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| Executive Shake Up at LinkedIn Puts Founder Back in Charge Posted: 17 Dec 2008 04:08 PM PST
It’s uncertain how long Weiner will be at LinkedIn as the interim president, but Nye will remain with LinkedIn until January to ease the transition. Weiner will also remain in his current position as an executive in residence at Accel Partners and Greylock Partners, the latter of which is a LinkedIn investor. The reasons for Nye’s departure, however, remain unknown. Having been with LinkedIn for the past two years, he has helped LinkedIn grow significantly. While many other social networks rely on advertising for a source of revenue, LinkedIn’s professional networking capabilities offered a service that millions of its users are willing to pay for. So even as social networks like Facebook modify their advertising options and bring in new positions to handle risk management (directly tied to advertising revenue), LinkedIn has been moving from a premium service-based network to one that supports a user-driven market place in order to leverage its size and platform. Not to mention, my own LinkedIn connections have skyrocketed in the past few weeks with people seeking job opportunities and referrals. No word on whether or not Hoffman has any drastic changes that would shift from Nye’s implemented features, but it doesn’t look as though much needs to be changed at LinkedIn.     |
| Have You Accepted Twitter Yet? Here’s 5 Steps. Posted: 17 Dec 2008 12:41 PM PST How many of you have ever thought that Twitter was a pretty stupid tool (or still think this is the case)? And if you’ve finally come to accept Twitter as the useful branding tool that it could be, then you’ve probably gone through the following steps of Twitter Acceptance. Blogger Rohit Bhargava has finally come to love Twitter, and as a marketing and PR professional he’s also discovered all the great ways Twitter can be used for nearly every type of branding. Bhargava has even gone so far as to write the 5 Steps to Twitter Acceptance. As if we needed additional proof that Twitter has established itself as a great tool for both entertainment and marketing purposes. Yes, Twitter is great for getting a message out to the masses that matter. And it can, in fact, be used for more than just writing updates about stuff you don’t care to blog about, as Bhargava used to do. One of the most important take aways from Bhargava’s Steps to Twitter Acceptance is the evolution Bhargava noted, from thinking of Twitter as a fleeting update service to a powerful marketing tool that can help direct traffic and build up brands through the direct and community-driven interactions amongst Twitter users. It’s reflective of not only the evolution of Twitter users’ acceptance, but of Twitter itself. So what do you use Twitter for?   |
| JS-Kit Adds Facebook Connect and YouTube Videos for Comments Platform Posted: 17 Dec 2008 10:45 AM PST
And given JS-Kit’s own cross-site approach to comments, both publishers and end users are only encouraged to use JS-Kit’s service as a result. In many ways, third party companies that have platforms in a certain sense are looking to Facebook’s own platforms for their expansion. But let’s not forget that JS-Kit has also added support for YouTube videos in comments. Though it’s not the same affect of recording your own video directly from your webcam, it does add to the robustness of a multimedia approach to its comments solution. The YouTube clips will play directly in the comment thread without a reader having to leave the page. Other new updates for JS-Kit include a new “smooth grey” skin option as well as a safe HTML option for comments. Keyword search within a comment roll has also been added, which can be an extremely important benefit for site publishers. JS-Kit already supports OpenID, and will be adding support for more standards in the near future.   |
| Announcing the AllFacebook Demographic Stats Posted: 17 Dec 2008 10:38 AM PST
I’m considering enabling users to enter their own adjustment factor into the charts but for now this should be a pretty good start. Let us know if you find any interesting information via our demographics tool and we might post about it. We are also looking to track some additional information outside of Facebook in the near future so let us know if there’s anything that you’d like to see from us.
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| StockTwits Tweets and Raises First Round Posted: 17 Dec 2008 09:37 AM PST
If you’re at all familiar with Twitter, then you’ll recognize its ability to get you news and useful information quickly. Get the right group of people together, and the result is a trusted source of highly relevant data. StockTwits has capitalized on Twitter’s popularity and others’ addiction for prompt news, providing an integrated service that forms an entire community around users sharing their knowledge and predictions on the market. Instead of asking “What are you doing right now?” StockTwits asks “What are you trading?” There are a handful of other features for StockTwits that allow you to see things like the biggest gainers and losers within the stock market, but it wouldn’t hurt to build out the community capabilities for StockTwits from here. While its simplicity is part of what makes StockTwits work so well, perhaps the recent round of funding will go towards providing more information on both users and stocks.   |
In a time of uncertainty for social networks’ steady revenue, LinkedIn is undergoing an executive shake-up with Chief Executive Dan Nye stepping down. Company founder Reid Hoffman will eventually be taking the company in the direction he sees as the best for LinkedIn, with former Yahoo executive Jeff Weiner acting as interim president for LinkedIn’s day-to-day operations, reports the 
In a move that makes perfect common sense, JS Kit has added full Facebook Connect support and YouTube videos in comments support as well. The company that offers a handful of services for site enhancement, from integrated cross-site comments to reviews and analytics, JS-Kit has had a year full of new feature implementations. As a result, JS-Kit is probably more well known for its integrated comments capabilities than most of its other services, JS-Kit is contending with the likes of 
Today I released a pretty easy to use widget which enables users to 
In a prime example of how a third party can create a niche community around interest-based Twitter users, | You are subscribed to email updates from The Social Times To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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Yahoo has been talking about a more social and custom approach to its applications for several years now, and the ramping up of the recently launched Yahoo Open Strategy takes the company further in that direction (finally). 
If you’ve visited this blog in the past week and a half, you’ve probably noticed a Google Friend Connect community widget on the side of the site. The service enables any site to instantly create their own community and users can login from Google, Yahoo, AIM, or via OpenID. Now users can promote their communities via Twitter. The way that is works is that when you click the “Invite” link to contact other people the service posts a message.
When Google and Facebook launched their social identity platforms over a week ago, few people realized the changed that occurred. It’s not surprising that few took note. Over a week later, there are less than 100 sites that have publicly integrated with Facebook Connect. Compare that to the more than 150 applications that were being launched daily immediately after the Facebook platform launched last year.
