generated into it (e.g. Dropbox, Google Dive), making it easy to share contacts, files and other information.
It's free to use and only requires an email to sign up.
It's ideal for business students to work on their projects, since it easy extremely easy to separate different team parts/topics/issues by creating a separate conversation, which makes it easier for everyone to follow.
Personally, I've been using this platform for sharing information within the Student Council as well as at the company I had my internship at. Every team has their own chat, as well as all the council members are a part of the general chat. It makes sharing important information and solving problems simple.
Slack
Slack, launched in August 2013, was founded by Stewart Butterfield, known for being founder of the Flickr. The name of the app is an acronym for “searchable log of all conversation and knowledge”.
Slack is a cloud-based messaging app what helps you to bring all your communication together in one place. Slack features real-time communication, archiving and search for modern business teams, wherever you are.
Slack has created a platform for simplified communication between co-workers and teams. Slack has combined many useful features such as file sharing, secure direct messaging and powerful searching options. Users can also create public or private channels depending who they want to access content. Slack also brings together many useful apps you are already using, such as, Google docs, Dropbox and Twitter. Communication is not limited to direct messaging as users can also leave comments on different sections.
From a student’s point of view, Slack is an excellent tool to manage your team projects and connect between collaborations with other university students, since the app makes it easy for all team members to contact each other more casually than e-mailing.
Even though Slack has several good features, there can be distractions as well. Multiple conversations and all the alerts of the app may be a distraction and take your focus away from relevant issues. The wide range of features may also be overwhelming for some users. Slack only works best, when everybody in the team are involved.
Jesse Ropponen
IntBBAk-23
''Trello'' is a site, where students, co-workers and even family members can share information with each other, keep team members updated on activities within a company or between family members in a fashionable style and collaborate on projects.
‘’Trello’’ has features to keep everyone on the team updated, such as sharing the information straight on the ‘’Trello’’ platform rather than having a face-to-face meeting whenever something new comes up. On the site, it is much easier to share the work, see what other members have done and the members can follow closely how the project has been executed and whether the demands have been met.
For students, ‘’Trello’’ is an effective platform to complete team works, because it has a page from where the students can see what they have done and what needs to be done. The platform is also available on App Store for Apple products and on Google Play store for Android users, and this is extremely helpful for students and also company teams that are usually on the move and only have their smartphones with them. Additionally, it is more time effective to update the assignments/projects on the go rather than wait to get access to a computer.
Jessica Saini
IntBBAk-31
https://angel.co
AngelList is a social network that connects startups with investors to raise fundings and for start ups to post available positions. You can also find a job by one application. AngelList connects your application with the jobs that match with your profile.
For business students this network is extremely valuable to find a new job in startup firms which may be looking for young and enthusiastic people with fresh ideas to work for them. Also business students who already have their own startup firm and are looking for investors can find their angel investor throughout this network.
Me and my friends could use this network by finding a job by posting an application through angel.co and my friends who already have a startup could recruit talents from angel.co. If you're looking to invest you can also find a startup match that could interest you.
Meetup Meetup is a local social network which brings congenial people together in a real life. Meetup was founded in 2002. Nowadays it operates in more than 100 countries and has more than 8 million members around the world.
Through the service people can organize meetings face-to-face with the aim of developing themselves and the community. The service has as many groups and interests as users, only dating and other groups related with sexual purposes are prohibited. There are for example, sport groups, training groups, student groups and only the heaven is the limit.
You can sign up through the Facebook, Google account or just with your email address. You can set up your own group locally and set up a topic for the group. After this you have to decide when the group will meet and how often. Hereafter people can join your group and you will meet at an agreed time.
For business purposes Meetup works better than Facebook, Instagram and other traditional social media channels. It focuses more in getting real life long-term relationships with people with common interests. A good example of it here in Helsinki is the ’’Helsinki Business creativity’’ group which meets every weeks and design together new business ideas and potential partners.
The worst side of the service is currently its popularity in Finland. The service is only available in english. Finns have a much bigger threshold to join a english based site than a site which is in Finnish. The service has also been advertised very little or no at all in Finland. The idea of this service is in my opinion great, as there is no equivalent service in Finland.
All in all, Meetup is an excellent tool in a networking business sense or in any activity relating to the acquisition of a social network.
Instagram Insights
Instagram Insights is an app that comes with Instagram if you have a business account. With Insights you are able to monitor closely your Instagram activity. It gives great analytical data that you can use to boost your visibility. Insights breaks down who your followers are. It shows gender, age, location, how much time they spend on Instagram among other things that you can use to know your audience, enhance your profile and reach more followers and audience.
Instagram which is one of the biggest social media platforms today can be an amazing tool for your business to grow. but without having analytical data you can have a though time making choices on what you post on your account.
In my opinion Insight is a great tool to use if you want to get to know your audience and by using the data to be able market your page as good as possible. But if you aren't able to use the data correctly Insight is useless, but with the right approach Insight is vital for the branding of your company or yuorself.
Mathias Selin
IntBBak- 32
ZiiTrend
ZiiTrend is a user-driven online community for predicting future events and trends.
The website is inspired by the concept of The Wisdom of Crowds. ZiiTrend.com, that was launched in 2007, is all about Social Prediction. Their users can predict the future together by sharing information and opinions. They believe a community can predict the future better than any individual can.
Its users believe that more people = more perspectives = better predictions.
The site comes with a bunch of interesting social networking fluff thrown in, like commenting, background to the prediction, performance results and the like, and overall I can see this becoming an interesting tool in the same way that polls are so popular.
At this point the site would need more traffic and more users in order to create statistically significant predictions. Never the less I think that if done right, it can be utilized by marketers and business owners to gather important data.
Max-Peter Laine
IntBBak - 21
Jalmari Lindberg
Inbbak-21
https://muusikoiden.net/
Muusikoiden.net is a Finnish based network for musicians and music related business.
The aim of the network is to bring together musicians and people that are interested in concerts and promotion. The site also has a "wanted" page that makes it easy for bands and independent artists to find new members and partners. There is also a section for trading music related equipment for live performance and studio use.
If your business is related to music or promotion, the site gives and excellent platform for connecting with people in the same arena.
I have been using Muusikoiden.net for a good 10 years and have found many bands and projects that have helped my career in music. As far as my knowledge goes, there are no other sites that offer a similar platform for musicians and promoters in Finland.
StartupNation is a website but also a social media platform, where people who want to start their own business can have coversations with other people who are either in the same position as them or have already started their own business. It is very helpfull for aspiring entrepreneurs, to get to ask questions and get possible new contacts, who may be able to help them or just advise them in starting a company.
Many Business students have the problem that they would like more information about the actual mechanics of starting up a company. StartupNation provides a wide base from various areas of business, who might have important information on the steps that you need to take to become a entrepreneur. being multinational website it also helps that people from different cultures can give you inside knowledge about the ways that business is done their country, since culture is a big part of coducting business.
Nordic Business Forum (NBF) is a Finnish company, based in Jyväskylä. The company is best known for its annual business conference in Helsinki, the capital of Finland. The annual main event, Nordic Business Forum, gathers together over 5700 attendees from over 30 countries, 24.4% of the attendees being CEOs.
In just nine years, Nordic Business Forum has become one of the world’s most significant business conferences for a reason. The events are known for a customer experience like no other, attention to detail, an impressive speaker lineup, top notch customer service, and bright-minded attendees. It has also called a business conference and a rock concert all wrapped into one.
It is great for business students to go and get inspired, discover new ideas, and build valuable networks. They can listen to a lot of amazing people with great experience and get motivation and good ideas for their own future plans.
The only downside for this event is that the price is very high, meaning 999€ for the cheapest ticket. Not a lot of people can and want to spend that amount of money on an event.
Falcon is a social marketing platform for managing your different social medias. All the used social medias are supported. You get an own inbox where you can see and read all messages from one box.
You improve your awareness with this tool as you can schedule different content to different channels at different time and built a playlist in advance to e.g. for the whole week. By doing this you create faster awareness around the social medias. You can also attend bad publicity faster.
“I love using Falcon’s Engage and Listen products to talk to our customers and find out what makes them tick.”
Suzie Ryan, Social Media Manager, Harvey Nichols
You need to attain people to connect with them and this platform helps you with it as well as interact with them.
www.falcon.io
Crème de la crème
“Crème de la crème” is a French start-up, founded in 2015, that has launched a platform to connect companies and freelance students. It can be accessed via the site (https://cremedelacreme.io/fr#/fr) or via the app.
The concept: small and very large companies pay students to complete short/medium-term projects. Students carry out its missions as freelancers. The platform is mainly aimed at students from prestigious universities. The startup selects its students based on their experience, academic background, skills... This allows it to have a quality pool and to ensure that companies have truly qualified and motivated students for their missions. The projects are of different types and duration in sectors such as IT development, strategy consulting, content writing, translation and marketing. Some missions require being on the company while others can be done remotely.
This network allows students to gain professional experiences before they finish their studies. Moreover, these missions as well as the status of freelance allow them to take responsibility, to gain in maturity but also to put into practice/improve their skills, in any case a plus on a CV. These missions are remunerated, which can allow students to pay for their studies and support themselves. The other advantage of the platform is also the network of relationships that students will be able to build over the course of their missions.
I have some friends who use this platform, especially as video editors and website designers. Carrying out a few missions allows them to pay for trips or simply to increase their daily budget, because as a student it is not always easy. A friend of mine managed to find a permanent contract thanks to the professional relationships he had built up through his missions.
Shapr is a virtual network that offers a connection to professional opportunity. The idea is to enter your passion, your professional interests, your personal interests, and find people interested in the same fields to discuss over a coffee or on the phone. Every day Shapr offers 15 new people who could possibly match with you. As on Tinder you can choose to dismiss or ask them to talk on a chat, a coffee or a phone call. If they agree too the discussion can start. Going on this app you can find investors, job opportunity, mentor or mentored, business angels, or generally people to share your projects, find inspirations or else. There is also a more public, collaborative feed where users can offer advice, share opportunities, and further build their relationships.
As business student the opportunity on this network is huge, both professionally and personally. I, for one, used Shapr once for an interview regarding a design project. It allows me to get feedbacks on my project and improved the idea. Some friends also found freelance jobs thanks to this application. However people with already huge professional network or business angels are not so many on this network so the new connection you will make are more probably people who want to widen there network as well. Be aware that you will not meet Bill Gates thanks to Shapr.
The idea behind this is that amazing opportunities come naturally when we stay curious, try to help others and keep an open mind. With Shapr you can easily meet or talk to people who are valuing networking with a new open-minded form. Shapr is a community of more than 2 000 000 users.
In order to remain a quality network, Shapr allow to flagged any users searching for unprofessional interests (dating, sales…)
Available for iOS and Android as a free app.
Young Entrepreneurs Council (YEC, https://yec.co/) is an online networking tool which offers different type of support, benefit and networking possibilities for young entrepreneurs. The YEC offers only a contact through internet and does not require any meetings. This website presents a perfect way for young adults to start a business and helps them through the starting point. Virtual mentorship program includes video chats with other users and email lessons. YEC offers professional help for the entrepreneurs and help them with the problems that they might encounter.
This website offers multiple services which make young entrepreneurs’ life easier. However, the access is limited. The group is highly selective, you must be 45 years old or younger, you must be a founder or a co-founder of company which has a minimum of $1M in financing or in revenue and also, your company has a headquarters located in North America. These limitations are very strict and followed that it is very difficult to get involved and it is invite-only type of website. These are huge negative parts. The invite-only access shows the limitation largely. For getting the invite you must know someone face-to-face that you are able to get an invitation. This limits the number of participants.
This YEC website offers multiple ways for entrepreneurs to discuss and think new business ideas. If the company would ease the limitations that who can be involved to this networking tool, many entrepreneurs could get very much out of the website and other entrepreneurs. Overall, this online network will compound entrepreneurs.
-Niina Mattila, IntBBAk-21
Heidi Räisänen
Intbbak-21
The network that I would like to introduce is called Meetup. You can find it form: https://www.meetup.com/
Meetup allows you to find local business partners in several fields. It helps you to locate them and to set up meetings. Meetup is great for business students, who may not have a wide business network. It is a platform, where you can find people, even possible future colleagues, who share your interests and aspirations. You can search groups and meetings that already exist and join them, or you may create your own group and find people to join it. Meetup is chargeable service; however, they offer a few different packages with different prices to choose from. Students from EBS would get the Basic package for 4.99USD, the Unlimited for 7.99USD and Meetup Pro for 30USD per month.
How to get started? Let’s say you have a business idea or an idea of a project, but you are missing a team to work with. Creating a group in Meetup will help you to find the team you need to develop your idea or project. Once you have created a profile, chosen your fields of interest, you are ready to start a group. After, people with the same interests can find the group you have created and send in a query to join the group. Now, imagine a different scenario, let’s say you have excellent skills in finance, marketing, or any field of business, and you would like to put your skills to the test. Then, you could create a profile in Meetup, and search for a group or a project and ask to join in. Perhaps, you are not interested in working on a specific project, but you would like meet new people, grow your network or simply just share knowledge. In that case, creating a profile in Meetup would also be a great opportunity.
Pluses: It is easy to find new people and the possibilities to grow your network are great. Meeting new people will help you to develop yourself, you will learn about new cultures and countries. You can even try to learn a new language on Meetup. To make the best use of your membership in Meetup, keep an open mind, don’t judge people too quickly but be careful and watch out for the mean hackers.
Minuses: You have to pay for the service. Building up a network online can be difficult and you would have to look up for trolls and hackers. People can be really mean on the internet, so as it comes to self-development, mean comments can be mischievous.
The name of the network is Gadball.com
Gadball is a website designed to help you enhance and develop careers. You are able to create a profile on Gadball for free and you can see others’ profiles as well. You are able to log in using your facebook account.
Plusses: You can search people with similar interests or jobs. In addition, you can search people based on your location, level of education and wage history. When you have created your profile, you can join groups and forums to meet and interact with other users.
There are over 200 000 active jobs posted on GadBall. You can create a job search agent, and they will send you an e-mail when matching jobs are posted. You can create your personal resume from your profile and choose one of their templates.
You can invite others to read your profile and leave comments and suggestions, which only you are able to see. People may provide career improvement suggestions, or even put you in contact with others who can help you advance your career. You may meet future business associates and get new ideas how to develop your business further.
There is chance to let their software evaluate both the content and relative context of your profile. Gadball can score your profile and your score represents how well your profile is written and perceived in comparison to other similar profiles. They offer suggestions on how you can improve your score, and improve your profile.
You are able to see over 500 professionally created videos. The videos will show you what you need to qualify for the job, and what is a typical day on the job. This is a great way of get to know new careers.
Minuses: Gadball is similar to LinkedIn and people may prefer use LinkedIn, because it is known in worldwide. Gadball is mostly used in USA.
Privacy is one of the major risks of social networking. People can also spend too much time on Gadball instead of working.
-Anniina L. IntBBAk-22
The Dotts
The Dotts is a creativity boosting network launched in 2014 by Pip Jamienson. It functions as a regular website but additionally has a free app version with the rating of 4.6 out of 5 (The AppStore, 2019). The platform offers job opportunities and apprenticeships in various fields such as marketing, writing, design and photography by different corporations like ASOS, the online clothing and cosmetic store.
However, this is not its only function. There is a possible to create a personal account and share own creative project ideas which might include photographing, drawing, new app creations, just to mention a few. This is particularly essential when businesses are looking to recruit suitable and talented people for their projects since they will be able to see what this specific person is specialized in and how their creative mind functions.
Unfortunately, the site seems to operate at this moment only in the UK but maybe in the future it could widen it operations worldwide. If this where to happen, it would be an excellent community for business students looking for ways to promote either their business ventures or just regular designing talent and creative thinking. For instance, some projects can be done without face-to-face interaction and using only social networks which makes it able to create cross-national employment relationships.
As mentioned previously, marketing was one of the fields it specializes in. This implies that if you as a business student are able to bring forth your creative thinking by developing a project, you will at least double your chances in finding a suitable job in the field.
The website: https://the-dots.com
By Karla Kettunen IntBBak-21
The name of this german network is called "Lunchzeit" which means "lunchtime" in english. You can access it here (and need to download the app): https://lunchzeit.com/en/employees/
With this network you can meet new colleagues you haven't met before. Its aim is to increase employees network across a company (or in a specific working area, e.g. Tallinn) through in-person meetings over lunch. You can select and invite persons you find interesting or let you suggest somebody random from their algorithm. The employer also benefits from stronger networks inside the company.
The value for business students is huge if they start in a new company and know only a few people. With this app, they can systematically build a network in the company and get many perspectives. Thus, they will understand different roles inside the company faster and succeed more easily with implementing projects.
Students can use it for an internship in Germany or use the chance and bring this idea in their country, if they don't have it. Maybe it could also be a chance to have it internationally...
Alex Hakkarainen, intBBak-22
A virtual network that I would like to introduce is a U.S website called AngelList. It can be found here: https://angel.co/. The platform was created in 2010 and its mission is to help startups with their challenges in fundraising and talent. The site allows startups to raise money from angel investors free of charge and allows its users apply to startup jobs or its users can post a job and do the hiring there. The site contains over 100000 startup jobs worldwide.
There are couple positive things about this platform, you can apply for a job privately, see salary and equity before you apply and the site allows you to speak to founders and hiring managers directly, so no third party recruiters allowed. Alternatively, you can invest in startups using the platform or seek for a investment to the startup.
In my opinion, this is a great virtual network for business students, who are interested in startups.
AngelList
I would like to introduce the network called AngelList (https://angel.co/). This is a networking site that connects the angel investors and startups. Also, through AngelList, startups can post available positions and in case you are looking for a job, the website will help you by matching your application with jobs that fit with your profile. You can sign in to AngelList through your Google account, Facebook or Twitter.
Some pros about AngelList:
+ Very valuable for young, starting entrepreneurs who seek for angel investors to fund their business and to help to fulfill their entrepreneur dreams
+ Helps recruiters to find talents to fill their open jobs
+ For the investor, might bring considerable profits in the long run
Cons:
- You can't expect the AngelList to be a shortcut to success - you need to have a good business idea, stay ambitious and work for it. AngelList and the investors are just tools to help you.
In my personal opinion, AngelList is a great network to connect the parties of both sides; start ups in need of funding and angel investors, job seekers and recruiters, and to help these all to pursue their business goals.
Jutta Kumpulainen
IntBBAk-21
I would like to introduce Telegram – an instant messaging service, where users send messages, photos, videos and files. There are both smartphone application and desktop versions available. Users choose a name to use the service – it can be a nickname to remain anonymous or use their real name. The service is free.
From the perspective of a business student, Telegram offers interesting options. In addition to exchanging messages privately, users are able to follow channels related to business, networking and self-development. Some of the most relevant channels for this include “The Conference”, “Entrepreneurial Journey” and “Talks”.
“The Conference” – channel informs users of business and technology events occurring around the world and reasons to attend: the goal of the event, who are the speakers and price. “Entrepreneurial Journey” is a channel where users can ask questions related to entrepreneurship and answer them. They also share tip and get feedback. “Talks” is a group dedicated to self-development.
The main benefit of the service is that it is mobile-friendly and thus making it easily accessible. In general, all students can benefit from the service by chatting and finding international contacts. The best-case scenario is that users find like-minded people and arrange meetings and business co-operation with them. Also, some students who are not very outgoing can benefit from online networking. I believe Telegram offers something for everyone.
Written By: Mathias Gamba
Hi! I am introducing a website called "Ye! Community". I haven't heard about it before and it sounds interesting because it is an online community for young entrepreneurs. The community offers for example support, coaching and a possibility to find funding. From the website you can also find upcoming business related events. If you have the knowledge you can also sign up to be a coach and help others. You can connect with investors, other young people and coaches to make your start up stronger.
Pros:
- Support for young people
- Website is clear and easy to use
- Upcoming events
Cons:
- Not so easy to find the website / Propably not too many people using it
- Only 2 languages
- A Coach is not guaranteed
If this website was more popular, I would have more courage to use it. I will propably try it at some point.
https://yecommunity.com/en/
- Mercedes Harris
I would like to introduce you to Trello. Trello is a web-based project management tool. It allows you to plan your projects events etc. efficiently and systematically. Trello as a planning tool is based on the timeline of the project. Trello allows you to create lists which will describe your projects tasks and their current situations. These lists can be described for example as "to do", "planning", "implementing" and "finished". You can create different kind of cards with different kind of colours for each task and then add them to the board that you like. You can also add a due date for each card.
Trello works with any browser and it also has a great app that you can download to you phone, computer or whatever electronic device you are using. You can invite your project members to the same Trello project with you, and then the network even allows you to assign specific tasks for your group members.
Trello allows you to filter the tasks according to a person that they are assigned for or according to the colour of the card. It also shows all the activity in the sidebar which makes it easy for each team member to follow the project management and changes that are being made.
I think that Trello is a very suitable network system especially for students but also for businesses implementing their project. Trello is also nicely structured visually which in my opinion makes it even more fun to plan a project!
Meri Helminen
IntBBAk-21
JobTeaser: https://www.jobteaser.com/fr
Founded in 2008 by two students facing the problems of orientation and job search, JobTeaser.com is today the first recruitment site for students and recent graduates.
Leader in France with a unique concept, the JobTeaser.com platform brings together the major players in youth employment: companies, schools and universities, students and recent graduates.
It allows recruiting companies to be more transparent about their core business and about their vacancies; Schools and universities have a research platform for internships and turnkey jobs; students and recent graduates to see more clearly about their orientation and their process of finding internships and employment.
The goal of JobTeaser.com is to reinvent and facilitate the professional insertion of young talents.
Thanks to its success in France with 434,000 young people, 500 companies and 150 partner schools and universities, JobTeaser.com is heading to Europe with 3 new signings from leading schools in Germany and two in Spain. An extension that aims to facilitate the mobility of young people.
Niko Avikainen, IntBBAk-21
An online network I would like to introduce is from a Canadian company Kik Interactive called Kik Messenger or Kik for short. It was founded in 2009 by a group of University of Waterloo students. It can be found here: https://www.kik.com/. Kik was released on October 19, 2010 and it is free of charge.
It uses Wi-Fi to for example transmit and receive messages, photos and videos. Users are registered with a username that are visible to everyone and can be searched within the application. In May 2016 Kik had approximately 300 million registered users and was used by 40 % of US teenagers.
Pros of Kik are that it is easy to use, connects people from any location with internet connection, it doesn't have any limit of how many messages can be sent, it can be downloaded to any platform (supported by Android, iOS and Windows).
Cons are that it doesn't have face to face conversation feature, you need internet connection for everything in the app, the company issued a controversial funding using cryptocurrencies in 2017 and it lacks on security.
In my personal experience it was alright, not the best but not the worst either, with room for some improvements.
An Enterprise social network is an internal communication system, a place for internal professional exchange accessible to employees of a company and possibly to partners of this company (suppliers, customers, shareholders, distributors ...). Its purpose is to facilitate cross-communication between the different departments and strengthen internal communication. The functionalities of a corporate social network are similar to those of "traditional" social networks.
An ESN provides access to the same features as a "mainstream" social network. These features are linked to corporate intranet sites to facilitate communication and collaboration within the institution. Each member can participate in the conversation and publish on the ESN and the communication flows are multidirectional. ESN is particularly useful for an organization working on several sites or working in association with other organizations.
The professional use of social networks is indeed very different from the personal use that has largely developed with Facebook, Twitter or Snapchat. Other reasons explain the difficulty of developing these collaborative practices : information overload but also the fear of judgment or surveillance. The ESN must be developed and deployed with the interests of employees in mind and facilitate communication between all structures and the different levels of the organization.
Introducing the Zero-Rated Internet (like 0.wikipedia, 0.facebook or “Google Free Zone”)
1. First a short explanation what this is about:
Zero-Rated internet pages are webpages you can access without having an internet plan on your phone (including also a zero balance on a prepaid phone contract). In developed countries within the EU this service is not as crucial as it is for example in low-income/skilled labor workforce countries.
2. The main function of this network is, that it is available independently from money. Hence it gives internet and communication access to people around the globe.
3. The world is evolving fast and the pace is accelerating. Thinking out of the box is necessary in times when the demographics of developed countries turns into an increasingly greater challenge. Developing countries are fast growing countries with a strong workforce which has by far not seized their potential.
The main added value for business students is the possible outreach to this activatable workforce and market in general.
4. Since zero-rated internet pages already exists you can either create a new zero-rated webpage or make use of an incumbent one. Aiming globally comes with huge scalability and can serve society to very great potential.
I first learned about this network while travelling in Africa, but I did not want to spend money on social media access. Zero-rated internet gave me this access for free and I realized that the potential of this service is enormous.
Disclaimer:
Limitation: Not all phone network providers, especially in developed countries, offer this service.
Net neutrality: It is a problem that net neutrality is violated since only the main internet firms participate nowadays in this network.
- Raphael Hess; Tallinn
Name: Slack
Accessing Slack: to access Slack, you must go online and either create a workspace or join a pre-existing one. If you are attempting to join a pre-existing workspace, you must receive invitation or approval from the manager of the workspace.
Slack is an virtual platform that is designed to offer businesses an online workspace and facilitate all communication within an organization. It attempts to consolidate all information sharing into one application, where members can send messages, attachments and phone call. This allows users to be able to easily keep track of what is going on in the organization, and easily search for the information they need. Additionally, they have integrated over 1,500 applications, such as Google Drive and Dropbox, that further simplifies communicating with employees. Slack's design supports a collaborative approach to business and allows you to join various channels dedicated to specific projects or teams, as well as privately message any employee.
I have found Slack to be an extremely effective way of communicating with a team and have used it multiple times with different groups. Unfortunately, the adoption of Slack is slow and not everyone is always keen to convert to Slack from their traditional communication platforms. Once everyone adjusts to using Slack, it is an efficient way to get work done.
- Kenzie Dahlgren
The networking tool that I picked is called Slack (https://slack.com).Slack is used for finding right people, information and tools for driving your business forward or for finding new business partners. Millions of people around the world uses Slack to connect with their teams and to combine their systems to get the work done. Slack is good for young entrepreneurs who want to find people with similar interests to work with. You can either talk to someone privately or you can build a group with multiple people interested in the same field as you.
You can have video calls or you can share your own screen to show your work who you are working with. Slack allows you to share your work from Google Drive, Dropbox and Twitter for example within many others. At first Slack was used for only among organizations, but now it has widen into a social platform that covers same features from Linkedin and Facebook. It is very simple to use it with the mobile app with many features or you can download it to your laptop and share your work files and tools seamlessly there.
Students needs this network for sharing their group work with members that can be anywhere around the world. The app is also free for everyone and very modern and easy to use. The aim of Slack is to have everything available from just one place in the most convenient way.
Katariina Kangas
IntBBak-21
Anton virtanen intbb-1a
Instagram engagement groups
Instagram advertising by paying instagram itself for engagement is a well known and basic advertising tool for businesses. What most people dont realize is that instagram doesent value the account (thus show it on other peoples feeds) by the number of followers and likes, rahter by who is liking and commenting on your post. For example, an account with 100k followers that are bots, will have less engagement and visibilty than an account with 500 real followers, wich like and comment unique comments (not copypaste) on the posts.
Instagram engagement groups, found for example on boostgram are the easy way of getting real comments and followers. The way it works, is simple. People in these groups have real and reasonably big accounts on instagram, and are willing to follow, comment and like your posts, if you do the same.
Benefits of doing this are explained above, having a account that appears more real on the eyes of instagram itself, thus getting more engagement and more visitors on your for example clothing lines account where you have the link to your shop in the bio.
It takes time, and is a slow process, which can be seen as a con. If you have the time to find your companions for growing your account, eventually it will grow itself as you have gathered real followers and fandwith this method. Obvioulsy assuming you have an intresting profile and good pictures, which should be the first thin you do when starting to sell in isntagram.
Young Entrepreneurs Council (YEC, https://yec.co/) is an online network that allows young entrepreneurs to connect and share information and insights about various topics with a focus on entrepreneurship. It gathers the world's most promising young entrepreneurs to an invite only network. Unlike traditional business networking groups, YEC focuses its interaction online and does not require mandatory meetings of any kind.
Members get access:
-24/7 peer support forums
-Members-only web and mobile dashboards
-Trusted, vetted peer community
-Opportunities to contribute expert content
-Educational resources
-Marketplace with volume discounts
Biggest limitation to young entrepreneurs is that this group is invitation only and highly selective. To qualify, you must:
-Be 45 years of age or younger
-Be a founder, or co-founder of a business that…
-Generates a minimum of $1M in revenue, or…
-Have a minimum of $1M in financing
-And, your business has an office or headquarters located in North America
Miikka Orava
IntBBAk-22
There is an online network and application called Monster that connects users with international job opportunities. By uploading a personal resume and creating a free account, people can reach employers in countries all over the world. This tool is especially useful for business students like myself that are travelling abroad and looking for work. This site does not have postings in all countries, however, it will transfer you to other websites that are local to that region. For example, from the perspective of an international student in Tallinn, I was directed to an Estonian job site that was available in English. This is a major benefit of the service because of how difficult it is to find an assortment of job opportunities in smaller city centres without ever being there. Another benefit is that employers have the opportunity to search for you as well, which makes it a great tool for connecting both parties.
For newly discovering this service I have many good first impressions, the postings are abundant and quite recent. Some drawbacks include the lack of jobs in certain areas and some difficulties in navigating the website. I think that Monster is a relatively unknown network that will grow in popularity as the world grows smaller and people are working more at an international level. Overall, it is useful network for connecting business students with international jobs and relevant business opportunities.
There is an online network and application called Monster that connects users with international job opportunities. By uploading a personal resume and creating a free account, people can reach employers in countries all over the world. This tool is especially useful for business students like myself that are travelling abroad and looking for work. This site does not have postings in all countries, however, it will transfer you to other websites that are local to that region. For example, from the perspective of an international student in Tallinn, I was directed to an Estonian job site that was available in English. This is a major benefit of the service because of how difficult it is to find an assortment of job opportunities in smaller city centres without ever being there. Montser.com directs you to sites and gives you the resources that you need. Another benefit is that employers have the opportunity to search for you as well, which makes it a great tool for connecting both parties.
For newly discovering this service I have many good first impressions, the postings are abundant and quite recent. Some drawbacks include the lack of jobs in certain areas and some difficulties in navigating the website. I think that Monster is a relatively unknown network that will grow in popularity as the world grows smaller and people are working more at an international level. Overall, it is useful network for connecting business students with international jobs and relevant business opportunities.
[https://connequity.com/]
Connequity is a hyper-targeted professional networking site that helps you meet new referrals, leads and clients. From an expansive national member base, Connequity utilizes staggered coordinating criteria to discover experts you need to work with and conveys them directly to your inbox. It enables you to pick coordinating criteria for both referral accomplices and customers to amplify all open doors in your business network. As you're making new associations, you can likewise acquaint your present contacts with new experts by method for "Referral Introduction" inside the stage.
You can synchronize your Outlook, Gmail, and email contacts with your profile to make it your one-stop-look for meeting new experts and building your current expert system. This is an excellent resource for students although an app version isn't accessible, you can at present, access it through your mobile's web browser.
It's an astounding web based systems administration alternative for future students in positions of senior to executive level experts requiring productive, directed business associations. Connequity has free and paid arrangement choices for individual and corporate spending plans.
What is really attractive from a student perspective is how you can network with industry experts and how a referral can also be introduced to you. This an online alternative to for example.. networking at a trade fair.
Edx is a nonprofit learning destination and MOOC(massive open online courses) provider, offering high-quality courses from the world’s best universities and institutions to learners everywhere. It was founded by Harvard University and MIT in 2012. Edx gives the opportunity to students to enroll to a great variety of courses. Whether you are interested in computer science, languages, engineering, psychology, writing, electronics, biology, or marketing, they have the course for you.
You can use Edx for any devise that has internet connection but there is also an app. In order to enroll the courses you have to register. Edx gives you the choice not only to gain new knowledge but also to acquire a certificate. To earn a certificate for a program, you must upgrade to the verified track for all the courses in the program, pass all the courses, and of course there is a payment for that. Many courses are instructor-paced, which means that the students will follow a schedule that the instructor will set, with assignments and exams that have specific due dates. But there are also self-paced courses, which contain assignments without due dates, so you can progress through the course at your own speed.
Their goal is to increase access to high-quality education for everyone, everywhere, to enhance teaching and learning on campus and online, to advance teaching and learning through research.
Pros
• You have access to the best teacher in nearly any field.
• There are usually lots of information about what will the course be about
• You can drop out anytime (this allow you to quickly test lots of course)
• It's basically free
• It has a wide range of topics.
• The video lectures of most courses are accessible via YouTube and are available to download for offline learning.
• Solid database of courses
• Quality content, provided by prestige institutions and universities
• Platform oriented on science and technology
Cons
• Course are usually based on video, which mean, you need a good Internet connectionYou always sign up for a long adventure.
• Sometimes, you just want to see the basics of a domain, not to prepare yourself to become an expert.
• It miss peer to peer collaboration. The forum is great, but it's often a small minority who participate
• Provider is orientated mostly on providing courses and content for science and technology
- Eleni Ioanna Manikou
Quora: Rachael Sudds
Quora was formed over 10 years ago and is a continually growing database of user-generated questions and answers covering a broad range of topics. Quora was specifically developed to promote the ask and answer methodology to increase shared knowledge between a collective group of people with similar questions. All the questions and answers are created, edited and organized by the individual users of the social network.
I personally have found great use in the forum due to its colloquial style of explanation and extremely relevant content. Many of the questions previously posted are similar to those a young business student such as myself may have. One of the positives about the platform is the ability to see multiple answers from different users with unique perspectives and solutions. Lastly, a major benefit to Quora is the ability for users to vote on the best response, helping the community reach the correct answer as fast as possible.
Example of a recent Quora search of my own: https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-restore-previous-versions-of-my-WordPress-website
A downside to the platform is due to the anonymity and lack of constant communication making long term networking relationships difficult to facilitate. Another main disadvantage of Quora is the lack of regulation over the answers posted. Without academic or expertise review, there is no way to gauge how accurate or reliable the answers to each question are.
In order to optimize your membership in the Quora community it is important to keep the platform alive by participating in both the asking and answering of questions. Without participation on both sides, the platform becomes stagnant in its ability to provide value to its userbase.
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