Social Networking 2.0 website, rsitez.com, is experiencing an unprecedented growth – 155% increase in 2009 sales, as compared to 2008 figures – during this economic downturn.

Rsitez integrated online social networking technology offers users the opportunity to create their own social networking sites with the largest, most comprehensive set of features. They will have the ability to customize all details in their websites, and the company presents a myriad of ways for businesses to make money.

According to Nielsen Ratings, social networks grew twice as fast as email and Search in 2008. Furthermore, time spent on Social Networks and blogs grew over 3 times the rate of overall internet growth. So what distinguishes rsitez.com from competitors?… Read more

Google Inc. famously flubbed its early social-networking efforts, allowing upstarts like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to dominate the platforms that are redefining the way consumers use the Web.
But the Mountain View search giant has been diligently working on the “social problem” in its own way: integrating it as a component of the total Web experience, rather than an isolated service or destination.
To date, its efforts haven’t generated much buzz, but some analysts believe the company’s much-anticipated Google Wave may represent its first real victory in the social space. Read more

How well do you know Facebook? Do you know it well enough to regard it as a learning and productivity tool? I remember writing an article on Facebook being able to improve productivity sometime back when most employers where scared of the income that might be lost if employees kept up with the Facebook trend. Here’s a list of 100 outstanding Facebook applications. Thanks to my friends at Select Courses who took time to put this list together. Not just bluffing; see a preview of some apps.

Social Connections

Make connections with others who can help you through thes apps.

1. FriendFeed: Use FriendFeed as a convenient and time saving way to keep up with all of your friends’ online activities.
2. Professional Profile: Use Professional Profile for business networking on Facebook.
3. SocialCalendar: Get your social life together and share it with your friends using this calendar.
4. CampusBuddy Courses: With CampusBuddy, you can connect with other students on your campus.

Documents & Sharing

Use Facebook for documents, and even share them with the help of these apps. 

5. Zoho: Use Zoho in your Facebook profile, and you can use it to create and edit documents, spreadsheets, and more.
6. SplashCast: Share multimedia on Facebook through the Splashcast app.
7. Books iRead: With this app, you’ll be able to share the books you read and find out what others are reading as well.
8. Divshare: Divshare makes it easy to send and share files on Facebook.
9. Files: Use your Box.net account on Facebook with Files.
10. Last.fm: Use the Last.fm app to share your Last.fm stations with friends on Facebook.
11. Ma.gnolia: Ma.gnolia will allow you to save and share links to websites on Facebook.
12. Scrapblog: Using Scrapblog, you’ll be able to create multimedia slideshows from your Facebook photos and post them to your profile.
13. Notecentric: Take notes and share them with your classmates using Notecentric.
14. Webinaria Screencast Recorder: You’ll be able to record and share video using this app.
15. Documents: You can share, create, and collaboratively edit documents using the Documents app.
16. Visual Bookshelf: Visual Bookshelf will allow you to catalog your books on Facebook.
17. Mathematical Formulas: You can find and share mathematical formulas and solutions with this application.
18. Netflix: Stay on top of your Netflix queue and view others’ lists with this app for Facebook.
19. SlideShare: SlideShare offers an easy way to create and share presentations on Facebook.

Photos

Make working on and sharing your photos a snap with these Facebook apps.

20. Picnik: This application will let you edit photos within Facebook.
21. Picasa: Picasa makes it easy to upload, resize, and share images on Facebook.

Ratings & School Information

Use these apps to research your schools, professors, and more.

22. College Planner: Research colleges on Facebook with this app from Embark.
23. SkoolPool: SkoolPool highlights the best schools on Facebook.
24. Courses: Courses will help you organize your courses, find reviews, classmates, and more.
25. Pick-A-Prof: Pick-A-Prof makes it easy to get professor reviews, grade histories, and more.
26. Gradzilla: Find rankings, information, and more from US News and World Report on Gradzilla.
27. Course Profiles: Course Profiles will help you learn about courses available through The Open University.
28. Rate My Professors: Rate My Professors offers a great way to share your opinion of your educators, and learn about professors before you enroll in a class.

See all 100 Facebook Apps here….

Back in November, people-search sites Reunion.com and Wink announced that they would be merging, and now it’s happened: the sites have rebranded as MyLife, which can search over 60 social-networking sites (over 750 million profiles, the company says) and other information resources on the Web.

Among those social networks it can search are MySpace, Facebook (well, the public profile listings thereof), LinkedIn, Friendster, AOL’s Bebo, Microsoft’s Windows Live Spaces, Yahoo, and Twitter…Read more

Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) this week launched an enhanced version of its Mail service. The service is set to filter messages according to relationships, manage friends and family connections and activities. Yahoo has also opened the service to third party developers to come up with new social engaging applications and hopes to integrate with social sites like Facebook and MySpace in future. The changes to Yahoo Mail offer users a “smarter in-box” experience that the company said it will roll out gradually to its users during the coming months.

As the change expands across all regions, Yahoo Mail users will find a new “Welcome Page” that will include messages, information and activity updates from people users have identified as important as well as an updated in-box and folder view that filters messages from personal connections…Read more

Sony has launched its long-awaited virtual world – Playstation Home. Gamers can create their own ‘avatar’ – a virtual representation of themselves – and interact with other players in 3D.

Critics have slammed the service as outdated but Sony has hit back, saying Playstation Home intended to improve gaming for existing PS3 owners, rather than rival other virtual worlds. Players download Home software and connect their PS3 to broadband before creating their online selves…Read more

Peoplemovers.com launch to build local communities

We’ve witnessed the explosive growth of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. Why? So people can connect for social engagement and entertainment. The next evolution of this phenomenon is social networking with a purpose: Peoplemovers.com.

Peoplemovers.com is an online community that helps neighbors, businesses and charitable organizations connect to each other to build better communities offline and to give help and to get help, which is especially vital during these uncertain economic times.

Using Peoplemovers.com, businesses and organizations of all kinds, from schools to places of worship can easily mobilize their members to positively engage in their local communities… Read more

A good number of employers are concerned about the time spent during work hours by employees on sites like Facebook. According to employment law firm Peninsula, 233 million hours are lost every month as a result of employees “wasting time” on social networking. A study revealed that workers who spend time on such sites as Facebook coulld be costing firms over £130m a day. Many employers have considered or even implemented a ban on the use of social networks during work hours. But how effective is this move?

Facebook and a few others are already on mobile phones. Recently launched by Hutchison Whampoa was INQ the ”Facebook phone” to provide improved accessibilty to social networks while on the move. Let’s take our minds some years back to when email services such as Yahoo, Hotmail and Excite rocked the web space. Most employers  were furious about the lost time spent using personal email service during working hours. Most implemented a time restriction or a ban of the use of these services. Even at that, some employees tried hard to get privilege rights to use these same services while at work.

The most effective step employers followed was the introduction of an enterprise email service that allowed their employees send official emails. Although being official these emails where also used sparingly to send personal mails. It was easy for employees to adjust to the use of in-house email service since they were already familiar with its use outside office business.  Employees were accustomed to the “habit” of checking their mail boxes so employing that custom into their daily routine in the office was the key to keeping employees on check.

A Similar Approach

Can a similar step work today for business when it comes to social networking? Yes, it can. Granted we are in the craze of social networking and its use at work cannot be completely eliminated. Employers should leverage on the best way to adopt this “time wasting service” into productivity by introducing a similar service into the enterprise. Companies that have implemented an enterprise social network have found its use to be very effective. Reports show that social networking in business not only improves collaboration among employees but it also led to an increase in overall productivity and efficiency.

What Benefits Result from Enterprise Social Networks?

SAP and and Universal McCann are just a few examples of companies benefiting from deploying an enterprise-wide social network. Its use has provided employees a platform to engage more in team activities within communities resulting in  useful contributions to discussions that involved business matters. Employees have been seen spending loose and planned time updating company community blogs or forum discussions and threads. Content from this tool can become knowledge assets; content can be harvested and transfer into the company knowledge repository. It becomes even valuable to younger employees when knowledge is tapped from retiring employees who are also members of the company social network. Work is enjoyable when it is made more relaxing.

Employee adoption of social networking as a business tool will bring a better ground to interact with colleagues across the enterprise. Associate more with colleagues who share similar interest and share expert knowledge among teams. Some companies have also found the use of their enterprise social network to improve customer relationship, customer acquisition, marketing and support. Employers will reap business rewards if only they start looking into the positive use of social networks and how employee productivity can be affected by its proper use.

Congratulation! The bullish companies are taking the the lead. We are proud to see two new clients launch on Beezbox enterprise 2.0 platform.

Mnemos www.mnemos.com is a social network operated by Balthazar a Management Consulting firm. The service is geared towards executives and managers seeking to develop expertise in Management. Balthazar will be using this tool to retain professionals who have been trained in its training methodology (MNEMOS) to develop and purchase additional seminar cycles. Secondly, Mnemos social network will be offering its very large corporate customers( SNCF, EADS, FNAC, SIEMENS, AIR FRANCE,…) a new line of service: a community strategized for employees with online coaching. “What a revenue generator?” you would say. Félicitation Mnemos!
 

Footemotion www.footemotion.com is a multimedia journal (same concept as “La Rue 89″) dedicated to football for children between the 6 to 15 years. Footemotion targets all amateur clubs that commune in France. Assuming that there is a club of 20 kids in common, you imagine the potential of members (players and their parents )…. This is sure a very innovative business model!

Interesting 2.0 enterprise mentors. If you are a CEO, CIO, decision maker, or you think your project team will find an internal social network a handle enterprise-wide business tool, you are not far from making the best business decision. You are just close to giving your organization “Corporate Facebook”. Feel free to drop me a line.

-Paulette.