Facebook Privacy Issues: Changing Society or Just a Smart Business Move?

Published by Ryan Healy on January 17th, 2010 in Work | 5 Comments

Last week, following the recent changes in privacy settings, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would be public by default.

Personally, I think Facebooks recent shift in privacy settings was a smart move. For the social web to truly be “social,” data must be freely available to everyone.

Twitter understood this when developing their service and we understood it when deciding to make Brazen Careerist open. Also, as services like Twitter, Blogging and Brazen Careerist have become more and more prevalent, people seem to be less concerned with online privacy. I’m conscious of what I say online, and I have nothing to hide, so privacy is a non factor for me.

But the real reason I think it’s a smart move for Facebook is because opening the site will improve their bottom line. When you open everything up, people become much more aware of what they post and what they don’t post online. And when 350 million people are consciously monitoring what they post, the number of beer bonging photos and mentions of last night’s illegal escapades will go way down. When these things go way down, advertising rates go way up..

However, this post by Greg Tracy made me think of the issue in a whole new way. Tracy argues that privacy absolutely matters for Facebook, and Twitter and blogging are terrible data points. They are poor data points because Facebook is different. Facebook is supposed to be an online extension of your everyday offline life. Offline, you have private conversations with your neighbors on the sidewalk or with your coworkers at the water cooler. These conversations would never be shouted for a neighbor down the street to hear you or for your boss in the corner office to find out what's going on.

Tracy goes on to say that people aren’t changing and Facebook will not make them change. Facebook is merely a new medium to do the same things we have always done. Twitter and Blogging are very different. Twitter and Blogging are not supposed to be an extension of your offline life. They are meant for public consumption, just like newspapers, magazines and television are meant for public consumption.

Tracy makes an excellent point. Facebook could be making a huge mistake by following the lead of Twitter and other new, open sites. But, it could also very well be that they recognize there is no money in being an extension of offline life, and they are making the smartest business decision they can by downplaying privacy.

If Facebook truly wants to be the place where you live your life online the same way you live your life offline, they are making a mistake by downplaying privacy issues. You can change the medium, but you can’t change how people fundamentally behave.

However, if Facebook believes that they are not merely a new medium to do what you have always done, but instead they are a new media tool designed to give people a brand new way to behave and communicate, then Facebook is on the right track.

I’m sure Facebook will go whatever route can make them the most money, but whichever way they decide to go, they’re going to piss some people off, and they’re going to leave the door wide open for a new service to come along and fill in where Facebook does not.

What do you guys think? Is privacy a major issue for you? Do you agree with Zuckerberg?

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Use Social Media to Make Every Employee a Recruiter

Published by Ryan Healy on November 23rd, 2009 in Work | 2 Comments

Linkedin started the concept of Social Recruiting when they launched in 2003, and now it’s the buzz of the recruiting world. ERE just hosted a social recruiting conference to discuss the do’s and don’ts of social recruiting. Of course, some of the hot topics are around whether Twitter, Facebook and blogs are a good way to recruit candidates, and if so how do you go about recruiting them?

Whether or not these sites can help you recruit talent is not really a question. Of course they can. But because these sites are not built for recruiting and do not offer products to aid the recruiting process, it’s not an easy task. There are hundreds of ways to source candidates through these networks and if you spend enough time on them, you’ll find the talent your organization is looking for.

Unfortunately, sorting through all of the crap on Facebook and making sense of the rapid fire tweets on Twitter to find the right candidates takes a ton of time. Considering most recruiters are hard pressed to find an extra second in their day, it can be difficult to justify giving social recruiting a try.

One thing a company could do is ask their recruiters to work more hours. Of course, this won’t work. Recruiters will leave for another company so they can have a life.

Another option might be to have social media specialists. Put your least experienced, most tech savvy recruiters in charge of social media and don’t have them bother with phone calls or emails. Again, probably not a good idea. Phone calls and emails still work; social media will not change this.

What you should do is listen to the advice from two recent posts by John Sullivan on ERE.net. The author tells companies to stop worrying about how to get recruiters to use social media for recruiting and instead get your recruiters to start thinking of themselves as managers and organizers, responsible for getting your employees on the front lines.

Sullivan says, “Social media erupted as tools to facilitate interaction, and interaction in too many aspects of one’s life can be time consuming and exhausting! Fortunately there is an answer to this problem: don’t do it alone. Use employees to build relationships, and then take advantage of those relationships!”

There are hundreds of millions of people on social networks, and each of your employees is probably connected to thousands of them. It’s already a proven fact that the number one source of new hires is referrals. If you want to improve your situation and attract top talent, your organization should be focused on how to get even more new hires through referrals.

When you really think about it, social media is built for this; it’s the ultimate referral tool. Social media is based on relationships, conversation and existing connections. When you have those things, the need for cold calls, random job postings and advanced search techniques goes way down.

If you really want to capitalize on “social recruiting,” figure out how to make each of your employees your #1 recruiter, than sit back and watch your successful new hires go through the roof.

For some great tips on how your organization can do this, check out John Sullivan’s most recent post on ERE.

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Forget Work-Life Balance And Build A Lifestyle

Published by Ryan Healy on November 12th, 2009 in Work | 13 Comments

In a recent talk, Tony Hsieh, the CEO and founder of Zappos was asked about how the company manages work-life balance.

Hsieh replied,

“For most companies (work-life balance) implies that work must suck so much you need a life on the outside. At Zappos we’re more focused on creating a lifestyle. We don’t think of it as one or the other. Most Zappos employees leave work and hang out with other Zappos employees.”

He’s right. While it’s usually done with good intentions, focusing on work-life balance is killing your corporate culture. Like Hsieh says, the mere term implies that work must be so terrible that you need to stop thinking about it the second you walk out the door.

This was a great philosophy – in 1890. In the days of 8 hour shifts on an assembly line, everyone had work-life balance. When the machines shut down, there were no widgets to be made; you couldn’t work if you wanted to. And there was no point in dreaming about how to get the job done better or faster or how to beat the competition when the machine dictated everything you did.

Its 2009 and things are different now. We live in a knowledge based world. The companies who dream, innovate and change the world are the ones that win. No one is making world changing innovations in 8 hour shifts, 5 days a week. Ideas come in your sleep and breakthroughs come at happy hours.

Start-ups are doomed the second people start talking about work-life balance and begin thinking of each other as nothing more than “coworkers.” They need to be best friends, they need to work around the clock, or at least be thinking about work around the clock, and they need to kick and scream and fight together, just to survive. So start-ups create a culture where work is a lifestyle. Zappos is well past the start-up phase, but they’ve managed to do this too.

Stop worrying about work-life balance or how to give people as much time off as possible, and start thinking about how to create an environment where people never want to take time off. Not because they’re scared or intimidated, but because they can’t think of anything in the world they would rather be doing than working with their peers and friends to achieve a common goal.

The employees you really want aren’t looking for a job, they’re looking for a lifestyle. Create one for them.

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Brazen Careerist Is Live! Go Check Out The Site.

Published by Ryan Healy on August 26th, 2009 in Work | 0 Comments

As most of you know, Brazen Careerist has been live since March 2008. But, really, we just launched it yesterday. The site has gone from an idea, to a tiny aggregator of 50 Gen Y bloggers, to a network of thousands with social networking features like profiles and groups. And now, we're taking the giant leap to turn the site into a career management tool for next-generation professionals.

You might be thinking, why does Brazen Careerist keep changing what they're doing? My response to that question is, we didn't really have a choice. Over the past six months we've listened to the community and we've listened to the marketplace. And what they both keep telling us is that young professionals (Gen Y) are looking for a professional home on the internet.

On the community side, our groups feature has continued to take off and members now think of Brazen Careerist as a full scale social network. New members are joining every day and engagement on the site is increasing dramatically.

When I read the bios on some of these new profiles, I'm blown away. We have successful entrepreneurs, marketers, freelancers, IT workers, and more. And they're all driven, motivated and accomplished. Our members now think of us as a professional network, and it became glaringly obvious that we had to give them what they wanted.

On the other side, the marketplace needs a young professional social network. Here's why.

Facebook is home base. We all know this. Facebook is where you share your personal information, send messages to established offline friends, and browse through photos from the good ol' days of college. Facebook is not where you meet new people, build a network, and have work related conversations.

Linkedin is the dominant player in the online career network space. It's where you should have a professional profile because it's where your boss and your future boss probably hang out. But the average age on Linkedin is 40, and the profiles emphasize experience – something people in their twenties are a little short on.

When we looked at all of these factors, we realized, there's a huge niche that needs to be filled – a professional network for Gen Y – and our community that started as a little blog aggregator is in the perfect position to fill that niche. So, with this launch, that's what we've done.

First of all, we gave the site a complete facelift, improved the user experience and made just about everything customizable to you – the way a social networking site should be. But most importantly, we completely revamped our profiles to emphasize ideas over experience. The new profiles aggregate everything you say or do on Brazen Careerist. From blog posts to group chatter to profile updates, the new profiles display all of this activity in a feed to show that your experience and background aren't the only indicators of success. Your ideas and potential matter too.

The other part of our profiles showcase standard resume information including work experience and education to give a complete picture of who you are and what you have accomplished – even if it's not 20+ years of experience in a single field.

On a personal note, the past few months have been crazy at the Brazen Careerist office. We've pulled countless all nighters, we've had our fair share of arguments, we've had plenty of great discussions, and Photis, our lead developer even managed to lock himself out of his office an hour before our final load balance test, only to pull a MacGyver and climb through the roof to get to his computer. (This was hilarious, you can see photos here) All in all, it's been everything a pre-launch period is supposed to be and we've all had a great time doing it.

So please, check out the site, create a profile if you don't have one and let us know what you think because community feedback is what made the site what it is today, and it's what will make the site great in the coming months!

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A Startup Isn't About One Big Idea, It's About A Lot Of Little Ideas

Published by Ryan Healy on August 18th, 2009 in Brazen Careerist, Entrepreneurship | 2 Comments

Starting a business is not about the big idea you have. Very seldom does someone come up with an earth shattering, ground-breaking business idea one day, and change the world a few years later. In fact, from my experience, the companies that do change the world tend to come about quite randomly, and the ones that started with an earth shattering idea tend to go bust.

Take Facebook for example. Mark Zuckerberg didn't invent social networking. He stole the idea from a couple of twins from Harvard who hired him to help build a website based on an idea that they stole from a company called Friendster. Six years later, Zuckerberg is a billionaire, the twins made cash by suing Zuckerberg, and Friendster is looking to sell for far less than their investors would hope for.

Twitter started as a side project. The original idea was completely based around sending status updates from your mobile phone. A few years later, that basic idea is still very much a part of Twitter, but it's turned into so much more. It's a new form of communication and it's changing the world as we know it.

The funny thing is, it took Twitter years to even understand what their idea REALLY was. Go look at the new homepage. It's all about real time search. What's happening right now? That's what Twitter is. Well, until three weeks ago, you could go to the homepage and the about page and any other page on the site and have no idea why Twitter was actually useful. The founders didn't even know. It took a lot of money, a ton of hard work and a lot of smart minds to wrap their heads around what the idea actually was and then figure out how they could present it to the world.

The point is, entrepreneurship is not about a big idea. It's about execution and it's about a whole boat load of little ideas that come from assembling a smart team of people and giving them the freedom to innovate.

That's why I loved reading about the new initiative by YCombinator. They will be issuing RFS's or Requests for Startups. Basically they give some ideas of what kind of company they are looking for and they will accept the entrepreneurs that pitch the best way to get the idea done. Obviously the people at YCombinator understand that startups need an idea, but the successful ones are the startups that make ideas come to life.

Over the past two years since starting Brazen Careerist I've realized this first hand. When Penelope and I first discussed starting a company, we had no idea what we were going to do. We knew the market we wanted go into, and we knew that we wanted to help people with their careers, but that's about it. No crazy ideas to change the world. Just a desire to do something great.

Since then, we've all had a lot of good ideas and a lot of bad ideas, and the whole team has worked their tails off to make this whole thing come to life. And finally after a couple of years, we have a pretty good idea of what our business is. All it took was not being able to pay rent occasionally, showering and living at the office some days, working when we were supposed to be sleeping, and cheering our one-man development team as he coded until 6 am.

All that stuff is called execution. And that's what running a business is all about. Every startup that's lived on for more than a couple months has done the same thing, and every successful start-up will continue to do the same thing.

My point is this. If you're dying to be an entrepreneur because you're full of ideas, just pick one. Put a plan together, create some milestones, pitch in some capital, recruit a partner or two, hit your milestones and execute on the plan that you created. Be prepared for sacrifice, instability, arguments, being terrified, and a serious lack of sleep. Because that's what the game is really all about. Your idea is just the beginning.

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