2above.com

Rose started Digg with $1,200 and an insight about the changing nature of news. Thanks to cheap broadband and easy-to-use blogging software, there was suddenly an endless stream of news, gossip, and rumor about pretty much any obscure topic — say, new versions of Linux or 9/11 conspiracy theories — spread across millions of blogs and websites. Rose and others like him were spending hours digging through these stories and then passing them around to their friends. What, he wondered, would happen if someone harnessed that energy?

Rose signed up for a cheap hosting service and hired a Canadian programmer he met online. He designed the site himself, giving it a utilitarian — even ugly — look. It had no graphics, but it did offer something special: a way for anyone to get his or her news in front of lots and lots of people. In addition to his promotional efforts on TV, Rose started talking up his venture on his blog, which had nearly 10,000 registered users. In January 2005, he described Digg as “a friend’s site and one of my favorite technology news websites.”

Just a month later, a hacker somehow managed to download and post the contents of Paris Hilton’s cell phone address book, and a link was submitted to Digg. Within a week, the site saw its traffic quadruple as the Hilton story wound up in The Washington Post and The New York Times. Digg had its first major scoop, and Rose realized for the first time that he was onto something. He left television the following month, with a plan to make Web videos for fun and to pay for his life by selling advertising on Digg using Google’s AdSense service. “I’d always liked the idea of being independent and working for myself,” he says. “I was sitting in my room thinking, If I can just make a few hundred dollars a month in ad revenue, I’ll be able to support myself, pay my rent, and have a good time.”

The site grew faster than he could have imagined. Rose rounded up $50,000 in angel funding, hired a real designer, and started getting acquisition offers. That summer, just months after Digg’s founding, Jason Calacanis, the founder of Weblogs, offered Rose $4 million for the site. Rose said no. Instead, he persuaded his mentor, Jay Adelson, the founder of a data center company called Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX), to join him as an adviser and then as CEO. The pair raised $2.8 million from Greylock Partners and some angels. “Jason could have had it, if he had been cool about it,” says Rose. “But he was pressuring me so much that I kind of stepped back and said something isn’t right.” Calacanis was so taken with Digg that, after he sold Weblogs to AOL, he started a copycat site under AOL’s Netscape.com brand. He even offered Digg’s most active users $1,000 a month to defect. (The effort failed: Traffic was flat, Calacanis quit, and the Digg clone was moved off the Netscape homepage in 2007.) Digg’s traffic, meanwhile, exploded. By late 2006, the site had 11 million users.

ps. This article was originally posted on INC.com back in early 2008.

There are many job-twitter sites around basically feeding jobs posted somewhere else, that is not really a smart way of using twitter. CNNMoney posted an article today with stories of real people finding their jobs by engaging their online social networks, including twitter. Take a look!

By Jessica Dickler, CNNMoney.com staff writer

Making the right connections

LinkedIn, which has over 40 million users, is geared specifically toward professional networking. Expansive networks are built by posting a profile which acts as an online résumé, making connections and getting references from your connections that potential employers can view.

For Barbara Maldonado, LinkedIn was the gateway to a great opportunity. Maldonado, 32, participated in a professional group on the site for “Innovative Marketing, PR, Sales, Word-of-Mouth & Buzz Innovators.” Another member of the group posted a question and liked Maldonado’s response. From then on they kept in contact.

“When I updated my status that I had been laid off, he referred me for a position that was open at his company, which is where I work now,” she said of her current marketing position at the firm in a suburb of Chicago. “Without actively participating in that discussion, I would not have made the contact for the job.”

Other sites like Twitter and Facebook, while popular among teens and young adults, have also been embraced by professional communities. Friends on Facebook typically share status updates, pictures and video. Twitter limits exchanges between people, also known as followers, to messages of only 140 characters.

If it weren’t for Jen Harris’ followers on Twitter, she would not have been notified of another job opportunity, only moments after getting laid off from Idaho-based MPC computers in October.

As Harris packed up her desk she sent out a tweet that read: “just been laid off from MPC.”

“By the time I left the parking lot, I had a job offer from a friend that had a Web development company in town,” she said.
First dibs on job openings

But job seekers don’t have to rely solely on others for information about possible job openings. There are a variety of services associated with social networking sites to help too, like TweetMyJobs, which sends out automatic updates of new openings in a specific field and region sent to your cell phone or by Twitter.

If you fan a company on Facebook or follow internal hiring managers on Twitter, you might be the first to find out about job openings at the employer of your choice.

When the Minneapolis office of Weber Shandwick was looking to hire a junior Web developer, the digital strategy manager, Greg Swan, sent a 136-character tweet to over 2,000 followers which read: “Weber Shandwick Minneapolis looking for mid-level html developer and PSD slicer. Plus you get to work with me. DM or @ me for more info.”

Doug Hamlin, 23, landed the job after responding with his résumé and information.

Job seekers can also seek out and follow professional recruiters, like Shane Bernstein, to get first dibs on job opportunities.

Bernstein runs an IT talent agency based in Los Angeles and says he uses social networking exclusively to find candidates for technical jobs.

“Social network is going to take over job boards,” he said. The greatest advantage to Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and LinkedIn is that job candidates and employers can meet through people. Those connections make it easier to break the ice, he said.
Too much information

But for job seekers, there can also be a downside to that type of access. “It does open up a more 360 degree view,” Fathi cautioned.

A prospective employer may see your friends, your pictures and your personal information, “so you can’t have drunken pictures of yourself in Cancun,” she said.

For starters, Fathi recommends cleaning up your online image. Job seekers should do a Google search on their own name to get a sense of what information is out there.

Because of their popularity, social networking sites will generally pop up first. But make sure the privacy settings are activated so that a potential employer can only access the content that is appropriate.

If a Google search returns no results at all, that means that you don’t have an online presence, which is also a bad thing.

Fathi recommends that job seekers immediately create a LinkedIn profile, a Facebook page, join Twitter and any relevant professional networks or communities in your field.

“Even adding your name to a directory or commenting on a high profile blog can create new content for a prospect employer to find when searching for information on you,” she said.