Social Media Tools, "other"

Third posting, in this article I cover miscellaneous tools, some may obviously apply others maybe not.  As always,  I have the complete list categorized here.
I will keep that sheet updated as I make changes, delete sites I'm not planning to review, etc.  I'll try to have a link to the sheet on each blog post I write related to this subject.


More tools that can help you in this Social Media Jungle...

Sites for cataloging books. "goodreads", "LibraryThing", "Shelfari" & "weread".  I'm reviewing all four at once because of their similarities and low value related to my focus ("Find The Job").
Do you love to read?  The above sites are probably a great way to take advantage of your personal life and use it to promote yourself on the web.  Remembering that everything you do related to your name will show up in a search result somewhere, building a profile on one of these sites could have a double reward.  You get to catalog your reading collection, have conversations with people who share similar interests and promote your search ranking at the same time.  I would suggest that you be careful with the books you list however.  Your online activity represents you and many people will look for you online before they contact you for a potential job.  If you have reading interests that conflict with your profession, perhaps you should consider cataloging them under a profile with less information about you.

A quick note on "everything you do related to your name will show up in a search result somewhere"...   My first Google profile was under the name "chetmiester"; I have a second profile as "chet.lohman".  The second profile ('chet.lohman') has much more information regarding my full name.  Before I became interested in social media & SEO, I worked to keep my search results low.  I didn't want "Google to find me".  Now that I do, I treat my online profiles differently.  In short, if you want to show up in search results, no matter what your profile name for any website, make sure the details of that profile have your full name somewhere.  A profile for "chetmiester" that only has the name "Chet L" on the details page will be MUCH farther down the results list than a profile for "chetmiester" that has the name "Chester Lohman".  Secondly, the more active you are the higher that activity will rank on a search.  If you built a LinkedIn profile 3 years ago, used your full name and haven't touched it since, don't expect that profile to show up in the first page of results in a Google search for you name.  If you are active, participate in groups/discussions, answer & ask questions, then you can expect that profile to probably hit the first page.  Optimizing how a search engine (Bing, yahoo, Google, any of them) treats a search for your name is about what effort you put into it.


http://www.pingsta.com/ - Pingsta
Taken from the website: Pingsta is a collaborative platform for the world’s Internet experts that enables customers to procure network expertise on a pay-per-use basis and engineers to work at will. Its members include Internet inventors, fellows, professors, distinguished engineers and technical leaders in over 52 countries.  Through its Intellectual Commerce Ecosystem - Pingsta ICE™ - service offering, Pingsta enables Enterprises, IT Service Providers and Government agencies worldwide to leverage network-expertise-in-the-cloud on a pay-per-use basis for break-fix technical support, consulting and R&D tasks.  
Through its Virtual Private ICE - Pingsta VPI™ - service offering, Pingsta enables organizations and Government agencies worldwide to create their own expertise-in-the-cloud platform and monetize excess intellectual capacity to generate new green revenue stream that is estimated to average USD$1,000 per employee per day.
So, are you an IT person?  Looking for work?  You may be able to supplement your income with short-term contract work here, until you locate that next long-term position.  It's a members-only site, membership is by invitation or application.  Sounds like a good time to do some leg-work on LinkedIn and locate a current member for an invite.



www.boardlite.com - Boardlite
Open discussion forum for any subject you choose.  Want to talk about that new Android phone thats coming out?  Or how about how you hate gardening carrots but love tomatoes?  It's an open forum so you can start a discussion about almost anything.  You can login using Google, Yahoo, MySpace or OpenID.  Share any discussion through Facebook "Like", Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Reddit or Stumbleupon.



www.sodahead.com - SodaHead
It looks like Quora but 'louder'.  Sodahead offers statistics on the questions asked, and appears to focus on debateable, yes/no questions.  You can create polls, lots of images, it's a very "busy" page.  "Diet Coke overtakes Pepsi, which do you prefer?".  "Sara Palin blames Obama for high gas prices, do you?".  Looks interesting.



www.spokentoyou.com - Spoken To You
Nice idea but doesn't appear to have fully matured.  (Side note, Google, please buy this service and help it grow into something really awesome).  At first glance, I was instantly impressed and ready to sign up.  After further reading/listening I realize some improvements need to be made before I'm "sold".  The site converts any website available as an RSS feed into audio content (mp3).  Of course, you could use any device to play the content back at your leisure.  On the surface this sounds incredible.  The limits are a max of 15 minutes content generated daily and files will be help for up to two weeks.  You can choose what content you get by adding RSS feeds to the site and adding them to your Que.
The killer for me is that 15 minute max.  If I registered for this service, I could quickly add up a few hours worth of source material daily.  A second downside is the voice used to 'read' the information to you.  The voice quality is easily understandable but a little choppy.  If they would raise that 15 minute max to something bigger, I would overlook the voice.


So, that's all I'm covering for now.  My next four weeks are starting to look very busy but I will work to continue covering items as I can.
Please leave feedback in the comments.  Have you used any of these tools?  Planning to use them?  Would love to hear your input.






(Remember to ignore this, it's just all my tags.  No need to read this, its just SEO. Employeer, internet, Job, Jobseeker, Lifehacker, Online Reputation Management, ORM, Recruiter, Social media, Wikipedia, chester, chester paul, chester paul lohman, paul, paul lohman, lohman, trainer, manager, Landing page, internet, internet tools, blog, blogging, bookmark, bookmarking,  email, IM, shopping, social network, social networking, social news)