NewsGator: The Corporate Alternative to Facebook at Work

If you’re company has a SharePoint 2007 portal, then consider Newsgator Social Sites. According to the NewsGator Web site itself, “NewsGator Social Sites extends Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 with social feedback (i.e. bookmarking, tagging, commenting), social networking, and community functionality by leveraging the SharePoint platform and social computing services.”

Since these are all things that peak my interest, I decided to check it out for myself by signing up for their free webinar. I wanted to learn about what NewsGator and other companies are currently doing to maximize Web 2.0 technology for internal collaboration. And, it’s interesting stuff!

NewsGator is a behind-the-firewall social computing platform used for collaboration. It includes all aspects of Web 2.0 third generation technology, which includes blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, social networks, tagging, social bookmarking, people profiles and mash-ups.

If you and your co-workers are using external emerging media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and external blog services to collaborate, you may want to consider the following risks (provided by the webinar) that these emerging technologies pose to your company. According to the webinar there exists:

• Very few business-related functions/features
• Employees don’t want to mix fun/personal profile with professional life
• Different countries gravitate toward different social networking sites
• Security and privacy concerns
• Difficult to integrate other internal systems
• IT Support challenges

NewsGator, in partnership with Microsoft SharePoint 2007 tackles all of the above-mentioned risks. Check it out for yourself!

Are Young Professionals Taking Advantage of LinkedIn?

According to the LinkedIn site itself, the professional networking site has over 43 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the world. In fact, a new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second and about half of its members are outside of the US. What does the LinkedIn demographic look like?
BusinessWeek defines LinkedIn members to be the following:

“All about business. More males than femals (57% to 43%). Highest average income, at $89,000. More likely to have joined the site for business work, citing keeping in touch with business networks, job searching, business development and recruiting as top reasons. They like news, employment information, sports and politics. More likely to be into the gym, spas, yoga, golf and tennis. Excluding video game systems, they own more electronic gadgets than other social networkers, including digital cameras, high definition TVs, DVRs and Blu-Ray players”.
Does this mean that there is no place for active engagement for young professionals under the age of 40 seeking to advance their careers? If you are a young professional under the age of 40 reading this, what have you done lately to bolster your career prospects on this professional networking site?

LinkedIn PR Manager, Krista Canfield, recommends the following:
1. Study the people that you admire.
2. Tailor your profile to look similar to the people whose careers you want.
3. Research people you are scheduled to meet.
4. Ask for advice and give advice through LinkedIn’s “Answers” feature.
5. If you want to increase your Google-ability, set your profile to public and choose
a vanity URL. Some people even include this on their email signature and
business cards.

Not familiar at all with LinkedIn? View this video to see how LinkedIn can help your professional networking career.