As of today LinkedIn is one of the go-to sources for showing-off your own online C.V. and the company is all set to utilize this fact for its next giant step. LinkedIn has launched an “Apply With LinkedIn” button which is quiet similar to the “Like” button from Facebook, “Tweet” button from Twitter and “+1″ button from Google+. While the latter three social media giants use their specific buttons to promote content around the Internet, LinkedIn has opted to run into a totally new path. The “Apply With LinkedIn” button will give job-seekers the opportunity to apply to any job adverts (if they support the button) with just few clicks.

Why “Apply With LinkedIn” button will prove helpful (and to whom)?

• Hardly anyone of us likes to carry his/her updated C.V. which results in missed opportunities that come in without prior notice. The ready-to-use “Apply With LinkedIn” button will let users apply to a particular job advert with just few clicks, provided that their LinkedIn C.V. is updated.
• Companies looking to hire recruits will have the opportunities to gather all the incoming requests in one common (LinkedIn) format thus helping them bifurcate the available information with ease.
• Users will be (indirectly) forced to keep their LinkedIn profiles updated as the third-kind-of social networking website (I consider Facebook and Google+ as one while Twitter as two) is actually the market leader when it comes to online professional profiles.
• Users can expect referrals via their LinkedIn network itself. This will make it mandatory for users to expand their LinkedIn networks so as to multiply their chances of getting best possible referrals.
• After a mouth watering LinkedIn IPO few months back, the company’s balance sheets will love to see growth every quarter. To maintain this growth LinkedIn had to come out with lucrative features and this seems to be one such feature.

Well, with great network comes the great responsibility to live up to everyone’s expectations. LinkedIn never started as a job website. Rather, they started as a social networking website with emphasis on professional profiles. With their current step LinkedIn will move towards being a job-profile based website that will cater to the needs of job-seekers and the ones hiring them. Although, this could revolutionize the hiring process on the Internet yet it might act as a turn off for users who joined LinkedIn during its early days for its social image (with touch of professionalism).

Only time will tell if the advantages balance out the disadvantages that come in with this move.

© CompuWorld - because The Genius Inside You Is Still Sleeping.

UPDATE – It is up now. First down time of facebook and I witnessed it!

© CompuWorld - because The Genius Inside You Is Still Sleeping.

Since years Facebook has been using the same Facebook profile design which has been appreciated by everyone who uses Facebook. And guess of? Facebook has given up on its USP. They cluttered it and they are happy about it! Was this project ever approved by Mark Zuckerberg? Or, is he even aware about the mess that 7 members (Josh Wiseman, Amanda Johnson, Douglas Li, Matthew Choi, Joey Flynn, Lovro Puzar and Peter X. Deng) behind this project have come up with. Sadly, Mark Zuckerberg is obviously aware of the new version of Facebook profiles design and his profile displays the newer version itself.

Basic Introduction

It is cluttered, period! I agree that the revamped profile page displays your basic information along with tagged photos right on top but why? What was the requirement for squeezing the tagged photos right on the head of my profile page when we already had the Photos Tab that was doing its job pretty well? I like the way the basic information of the particular person is displayed right on top but the extra tagged photo thing kills all the experience.

Take this example: my friend tags me on a horse pic just for fun and if I am  using this version of Facebook profile then it will display right on top of my profile page which I use for highly professional work. I can obviously go ahead and delete that tag later on but for that time period the horse smiles on  my employer’s face. Not funny!

Featured Friends

Using this feature one can actually display a particular group of friends on his profile page which I think is surely a nice idea. I am an avid blogger plus a software engineer. I can display my blogging circle and my IT circle on my profile page thus giving others the hint of the circles I belong to. I like it!

New Experiences

This is one amazing integration which comes with the new profile page. From now on people can tag their colleges along with the experiences they carry on their back. If you attend kitty parties with a planned set of people every weekend then you can actually tag all of them under your kitty party section in your activities. This will help people stay closely connected. Simply amazing!

Improved Photos and Friends Pages

Zero improvement! I mean it. Go check your photos page if you have already switched to the newer version (otherwise use friend’s profile) and try finding out the difference. The tag photos display below your albums and all the tagged photos display on the single page. No major changes here.

The friends page surely has changed. Now all your friends are displayed on the single page which is a bit better than the vertical listing that used to be displayed before. But, this isn’t any major change and it does not enhance my experience by any means.

Common Interest

This could be termed as a nice integration as it lets me understand what is the common activity that I share with my friend and what are our shared groups, photos and wall posts that we share. Well, this hidden feature is surely going to be an added advantage for many.

Videos No More!

I have been trying to find out the videos tab that people used to have right on their profile’s page and it isn’t there! Well, the videos link is available but you got to work hard to get to the same. Let us start our journey:

How To Access My Videos In New Facebook Profile Page?

• Click on Photos link which is below your profile pic.
• Now you can see Your Photos section and Photos and Videos of You section. Next to Photos and Videos of You there will be View Photos of View and View Videos of You. Click on View Videos of You and relax.

Hidden Reason

Hardly any might have noticed this but the right sidebar which used to display ads is now wider than before. Looks like Facebook is finally trying to squeeze in more space for ads thus luring the advertisers. But, extra space to advertisers with such a mess for the users is not acceptable for anyone.

And you cannot switch back!

Yup! Try as hard as you can but if you have switched to the newer version of Facebook profile then you won’t be able to switch back. All that you can to is sit back and watch at the weird looking Facebook profile of yours. I am not switching to the new profile.

How to switch to new Facebook Profile?

It is rather too simple. Check this page and click on green colored Get the New Profile button to switch to new profile. I will suggest you people not to switch to the newer version till Facebook introduces the switching back option. I am staying to the older version till Facebook makes the newer version the default page.

Mark Zuckerberg, if you are reading this then it is a humble request to you. Please think about your basic idea behind Facebook and make it simple not weird like it has turned out to be.

© CompuWorld - because The Genius Inside You Is Still Sleeping.

Summarizing the features:

• Size of photos increases from 720 pixels to 2048 pixels which means an 8 times increase in initial size.
• New photo viewer to navigate photos easily. Photo opens in the center of your screen and can be closed once you are done admiring it.
• A dark black box around photos will help you concentrate on the photo that you are viewing.

• Multiple photographs of the same album can be tagged all at once. Something like flickr for sure.
• A behind the scenes change in flash unloader will improve the performance of the same as claimed by Facebook.
• Lastly, surfing through many photos will be a lot faster than ever as facebook claims to have re-built the complete code from scratch.

To enjoy some examples of high resolution photographs you can view National Geographic’s “Top-Rated Your Shot Photos (September)” album or Sports Illustrated’s “Football Across America” album. We will keep you updated as and when this is available across the globe.

© CompuWorld - because The Genius Inside You Is Still Sleeping.

Marginize is one new Internet based startup that has shown smartness by tapping into the traffic of Facebook, Twitter and Google Buzz instead of taking a head on fight with these giants. The service provided by Marginize is quiet simple. Once you install the Chrome/Firefox plugin for Marginize then a permanent frame is attached to the side of your browser which displayed reactions from other registered users of Marginize for that particular page. To understand exactly what I mean I would request you to check the image below and use this link for Marginize link of CompuWorld’s home page.

Once you are at a page then you can use the permanent frame on your right to leave your reactions regarding that page and let the world know more about the same. You can scroll down so as to check what other users have written about that page and even reply to individual users. At the end of the day Marginize can end up collecting some seriously useful information regarding different pages on the Internet based on the experience of its users and all this will be available in compact format right on top of every respective page. One also gets the chance to check-in into different pages which lets others know that you had visited that page. This way you can leave traces of what you have been surfing on the Internet if you aren’t an avid porn surfer! Just use the check-in button and let your presence be felt.

Their can be times when the huge vertical Marginize bar can prove to be irritating for users as it covers one third of every page and you don’t even have a horizontal scroll bar to view the rest of the page which is covered by Marginize bar. This is when one can either use the transparent feature of Marginize or else minimize Marginize bar to a small box. The vertical bar can be made transparent if you roll over your mouse on the word marginize next to the bar as show by red mark in the image below:

But, the transparent feature might not be that interesting as it still won’t let you surf that hidden part of the page with smoothness. This is when you can simply minimize the huge vertical Marginize bar and once you do that then it converts itself into a small box which keeps giving you the updates and stays in the bottom right half of your webpage. It won’t disturb you much as shown in the image below:

One can easily disable the Marginize plugin using the small little icon which is available on the right of your address bar as shown in image below:

Overall, Marginize is one awesome startup that will surely stick around if it does not end up goofing things around. Be as simple as you are right now yet introduce more features to keep the public intact.

Some of the features that I would love to see in Marginize:

• My Profile page is way below simplicity. I cannot add the link of my website on my profile page and neither can I add friends in Marginize. These two features can surely let users stay in touch and use Marginize to its best.
• The mailing feature is missing in Marginize. One would love to have an inbox in Marginize using which he could send messages to others.
• A toolbar version of Marginize for Internet Explorer users. It is true that most of us use Firefox or Chrome but still their is one section of the Internet users that use the age old Internet Explorer and the number is pretty decent.
• More marketing please! Marginize has hit Tech Crunch (and received pretty decent reaction) yet @marginize has 146 followers while Facebook fan page has JUST 25 followers. Ring a bell people?

I will surely be following Marginize without fail as I do see potential in it. Lets see where the mixture of Facebook and Twitter takes Marginize.

© CompuWorld - because The Genius Inside You Is Still Sleeping.

Vaughan Smith told Bloomberg reporter Brian Womack:

“As we get bigger and our platform gets more stable, I fully expect that we will be doing more significant acquisitions. This is working for us, and it’s working for the people that we’re acquiring.”

With ad prices not jumping up in Facebook and advertisers spending a lot more than normal, it is understood that Facebook’s revenue will jump up to $1.4 billion or even more within 2010 itself.

Some of the rock-star acquisitions of Facebook till now have been the $50 million for FriendFeed, the $10 million for Hot Potato and the travel related website Next Stop. The major reason behind Facebook’s current acquisitions is the virtual currency that the company earns due to these small but happening social networking websites. Along with the money the company gets some of the best brains on the Internet to work for herself thus making it a win win situation. Looks like Facebook is working pretty hard before it launches its IPO in 2012 (hopefully!)

© CompuWorld - because The Genius Inside You Is Still Sleeping.

I agree that this won’t decrease the level of interactivity too much but it will affect it by some percentage. Though they are still not showing ads on other communities with less number of community members.

© CompuWorld - because The Genius Inside You Is Still Sleeping.

Its been around 18 months when we raised the speculations of Google launching the mobile feature for Orkut where users can SMS their orkut scraps and receive their scraps as SMS in their mobiles.

You will have to select your service provider and then register your phone in order to use this SMS feature of Orkut. More instructions can be found over here. Of course your service provider will apply some charges when you use this facility but I am sure everyone will happily pay these charges considering the addiction of orkut in India.

Not all the carriers are still available in the list but I am sure that soon all will join the bandwagon. The current list is:

• Aircel
• BPL
• MTNL
• Reliance
• Spice
• Tata

Unfortunately I use the Idea SIM.

© CompuWorld - because The Genius Inside You Is Still Sleeping.

Recently Google added some applications to orkut which the user can use in their profile to make his/her profile more attractive. Those apps when activated are visible to the general public (that is the basic of a public profile..right?) and they can also interact with those apps as per the application’s features.

So why is this attempt in vain?

When you activate any of those apps then they will show up right below your profile and this steals the show. Usually people in Orkut have real lengthy profiles and below it are the testimonials which they receive from their friends. These apps will show up below the testimonials (or testi as we call them) and hence 90% of the visitors may not even know that you are using some of those apps. They won’t even scroll that much!

Also as Orkut is very famous in India so they have launched some of the applications targeting the Indian customer base only.

India Dekha has been developed by Zoomtra.com in an effort to connect Indian Travel enthusiasts with one another. How much of India Have you traveled or plan to travel to in the future? Make your India Dekha! Map and share it with your friends.

Teen Patti – Indian version of 3 card poker; also known as flash. A multi-player game that you won’t be able to stop playing – once you start. A must play before and on Diwali for most Indian families, even losing in this game is supposed to bring you good luck. Get together with friends and have fun!

I am an Indian and I won’t be impressed until these apps show up at a more visible space than the usual which they have chosen.

Let us hope that these apps give Orkut some extra hype but as far as I am concerned it has failed to do so.

© CompuWorld - because The Genius Inside You Is Still Sleeping.

After Bill Gates showed interest in buying Yahoo the Sunnyvale, California-based company has been trying its best to retain hold of the reader base which it has earned in years. Looks like they are not ready to give up their business and Yahoo Shine is another attempt to cash on the 40 million females visitors which yahoo has in its bag.

Basically shine is a blog with a magazine style theme which focuses very well on the various categories like parenting, sex and love, healthy living, food, career and money, entertainment, fashion, beauty, home life, and astrology.

The homepage also give you the option to create your own blog (once you are logged in) and you can even leave comments for various posts. This commenting feature will attract many bloggers like me so that they can publicize their tiny blogs.

I am sure this project will add some bucks to the bid which Microsoft will offer for Yahoo!

© CompuWorld - because The Genius Inside You Is Still Sleeping.