patti wilson's blog

Leveraging Google’s Orkut

The glut of social networking sites can overwhelm your ability to discriminate among them. There are, though, statistics on the big ones that enable anyone to pinpoint their networking goals to demographic targets and geographical areas with at least side-of-the-barn accuracy.

Ecademy was founded by Thomas Powers in Great Britain and is known for a solid European base of members. A recent newcomer to that geo area is multilingual Viadeo having originated in France, it is considered an upcoming competitor to Linkedin for EU professionals.

The most interesting news of late is the Business Week article about Google's plans to expand Orkut, its invitation only social network. The article lamented the fact that Orkut had geographical limitations. Perspective is everything, right? What is one person’s poison is another’s perfume.   

According to Business Week, “…..Asia and Latin America, which account for nearly all of Orkut's 24.6 million monthly users, the site's traffic remains simply anemic—totaling just 600,000 in North America and about 1.2 million in Europe, and not growing very fast.”

This is a problem?

Perhaps for Google it is a business concern but not for recruiters, deal makers, business developers, job seekers and geo-focused networkers who seek contacts in those areas. Orkut is the perfect venue to penetrate Latin American and Asian markets which adds up to about to about 22.6 million potential connections, especially in Brazil.

The old saying goes something like: to catch fish you need to cast your line in water. Same holds true for social networking sites. The idea is to join those sites that most closely target the population that you seek. 

My offer to you to join Orkut.

I was invited to join Orkut when it first started several years ago. If you are interested in networking in Asia and Latin America please add a comment to this post. In return, I will invite you to join Orkut using the email address you left with your comment. Please don’t send me an email, the quid pro quo here is the trade of a comment for an invite.

Who is ZoomInfo? It's Linkedin's Search on Steroids

"ZoomInfo is a search engine that continually scans millions of Web sites, electronic news sources, SEC filings, and other on-line resources and provides results in concise, easy-to-use summaries. ZoomInfo PowerSearch helps recruiters source passive candidates by providing information on more than 36 million business professionals. ZoomInfo JobCast is a campaign tool that uses proven email best practices to help you efficiently reach these candidates. Try out ZoomInfo on some of your own searches!"

ERE the Recruiter's Mother-ship

This ad was included in an email announcement from ERE, a 30,000 member on-line recruitment community and publisher of Electronic Recruitment Daily. ERE is probably the most influential resource for the recruitment industry. 

Zoominfo a big advertiser on ERE's website and newsletters, has grown into a powerhouse resource for recruiters, deal makers and sales/marketing folks. It scrapes websites for data, organizes the information by person and provides depths of detail to users for free or in various fee-based levels similar to Linkedin.

Zoominfo is Raw Capitalism

But that's where the similarity to Linkedin ends. While Linkedin is based on a mutuality, an exchange of value, and the understanding that connections are made through known commodities. Zoominfo is pure raw capitalism, allowing you to gather as much data on a person and their affiliations as possible and go after them freely and relentlessly. Of course how you go after them is up to you as no introductions through shared mutuality and other niceties are available through Zoominfo. It's up to an organization to ferret out the data and drive the deal

This makes Zoominfo one of the most fertile aggregators of data on people and companies existing today outside of Homeland Security's records with potential to seek and recruit talent with speed and efficiencies escalated to the steroid level of employment search on the Internet. It makes even using Google's search tools pale in comparison because Zoominfo does the search for you. They take out the guesswork and the effort.