Best Wishes and happy recruiting in 2008

Google to take on Facebook?

December 17, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Google Inc. over the weekend quietly announced Google Profiles, which provide a way for users of various Google products like Google Maps and Google Reader to offer information about themselves to other users.

The announcement got some bloggers twittering about a possible future foray by Google into social networking. A Google Profile will initially include basic points, like a user's name, photo and location, and can include other information, like a person's profession.

"You control what goes into your Google Profile, sharing as much (or as little) as you'd like," Google noted on a Web page with a brief description about Google Profiles. "Use multiple Google products? Soon your Google Profile will link up with these as well."

Anyone can see a user's profile, the site noted, and if a user includes his full name in a profile, it may be returned in Google search results for that name.

The new Google Profiles are already available in Google Maps and Google Reader and will be added to other Web applications, noted Ionut Alex Chitu, in a post at the Google Operating System blog.

"It is not a stretch to see that these profiles are the perfect host for your activity streams, and your public activities could become a part of the profile (uploading photos to a photo album, bookmarking Web pages, posting a new blog post)," Chitu wrote.

Sepideh Saremi, a blogger at search engine optimization company Reprise Media, noted that this move, combined with Friday's announcement that Google Reader has been linked to the Google Talk chat feature in Gmail to help users better share content with friends, shows that Google is moving closer to building a social network.

Google is chipping away at rival Facebook by "leveraging the dependency Google users have on Google products and building a social network that integrates these products," Saremi wrote.

"Facebook, which tends to annoy its finicky user base by rolling out features that don't necessarily have the user's best interest at heart, should also look to Google when it wants to implement changes to its site," Saremi added. "Google is rolling out its own social features methodically, explaining them clearly, and respecting their user base by saying they will make changes per user feedback. Google's evolving social network platform will absolutely rival Facebook, and probably sooner than anyone realizes."

LinkedIn Group - Passive Recruiter Unite

You’re invited to join the "Passive Recruiters Unite" Group on LinkedIn. Joining will allow you to find and contact other "Passive Recruiters Unite" members on LinkedIn. The goal of this group is to help members:

Here’s the link to join: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/36140/7A871C03AB14

The use of LinkedIn groups

Recently LinkedIn initiated the LinkedIn groups as you know, that's why you are here. They actually didn't initiated it as it already existed but they made the whole process much easier. At the time I initiated a group for Agilent employees and Alumni and it was a painful process to get that done. Anyway, that is not the reason for this entry.

I believe it to be great that you can create these groups and that through this you can connect and share ideas (again very obvious). However, I started testing in how far other groups had any criteria in carefully selecting their members and it became very clear that 80-90% of the groups are not. Only the alumni groups (especially from MBA's and professional organizations) are very restrictive in their selection. All the others simply accept everybody.

I started to feel like a boyscout with all the badges so I took a lot of them out of my profile but I'm now the proud and active member of:

and the list keeps on growing :-) I'm particularly proud of being a member of the Chinese entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, a group which is really dear to my hart ;-).

message: let's make sure this group stays focussed and doesn't become a "me too" club like so many others. What do you feel is the value of groups?