Google’s long awaited social network project, Google+, has been recently released to lucky few, while the rest of the world willing to try the “not Facebook but like Facebook” new kid on the social front are bound to wait. While in most cases restricting your beta release to a restricted group might be a bad idea, in Google’s case it seems to be working great.

Browsing my Google Reader today (yes, my online life is completely dependant on Google), I saw a quite a lot of stories on how to get invites faster, news roundups including the Google announcement, reviews, good or bad, and everything in between. While some proclaim Google+ another failure at getting the social concepts right from the search giant, others are already focusing on the features and how to leverage this new networking channel. Bottom line, the Google+ project keeps getting lots of coverage.  Continue reading

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The majority of LinkedIn members tweet, a lot of them quite frequently. That is what the results of a recent poll created by Debbie Weil have shown. Apart from 13 percent of users who see Twitter as a waste of time, the rest of them have Twitter accounts and 68% of all the 247 users that took the poll put it to good use.

Because LinkedIn polls do mix the replies with some other data on the members, you can see who tweets and how often by job title, company size, job function, gender and age.

Here are a few results I found interesting

• Company owners tweet more than others (VPs, managers and other types of personnel)
• Small companies and enterprises are big Twitter fans
• No Marketing or PR professionals see Twitter as a waste of time
• The male/female results are perfectly balanced!
• And speaking of young people not tweeting, everyone in the 18-24 age group is a proficient user.

If you’d like to view detailed results, click here. And if you’re on LinkedIn and would like to take the poll, please go here.

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Guest post by Iuliana Butuc-Cerchez

Contacts. This is the word that matters nowadays for a large part of PR professionals and not only for them. That is why social networks were invented, collaboration software was created and so on.

LinkedIn is one of the most loved social networks in the business environment. Unfortunately, some people don’t get it all. I begun to receive almost once a week link in requests from various people I never met or emailed before. Some of them are recruiters. Some of them are sales people. Some of them just work for environmental projects. I’m wondering what’s in their minds before asking for your contacts without even mentioning a mere reason.

Most recently, X from EcoStuff is asking me to connect with him. “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn”. Why? Did you meet me somewhere? Have we talked before? If yes, please remind me. If no, please explain why you are interested in my contacts.

Come on! Be a professional if you want to be included in a professional network.

Iuliana Butuc-Cerchez has been the Corporate Affairs Manager of the Gecad Group for over 4 years. She’s an exceptional PR professional and a true mentor for me. Before starting her PR career, she used to be this hard-core IT journalist at one of the best business and financial newspapers in Romania. She’s also a blogger, but as her blog is in Romanian, only part of my readers will be able to enjoy her articles.

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