New Face for Facebook – More Opportunities for Effective Networking

Thanks to MaryPat Kavanagh – social networking and joint venture expert for entrepreneurs (www.queenofmarketing.com), I’ve had an early peek at the new Facebook. (If you have an account, you can change your old page to the new one by going to www.new.facebook.com. And according to MaryPat, everyone’s page will soon be changed over to the new look).

My comments: First, I’ve barely learned the ins and outs of the old Facebook. Still, there are already things I like better, such as an actual visible home button instead of having to mouse over to find the invisible home button.

From a professional point of view, the best new feature may be the opportunity to put a very short bio (only a little longer than the one allowed on Twitter) right under your profile picture. So when, for example, someone is on your Wall page, the person can see something about you without going to your Info page and scrolling down under Personal Information to About Me.

Below is what I wrote for the little bio under my profile picture. Full disclosure: it took me some time to fit what I wanted to say into the space allowed:

I'm a marketer and an author with a recently released novel and three blogs. I'm launching a FAMILY of info product websites with estateplanningforyou.com.
~
I just connected through Facebook with Zimblers in England -- possible distant cousins.

(The photo of a dulcimer at the beginning of this post is representing the tsimbl, an Eastern European stringed klezmer instrument that originated the Jewish surnames Zimbler and Zimbalist. I’m working with a new possible cousin in England found through Facebook on a theory involving the supposedly most famous klezmer musician Mikhail Guzikov (1806-1837), who toured “the great opera houses of Europe from Odessa to Paris” according to an article by Pete Rushefsky. In our Zimbler cousin case the opera house in Odessa is a possible key to a mystery we’re trying to solve.)

If you’re not already on Facebook, this is a great time to start. You’ll be learning the new look while the old-timers will be learning it too, so you won’t be that far behind.

Just remember my constant warning – choose a profile picture that has a professional look to it. No funny faces, funny hats or funny anything.

And if you read this column come friend me on Facebook – just be sure to mention my FLIPPING BURGERS blog in the friend request message you send me.

Technorati Tags:
MaryPat Kavanagh, www.queenofmarketing.com, Facebook, Zimbler, Zimbalist, Flipping Burgers and Beyond, tsimbl, Odessa, Mikhail Guzikov, Pete Rushefsky

Finding an Internship or a Job: Using Twitter Revisited

On Monday I posted about using http://Twitter.com to research internship possibilities and described the Twitter client application Summize. Such is the speed of the internet that this info was out of date just as I posted. Because, also on Monday, Twitter announced it had just acquired Summize and that the URL for this feature is now http://search.twitter.com.

You can access this function without a free Twitter account. So if you want to see what people are saying on Twitter about a certain subject, go ahead and type in the subject and see what tweets pop up. (I just put in the word internships and got some interesting tweets.)

And for the last two days I’ve been trying out http://twhirl.org after MaryPat Kavanagh (www.queenofmarketing.com) advised me that she uses Twhirl to access Twitter. (Twhirl is a desktop client for Twitter based on the Adobe AIR platform, which I downloaded for free.)

At the moment I’m of two opinions about Twhirl: On the one hand I like the pop-up tweets that appear in the bottom right-hand corner of my computer screen whenever anyone I’m following posts a tweet. On the other hand I get distracted from what I’m doing by reading those pop-up tweets. So for now the jury is still out on what I think of this client application.

And here’s a Twitter feature I’ve just started using – http://twitter.com/direct_messages. It’s when you want to tweet someone on Twitter but you don’t want everyone following you and following the tweet receiver to be able to read the tweet. I’m using the direct messages feature to send my primary email address to someone with whom I’ve been exchanging tweets on a specific topic.

Okay, I’ve now given you more research tools for finding contacts for internships and jobs. Let me know if you use these tools and if they help lead you to what you want to find.

Technorati Tags:
Twitter, Summize, www.queenofmarketing.com, MaryPat Kavanagh, internships, jobs, careers, Flipping Burgers and Beyond