What we’re living today is probably the core and hardest point of social change generated by Internet and the so called Social Web. We are in the deep consolidation of the Networked Society in which network technologies are undermining an organizational model based on the centralized power control, in favor of a more distributed power. Despite many governments try in different ways to “arrest” this process through direct or indirect control, we can say that the networked society has passed the point of no-return. In order to understand why It’s impossible to go back, we need to travel through again the path we walked till today. From Globalization to the Information Society The first stage of this change has been realized at the end of ’80 when the Berlin wall’s falling closed the Cold-War and, as we know, this disintegrated the USSR. Falling down the soviet block, also many of threats and limits felt down. In the middle of nineties, WTO born with the intent of supervising and liberalizing international trade. In those years China started to increase its economy and it will has become the largest economy in the world. Europe was moving fast forward to open internal borders and to create the European Union, facilitating people and goods exchange between States. The Globalization was born. In the meanwhile (1993), Internet abandoned the “reasearch” stage becoming the World Wide Web. The major change introduced by this technology was that “borders” would have no more meaning. Now any information can be produced anywhere and used, consumed and spread despite the place and time. It’s a about permanent information stored somewhere and ready to be access by anyone around the world. In nineties we entered completely into the Information Society age. People living in different countries had the opportunity to communicate each other without any limitation. In few years, the number of connected people grown up from 16 million (the 0.4% of world population as in 1995) to 361 million (5.8% of world population as in 2000) to reach about 3 billion in March 2014 (41%) [source: History and Growth of the Internet from 1995 till Today at Internet World Stats]. On one side we had the free circulation of people and goods. On the other side we got the opportunity to have the free circulation of ideas. Social Media and Internet penetration have a causal and negative impact on corruption: this is the conclusion of the research conducted by Chandan K. Jha and Sudipta Sarangi, fellow researchers at Louisiana State University’s Department of Economics. According to the research conclusions the more Social media and Internet penetration in a Country, the less the corruption rate of that Country. Published on March 2014, The Louisiana State University’s paper is probably one of…
Leave a CommentMonth: June 2014
LinkedIN pays a lot of attention in enhancing services in order to incentive people to subscribe Premium accounts.In the past days Linkedin has stared to roll out new features aimed to enhance the visibility of the profile. The main ones are related to: Profile design, a support system to optimize the profile summary, a better outstanding in search results, an “open profile” option and more enhanced “Who Viewed Your Profile” Profile design The profile design has 2 significant changes. The first one is the opportunity to set a “background header image”. Following the major trend in social media tools design, a premium member now can set an header background image to customize the profile. You can choose your custom header from a set of preloaded background images or upload your own. The second one is the larger profile photo and the expanded profile header. Is it really necessary? Until people don’t reach your profile, probably it doesn’t. Anyway if you are used to share your Linkedin Profile link on your email signature, business card or other social media profiles, a customizable header can be helpful to enrich your personal or business brand. Companies paying for the employee’s premium account can ask to their employee to upload a branded header in order to aware their brand. Summary Optimization Summary is among the most important parts of your profile because it is used by LinkedIN Search Engine to discover you when people is searching by keywords. Now LinkedIN Premium Users has an assistant helping to find out the most suitable keywords to use while writing the summary. How It Works? Linkedin finds out profiles similar to you and looks at the most effective keywords used suggesting you to include them in your Summary. About my summary, for example, LinkedIn suggests to use some keywords such as Media Planning, Marketing Communication, media communication and so on. In choosing which one to include, it must be kept in mind what is your positioning statement and which one of the suggested really fits your skills. Don’t be seducted by the siren inviting you to “appear”. It’s important but it isn’t enough. You must be consistent with your real competences. Better outstanding in search results When you will appear in search result your profile will outstand better than non premium member. The listing will be twice as big as other results and offer more tidbits from your profile: Past and Current Jobs and the latest education degree. Open profile As a Premium Member your profile is Open. That’s mean that anyone, even who is more than three degree away, can message you for free without the need to be connected to you or to use a InMail Message.…
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Moving to a foreign country is a deep change of life; not only because you’re leaving your relatives and friends (skype and social media are good tools to maintain such relationships) but also because you have planned to set your entire social and professional life in an “unknown” environment where you don’t know people and people don’t know you. As in any situation where you’re going to reinvent yourself, you have to analyze you starting point and, hereby, to develop your “strategy”. When I moved to Turkey, I had no real job opportunity or contracts. Also, in the private sphere, I had just few connections with just a couple of my wife’s friends. Here there are some lessons I learned from my experience Attend a language school To know the language of the country where you live, obviously, It’s the first step to improve the possibility to establish personal and professional relations. Attending a language school (even if you already know the language, it wasn’t my situation :)) is for sure the first step to do. Going to the school language was my first opportunity to start to networking. The main advantage is that many foreign people like you don’t know the language, so if you know at least English (that is the most common language worldwide) you can start to make your connections. During the four months I attended at the school I met a lot of persons, even others Italian that temporary or permanently moved to Turkey. I met my firends “Paolos” (yes, it was the most common name among Italians :)) and German, American, English, and other persons from different nationalities. In the very first month I got a network of 20-30 local connections composed by foreign people living in Izmir. Most of them were married with turkish people so, my “second degree” connection reached about 40-60 people. How to get value from these connections? People moving abroad have almost the same problems: how to get resident permit and how to find a job are the most popular and urgent questions. So, if you are able to help them they will help you. Try to be valuable in giving the information they need. Be open and listen to their problem and always try to help to solve. When you’ll need, they will help you back. Connect with institutions of your Country If you live in a main city, probably there is at least a Consulate. Usually Consulate’s employees are both “diplomatic” (sent to the country from the Foreign Ministry) and “administrative”, usually local people employed. So Consulate has a deep knowledge of the local environment and can help you in understanding how to approach a business or…
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