Backing Down In The Face of Twitter

The end of 2011 saw big reversals by major corporations in the face of public outcry. First was GoDaddy, who came out in favor of SOPA and was quickly persuaded by online outrage into switching positions. The second was an even faster about-face by Verizon Wireless. Verizon thought they’d quietly slip-in a $2 bill payment fee, only to find the public reaction so seething that they cancelled that bright idea before potential shaming by the FCC. Two up. Two down. Is there something to be learned here?

It might be possible to dismiss either or both of these incidents as the obvious corporate toe stubbing that occurs from time to time. But when you add them to a stack of other news stories this past year that fall into the same category, there’s a pretty obvious pattern that emerges.

What other stories? How about the “Arab Spring” demonstrations that swept many countries in the Middle East and prompted regime changes in Tunisia, Egypt & Libya and ongoing protests in Syria, Bahrain, Yemen and Jordan? How about the “Occupy” movements that have been dubbed an “American Autumn” by some? How about 100,000 demonstrators in Madison, Wisconsin that included tractor parades and farmers dressed as cows circling the Capitol last February? By this summer, it may culminate in recall of the state’s Governor.

How does all this disparate activity tie together? The common thread is the Internet. We are living in a new age of the empowered individual that is different from anything we’ve seen before in one important aspect. Thanks to technology, that empowerment is nearly instantaneous.

Time was, if you didn’t like something you always had the option to write your Congressman or the editor of your local paper. You could call or write a company to voice your disapproval. If the results weren’t satisfactory, you always could discuss matters with your friends, even escalating your group efforts into a demonstration or protest march. The civil rights movement and student protests of the 1960’s can certainly be said to have changed the course of American society over a period of turbulent years.

For those of us old enough to remember 1968, there is a certain resemblance to Zucotti Park and UC Davis. One difference is the way we hear about these things and see the images. In the 60’s, you tuned in Walter Cronkite from 5:30 to 6 PM or you went without video. There were always AP wirephotos in the Sunday newspaper or color pictures in next week’s Time magazine.

Compare that with watching the live feed from Tim Pool's cell phone as he walked through the crowd in New York City, interviewing people involved in the Occupy Wall Street protests as he went. What’s it take to be such a citizen journalist with your own audio and video remote broadcast facility? In this case, a Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone and an unlimited 4G broadband account from Sprint feeding into a Ustream account called “The Other 99.” Would you like to broadcast live video to a dozen friends or tens of thousands of interested onlookers worldwide? The Ustream.tv channels are free. You can feed them from your desktop, laptop or smartphone with wired or wireless broadband connection.

Social media is said to be a major theme for business in 2012. The social media revolution has already become mainstream activity for individuals everywhere. In WWII, desperate messages came out of countries under siege via Morse Code sent from hidden short wave transmitters. In 2012, that’s text messages and tweets from some of the billions of cell phones in service worldwide. Think this can be stopped? Just who is going to round up all those billions of phones or cut off the Internet or texting for very long? There are so many interconnections that if you need to send a message anywhere on Earth, you can probably find a path in short order.

It’s more than the power of motivated individuals. Social media and the readily available tools that feed it allow those motivated individuals to quickly, almost instantly, join forces with others of the same mind. In hours, minutes, perhaps seconds, group efforts can be mounted to address nearly any issue. This is what doomed the ill-fated initiatives from GoDaddy and Verizon before they ever got solidified. One disgruntled customer on the toll-free service line can be placated or ignored. Ten thousand or a hundred thousand in concert bashing your business on Facebook, Twitter, text messages, YouTube, blogs and email are a force to be reckoned with. Once they get the attention of the mainstream media who monitor those social channels looking for newsworthy material, the game is over ... even if it only started a few hours or days ago.

Why Use Social Networking Sites? To Stay in Touch and to Connect

Why Americans Use Social Media. (Pew Research, 11/15/2011)

Job Posting Tool Offers Free Trial

It’s time to think about hiring again. Perhaps you are already in need of qualified candidates, but are none too anxious to wade into the snowstorm of resumes and phone messages that result when you run a job ad. Then there’s the cost of advertising and the dedication of staff time to screen applicants. The improving economy can seem like a mixed blessing unless you have a way to make the hiring process more efficient and less painful. Here’s one you should consider.


ZipRecruiter is in the business of improving the job posting and candidate review process. They have created an online-based system that takes a lot of the burden off you and your staff. If you like it enough to give it a test drive, you can try the system free for four days. Keep all the candidates you acquire during that trial period. If you want to continue with the product, pricing is very attractive.

What does ZipRecruiter do that’s easier than doing it all yourself? The leverage the power of automation to improve productivity. Sure, you can post to all the job boards online, one by one. ZipRecruiter will do that posting for you to the most highly trafficked free job boards on the internet. We’re talking a collection of resources that draws tens of millions of job seekers every month. You click once. your job gets posted to multiple boards.

Now brace yourself for the response. With the job market just recovering, there is a lot of excellent talent out there. There are also a lot of desperate, but unsuitable, candidates to vie for your attention. Don’t let the perfect matches get lost in the shuffle. One way to reduce resume spam is to ask your candidates real-world questions about your business. ZipRecruiter lets you set up an optional online interview so you can review candidate response along with the resumes they submit.

You’ll probably want collaboration with your colleagues before you commit to the time and expense involved with bringing someone in for a face to face interview. With the ZipRecruiter tool you can rate the candidates and share notes all in one place. There’s a tab to view the resume and another to quickly view the candidate's answers to your interview questions.

You know that social media is the way to connect these days. This tool has social networking capability built-in. It takes just a couple of clicks to spread the word about your job openings on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google Buzz.

This is a customizable job posting tool with a hosted company job page that promotes all of your job openings in one place. You can simply link to this page from your company website instead of having to build and maintain a completely separate job listing resource.

Want to manage your candidate data offline as well as online? No problem. ZipRecruiter makes it easy to export your candidate to an Excel spreadsheet.

Does this sound a lot easier than doing it all manually or coming up with your own proprietary tools? You bet it is. But why not decide for yourself by getting a free trial of ZipRecruiter right now? See how fast and easy it works for you. You probably won’t go back to the “old” way of posting jobs and evaluating candidates.