12 Fast-Growing, High-Paying Jobs In 2014

What are the hottest jobs of 2014?

CareerBuilder teamed up with Economic Modeling Specialists Intl. (EMSI) to identify the occupations that grew by at least 7% from 2010 to 2013, are projected to grow in 2014, and pay at least $22 per hour.
"In addition to higher pay levels and solid growth rates, what many of these jobs have in common is a talent shortage," Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder and co-author of the book "The Talent Equation," tells Business Insider. "Recruitment of skilled labor in specialized areas like information technology and health care has become highly competitive."
The list below, released on Thursday, reveals the jobs that are the fastest-growing, highest-paying for 2014:

1. Software Developers, Applications and Systems Software

What they do: Design computer programs
Total employment in 2013: 1,042,402
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 11%
Median hourly earnings: $45.06

2. Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists

What they do: Study market conditions in local, regional, or national areas
Total employment in 2013: 438,095
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 14%
Median hourly earnings: $29.10

3. Training and Development Specialists

What they do: Design and conduct training and development programs
Total employment in 2013: 231,898
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 8%
Median hourly earnings: $27.14

4. Financial Analysts

What they do: Assess the performance of stocks, bonds, and other types of investments
Total employment in 2013: 247,159
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 7%
Median hourly earnings: $37.34

5. Physical Therapists

What they do: Help patients who have injuries or illnesses manage their pain
Total employment in 2013: 207,132
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 7%
Median hourly earnings: $37.93

6. Web Developers

What they do: Create websites and help companies build a brand
Total employment in 2013: 136,921
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 11%
Median hourly earnings: $27.84

7. Logisticians

What they do: Analyze and coordinate the supply chain organization
Total employment in 2013: 127,892
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 10%
Median hourly earnings: $35.08

8. Database Administrators

What they do: Use software to store and organize data, such as financial information and customer shipping records
Total employment in 2013: 119,676
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 10%
Median hourly earnings: $37.39

9. Meeting, Convention and Event Planners

What they do: Coordinate meetings and events
Total employment in 2013: 87,082
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 14%
Median hourly earnings: $22.56

10. Interpreters and Translators

What they do: Convert information from one language to another
Total employment in 2013: 69,887
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 14%
Median hourly earnings: $22.39

11. Petroleum Engineers

What they do: Design and develop methods for extracting oil and gas from deposits below the earth's surface
Total employment in 2013: 40,733
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 21%
Median hourly earnings: $63.67

12. Information Security Analysts What they do: Plan, implement, upgrade, or monitor security measures for the protection of computer networks and information
Total employment in 2013: 75,995
Job growth from 2010 to 2013: 8%
Median hourly earnings: $41.62
EMSI data is collected from more than 90 federal and state sources, such as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau, and state labor departments.

Article Source : http://www.businessinsider.in/12-Fast-Growing-High-Paying-Jobs-In-2014/articleshow/27252175.cms

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Facebook and MicroStrategy Partner for New Big Data Analytics

During MicroStrategy's annual European user conference in Barcelona, Guy Bayes, head of Enterprise BI at Facebook, spoke on the topic of Big Data at Facebook. He discussed the technical challenge caused by the massive scale of the data generated by its 1.1+ billion members. To interactively analyze this data from any dimension, Facebook engaged MicroStrategy to create and test a new massively-parallel in-memory analytic technology which MicroStrategy calls "EMMA" (for Extended MPP Memory Architecture). The project has been underway for one year and the current prototype configuration is successfully analyzing just over half of the Facebook dataset and is achieving an average response time of under 5 seconds. At full configuration, the system will run in a cluster of hundreds of commodity servers containing over 10TB of data in memory. Mr. Bayes suggests that, once this massive interactive analytic technology is commercialized by MicroStrategy for general availability by other companies, it will have been thoroughly and strenuously tested against the largest datasets anywhere, and should enter the market as a very mature and high performance technology.

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This Company Will Only Accept 'Twitter Resumes' For A Six-Figure

By now, many employers think that who you are online is more revealing of your character than a résumé.
Some companies have decided to stop accepting paper résumés altogether.
"The paper résumé is dead," Vala Afshar, chief marketing officer at Enterasys," told Bruce Horovitz at USA Today. "The Web is your résumé. Social networks are your mass references."
For the next month, Enterasys — a wireless network provider — will be considering applicants for a six-figure senior social media position, but no paper résumés will be accepted. Instead, the company has decided to recruit solely via Twitter.
Jennifer Grabowski, a spokesperson for the company, tells us that candidates need to have a minimum Klout score above 60, a minimum Kred influence score of 725, a Kred outreach of at least eight, and more than 1,000 active Twitter followers in order to be considered. Enterasys is hoping to fill the position by April.
Although solely focusing on a candidate's tweets is still an uncommon recruiting tactic, more are heading that direction. Rachel Emma Silverman at The Wall Street Journal reported that when Union Square Ventures needed an investment analyst last year, the VC firm asked applicants to send in links that represented their "web presence," such as social media or blog accounts. 
It's true that Union Square Ventures invests heavily in Internet companies, but everyone should be paying close attention to their online presence. That means keeping your LinkedIn profile updated, setting up a Google alert for your name, and using Twitter strategically.
Rosa E. Vargas at Careerealism wrote that on Twitter it's important to use "jargon / keywords specific to your target industry" for a competitive edge, and include hashtags with keywords in your tweets so that you're more likely to pop up in searches.

Original Article : http://www.businessinsider.com/your-tweets-are-more-important-than-your-rsum-2013-2#ixzz2LYJRyyho

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Yahoo goes social, teams with Facebook for site revamp

* Mayer's biggest overhaul to Yahoo's Internet shop window
* Will import data on Facebook users, such as shared content
* Changes to be rolled out over coming days
* Can this makeover can win back Web audience?
By Nicola Leske
Feb 20 (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc is overhauling its website to incorporate features familiar to Facebook users such as a newsfeed and people's "likes," in CEO Marissa Mayer's biggest product revamp since taking the helm of the ailing company last year.
Mayer, who took over in July after a procession of CEOs was shown the door, said in a blog post on Wednesday that Yahoo's redesigned website will let users log in with their Facebook IDs to gain access to content and information shared by friends - from articles and videos to birthdays.
Yahoo is one of the world's most-visited online properties, but revenue has declined in recent years amid competition from Google Inc and Facebook Inc.
The changes to Yahoo's Internet shop window, which include a more streamlined mobile application for smartphones and tablets, will be rolled out over coming days. The makeover follows a new version of Yahoo mail, one of its most popular applications, introduced in December.
Analysts say the move marks a strengthening of Yahoo's ties with Facebook, employing some of the social network's growing data on its billion-plus users to battle Google for Web users' attention. It remains to be seen whether the initial makeover and tweaks expected over time will win back its Internet audience.
"This is definitely an important step. The Yahoo home page is one of the most important things because it is the first interface," said B. Riley Caris analyst Sameet Sinha. "It's familiar in terms of layout, the newsfeed is interesting, and it will be interesting to see how it develops over time.
"The key will be how data is aggregated within Yahoo and Facebook."
TUMULT, TRANSITION
Seven months into her tenure, former Google executive Mayer has arrested the decline of the Internet portal and won favor on Wall Street with stock buybacks among other things. But Yahoo's forecast of a modest revenue uptick this year still pales in comparison with the growth of rivals like Google and Facebook, which are eating into its advertising market share.
"We wanted it to be familiar but also wanted it to embrace some of the modern paradigms of the Web," Mayer said of the product revamp on NBC's "Today" show on Wednesday.
"One thing that I really like is this very personalized newsfeed; it's infinite and you can go on scrolling forever," she said.
Among other problems, Yahoo has been plagued by internal turmoil that has resulted in a revolving door of CEOs. Mayer, 37, took over after a tumultuous period during which former CEO Scott Thompson resigned after less than six months on the job over a controversy about his academic credentials. Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang then resigned from the board and cut ties with the company.
Thompson's predecessor, the controversial and outspoken Carol Bartz, was fired over the phone for failing to deliver on growth. Yahoo's 2012 revenue was $5 billion. It has been flat year over year, off from some $6.3 billion in 2010.
Yahoo shares were down 0.3 percent at $21.22 at midday on Wednesday on the Nasdaq.

Original Article : http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/20/yahoo-website-idUSL1N0BK4UL20130220

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How to Create a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media marketing is helping a lot of businesses both small and large firms who wants to establish online presence. This is the best marketing option for small businesses that do not have enough capital for expensive marketing plan. The World Wide Web is free for all and anyone can become viral nowadays with the help of right social media marketing strategy.

• What you need to do is to create several accounts in different social networking websites like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Tumblr. People from different parts of the world are using one or more of these networks, so you should not limit yourself to only one. Join any website that you think most of your target market use.
• You need a fan page on Facebook or list your business to different search websites like Foursquare. As much as possible you need to create interesting profile with photos of your featured products and services. Aside from pictures, you also need to include information about special offers as well as discounts. Customers nowadays are looking for discounts, because most of them want to save money. With the help of social networks, people can easily share information about your business.
• You need to help your business by sharing and advertising your fan page and website. You should not sit down and wait for your target market to find out about your business, products or services. You need to spend time and effort just like you do for ordinary marketing strategy. By giving incentives, your customers will be glad and excited to subscribe with your updates.

Social media marketing strategy is your key to establish successful business with continuous flow of income every month. You need set attainable goals right before you start your social media marketing plan, because this will lead you to the right path.

Original Source : http://www.chennaisocialmedia.com/how-to-create-a-winning-social-media-marketing-strategy/

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Job-seekers: The Power of Networking

Unless you’re a perfect match for an open job that needs to be filled immediately, applying directly is the least effective way to get a call from a recruiter. I’ve written a number of posts in this LinkedIn series and a complete book on what to do once you get the interview, so let me use this article to help job-seekers improve their odds of getting the all-important first call.
A short story will help set the stage. I just received an email from an old acquaintance, a marketing professor at a major university in southern California. I haven’t seen him for at least 10 years, so I was surprised to get the email. He attached a resume of one of his students saying “he’s my best marketing student this year, and if you’re looking for an intern, pick this guy up right away.” The resume itself was underwhelming. The skill set was average, the format was bland, and the writing was mediocre. But the endorsement was first class. I’m now in contact with the student, even though I don’t need another marketing intern, but you never know what can happen.
Endorsements matter. Strong endorsements from influential people matter more. In priority order from best to least best, here’s my I advice for job-seekers on how to get noticed by recruiters if your skills and experience are not a perfect match for the requirements stated in the open job description. I’ve assigned a rough value score from 1-100 for each technique in comparison to applying directly to a job posting.
1. Get referred by an influential person who can vouch for your performance (100X). This is gold in the hands of a recruiter, particularly if the recruiter knows the person. This is the best way for a strong candidate without the prerequisites to obtain an instant interview. It's almost as effective as being promoted internally.
2. Get referred by a less trusted source who can vouch for your performance (50X). This is comparable to the email story above. I don’t really know the referrer well, but his position and the wording of the email was enough for me to review the resume. It’s hard to resist someone going out of his or her way to vouch for another person.
3. Get recommended by an influential person even if they can’t vouch for your performance (20X). I get these all of the time, but if the person I know is just passing the resume forward, I don’t give it much credence. If I had an open spot though, I’d definitely review the resume as a courtesy to the referrer, and if it the candidate had a strong resume, I’d make contact.
4. Get recommended by anyone within the company even if they don’t know you too well (10X). In this case the quality of the referrer becomes the differentiator and the less credible, the less the referral is worth. Regardless, if the recruiter has a need to fill the position, the person’s resume would at least get to the top of the stack and be personally reviewed.
5. Bypass the gatekeepers (10X). Unless your skill and experience set is a perfect match to what’s required, your resume will not be reviewed by a live person. To get around this you’ll need to go on LinkedIn and find the head of the department for the job or the hiring manager and be bold, different and creative. For example if the company is looking for a marketing analyst send a cool Prezi competitive analysis presentation to the hiring manager, or the white paper you presented as part of your KickStart project. (Note: these are just ideas. The key is to be different in how you present yourself. Key: think beyond the resume.)
6. By found more easily by reverse engineering your LinkedIn Profile and online resume (10X). Recruiters are constantly searching their resume databases using the skill terms listed on the job descriptions. So if you want to be found make sure you include these same terms on your resume, then go to Google, LinkedIn or Indeed.com and search for people with these terms. If your resume or profile is not on the first page, look at those that are listed, and do what they did to get there.
7. Perfect match on skills and apply (10X). As long as the job is still open and a high-priority for the recruiter, you’ll be contacted directly.
8. Not perfect match on skills and apply (1X). Good luck.
Getting referred by an influential person is the ideal way to get a call from a recruiter. Pushing the "Apply Now" button and filling in the application and associated questionnaire is the least effective and most frustrating way. Sending your resume directly to a recruiter isn’t even on the list. But getting noticed is only the first of many steps in getting the job you deserve. At this next stage presentation matters, but performance matters more.

Original Article : http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130217213656-15454-job-seekers-the-power-of-networking?trk=mp-details-rr-rmpost

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Fresh Stats On Social Networks: Pinterest Catches Up With Twitter, Digital Divide Shrinks

I find statistics absolutely delicious. Pew research released fresh stats on what slice of Americans are addicted to all of the various social networks as of December 2012. There are a few big business and cultural implications.
Pinterest has practically caught up with Twitter, with 15 percent and 16 percent of adult U.S. Internet users on each network, respectively. Pinterest, which launched in 2009, has experienced explosive growth, especially with a white, female and affluent user base. Women are five times more likely to use Pinterest (5 percent vs. 25 percent) and almost twice as likely to be white and college-educated. It’s become a magnet for hip urbanites searching for the hottest wedding gowns and apartment decor. Twitter, however, gets a lot more attention, since neither presidential campaigns nor Middle Eastern activists are leveraging style catalogs to rearrange their countries’ political leadership.
There is no longer a minority gap in social media use. The surveyed groups (whites, Hispanics, and African-Americans) hover around 68 percent of total adults. Almost twice as many African-Americans (26 percent) use Twitter as whites (14 percent). The disproportionate African-American use of Twitter has fascinated culture commentators and scholars. One study found that African-Americans in celebrity news strongly predicted their Twitter use. Former web editor of the The Onion, Baratunde Thurston, hypothesized that “there’s a long oral dissing tradition in black communities,” explaining, “Twitter works very naturally with that call-and-response tradition — it’s so short, so economical, and you get an instant signal validating the quality of your contribution.”
Ironically, not using social media may be an elite thing. Those with a college degree are slightly less likely than those with some college to use social networks (69 percent vs. 65 percent). While the difference isn’t statistically significant, at least one study verified the trend among educated users to ditch Facebook for moral, political or cultural reasons. “Many Facebook refusers actually revel in their difference from the mainstream, seeing it as a mark of distinction, superior taste, and identification with an elite social stratum,” said New York University Professor Laura Portwood-Stacer.
Hipsters find it too mainstream and others find their privacy policies troublesome. In other words, not using social media is likely a product of more education, not a lack of access.
The full totals for each social network. Sixty-seven percent of online adults say they use Facebook, 15 percent of online adults say they use Pinterest, 13 percent of online adults say they use Instagram, 6 percent of online adults say they use Tumblr, 16 percent of online adults say they use Twitter (and 20 percent of online adults say they use LinkedIn as of August 2012). Below is a full table summarizing the results of the survey:


Original Source :http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/17/social-media-statistics-2012/

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Zero Day Java Vulnerability Compromises Computers of Facebook Employees

Last month, a number of major companies such as the New York Times, Washington Post and most recently, Twitter had revealed that they were targeted by hackers leading to some form of data breach.
In a recent development, Facebook has also now revealed that some of the computers of its employees were hacked by using a Java exploit. In a blog post penned yesterday, Facebook security team says,

[…] In this particular instance, we flagged a suspicious domain in our corporate DNS logs and tracked it back to an employee laptop. Upon conducting a forensic examination of that laptop, we identified a malicious file, and then searched company-wide and flagged several other compromised employee laptops.
After analyzing the compromised website where the attack originated, we found it was using a “zero-day” (previously unseen) exploit to bypass the Java sandbox (built-in protections) to install the malware.

The computers were compromised when the victims visited a mobile developer website that was compromised to host a zero day exploit, which installed malware on the victim’s PCs. Facebook contacted Oracle regarding the exploit and they released a patch for the same on February 1^st.
Facebook says that other companies were targeted in a similar manner and they are working with the affected companies and law enforcement officials to track the source of the attack.
And most importantly for us, there is no evidence that any kind of user data was exposed. Well, that’s a relief!
Original Source: Facebook

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Facebook's Biggest Problem With Brands Right Now: 'Illegal' Competitions

When Facebook revealed Graph Search to the world last month, a lot of people were excited by the potential it had.
While some had concerns about privacy, the general consensus was that the service would be immensely useful as it would finally graph the entirety of Facebook and make the vast quantities of information out there accessible.
While resorting to a keyword search would have been the wrong option for Facebook to take – its partnership with Bing pretty much takes care of that part – there is a problem that the site still has to address, one that has been happening since last year and is basically gaming the Edgerank system.
The Fight For Likes
If you have a look at your newsfeed right now, chances are a large number of you will see some kind of competition being run by a page. Some of them will be apps, others will be competitions being run on a site, but more often than not, you’ll come across the ‘illegal’ competitions. That is, those competitions which require you to like and share a status update to be in with a chance to win. While all competitions require you to like a page first before you enter, that’s done under the pretext of accessing an app where the competition is taking place.
There are numerous examples of this happening across the board, but it gets worse when you come across pages like this. This one is from a page called GadgetsGiveaway, which was only recently taken down.

With 22,000 likes and 9,000 people talking about it, it must have some pretty engaging content combined with paid promotion, but if you haven’t guessed by the title, the increased interaction was coming from status updates like this.

Those familiar with the rules surrounding Facebook promotions will know all too well the frustration experienced when they see statuses and pages like this. For those who aren’t aware of the rules, Facebook’s page guidelines are pretty direct about what you can and can’t do. To save people reading, here are the points of interest regarding competitions (emphasis our own).

i.    Promotions on Facebook must be administered within Apps on Facebook.com, either on a Canvas Page or a Page App.
ii.    Promotions on Facebook must include the following:
a.    A complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant.
b.    Acknowledgment that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.
c.    Disclosure that the participant is providing information to [disclose recipient(s) of information] and not to Facebook.
iii.    You must not condition registration or entry upon the user taking any action using any Facebook features or functionality other than liking a Page, checking in to a Place, or connecting to your app. For example, you must not condition registration or entry upon the user liking a Wall post, or commenting or uploading a photo on a Wall.
iv.    You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or entry mechanism. For example, the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant.
v.    You must not use Facebook features or functionality, such as the Like button, as a voting mechanism for a promotion.

The big problem is that while the majority reading this already know the rules, a large number of page owners don’t and are still functioning with the old rules in mind. Even if they don’t understand the purpose of Edgerank, they see other pages running ‘like and share’ competitions and decide to do the same since it gets people involved. It’s the social media equivalent of those competitions which ask you “Where is London?” and provides the answers “(a) Italy, (b) England, or (c) Japan.”
When it’s a major brand engaging in this practice, it gets noticed pretty quickly. However, the perpetrators in this case are the smaller pages – mostly small to medium size enterprises – that will barely register on Facebook’s radar. And since pages can get away with it, that’s what they will continue to do.
Emerging Problems


This becomes an issue when you realize that Facebook’s Edgerank decides how relevant your posts are by how much interaction they get. Since the newsfeed only shows content from people & pages you interact with, a ‘like and share’ competition alone would drive this ranking up for a page. This boost wouldn’t be massive by any means – unless it ran these competitions continuously – but enough for the next status update to be given a more prominent position the next time you check your news feed.
With more pages fighting to get noticed and get more likes so that more people see their content, it can be frustrating to see a page not following the rules, especially when you put the work into building a specialized app and pumping money into sponsored stories and ads. Seeing a page run such a competition makes a mockery of Facebook telling us that ads are the only way to get our content out there.
There are two major problems behind this. The first is the lack of education about the rules surrounding competitions on Facebook. While Facebook is usually showing businesses how it can improve engagement and reach out to its customers more, it’s neglecting the fact that the people they’re appealing to (a) are already clued up about marketing on Facebook and (b) have the funds necessary to buy ads and run these competitions.
It’s the latter part that leads to the second problem. Since its marketing conference back in February 2012, Facebook changed the rules so that brands would have to cough up money if they wanted to run competitions or get noticed. What it has done instead is create a massive divide between the bigger brand and those smaller businesses trying to get noticed.
Pages Vs Edgerank
Building up your likes when you’re a small page starting out isn’t the easiest by any means, while larger pages have to cope with a reduced percentage of users viewing their page the bigger it gets, another problem in itself that’s highlighted by Socialbaker’s graph from a few months ago.  The greater the number of fans on your page, the less chance there is of your posts appearing organically; but even with the added advantage of smaller pages appearing, they’re still going to be fighting for attention among each other and with limited space (especially on mobile), so a number of pages are going to lose out.

Most businesses don’t have funds to spare towards regular advertising and by extension, creating an app that will bring more people to visit your page. Since setting up on Facebook has been free, and since there are examples of many other pages running similar competitions, why wouldn’t they? Offer a half-decent prize, ensure that some people will share it and sit back as people start liking and sharing in their droves, Facebook already has so many pages and people to monitor, it’s not going to notice a page with 5,000 likes running such competitions.
No Middle Ground
So what are we left with? Small businesses don’t have the finances to build up their audience and so have to resort to other measures to build it up, while larger businesses who have been playing by the rules are left frustrated that their posts are being limited.
There is an argument that showing everything on your newsfeed would only be a recipe for disaster as there are so many posts fighting for your attention. In a sense, Edgerank is a necessary evil since there’s no way any of us would be able to properly digest an unfiltered newsfeed. Try making your way through content marked as ‘most recent’ and you’ll have to filter through a lot of content to see the posts you actually want to interact with.
However, there doesn’t seem to be a proper middle ground for either side, instead, the divide between small and large businesses only grows to the point where growth is only done either by having a significant marketing budget to work with, or by playing dirty. Even the former doesn’t guarantee that you will get the kind of audience you’re looking for, making you question the wisdom.
For now, the only one winning is Facebook itself, and as Graph Search improves, perhaps Facebook will be able to identify these posts since it will be graphing likes. Yes, it is a business and Facebook doesn’t really owe brand pages anything, but it’s does owe businesses to stamp down on these type of posts since it’s encouraging them to pay to reach larger audiences, otherwise what’s the point playing by its rules?

Original Article : http://www.simplyzesty.com/facebook/the-major-problem-facebook-needs-to-address-for-brands-right-now/#ixzz2L5SM0OHh

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Now You Can Pay To Promote Your Friends’ Facebook Posts To More People, Even Without Their Permission

Until natural language processing improves, only humans can tell what’s important. So Facebook today starts rolling out the option to pay to promote a friend’s posts and get them seen by more people. This will help critical posts bubble to the top of the feed, and let Facebook earn some money, too. The feature respects privacy controls, but could still make you look like a self-important prick.
Facebook began testing the ability to promote your own posts in May 2012 and rolled the feature out to the U.S. in October. See, your average Facebook post only gets seen by about 16 percent of your friends because they aren’t online soon after you post, or you never interact with them on Facebook. Promoted Posts artificially boost your posts so they appear in the news feed to people Facebook wouldn’t have shown them to.
The option has enraged some people, making them feel like they’re being extorted to communicate with their friends. When it first came out, I said Facebook was recklessly endangering the meritocracy of the news feed, which until then only rewarded posts that got the most Likes, comments, shares, and clicks.
But there are real uses for Promoted Posts. If you’re raising money for a good cause, looking for an apartment, or have a big announcement for your company, paying to force it into more people’s news feeds can actually be really valuable, and worth the $7 or so. The price varies by geographic area and how many people it could reach.
Now you can do the same for friends’ posts, or at least you’ll be able to soon. A gradual global roll-out for the feature is starting now, and it’s only available to people with fewer than 5,000 total friends and subscribers.
When you see one you think deserves more attention, you can click the drop-down arrow next to a post to sponsor it, and it will reach a larger percentage of the original audience of the post. That means promoting a friend’s post won’t violate their privacy settings. If the post was set to only show up for their friends, your payment will just make it show up to more of their friends. If their post is publicly visible, your promotion could appear to your friends, too.
Facebook explains “If your friend is running a marathon for charity and has posted that information publicly, you can help that friend by promoting their post to all of your friends. Or if your friend is renting their apartment out and she tells her friends on Facebook, you can share the post with the people you and your friend have in common so that it shows up higher in the news feed and more people notice it.”

One issue, though, is that you don’t need a friend’s permission to promote their posts. And depending on what they said, the extra eyeballs might not always be appreciated.
A friend could jokingly promote an embarrassing photo of me, or my status about something bad happening to me. If I post that I wrote an article or am selling something, a friend might innocently think they’re helping by promoting the update. But when people see the “promoted” tag on my self-serving post and realize money was traded for their attention, they might think I’m tooting my own horn a little too loudly.
Facebook will have to keep an eye on this one. If people use it for evil, or people unwittingly end up looking like a loudmouth used car salesmen in cheap plaid polyester suits that reek of even cheaper cologne, then it may want to give authors the option to prevent promotions.

Original Source : http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/14/promoted-posts-friends/

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Zuckerberg Now Owns 29.3 Percent Of Facebook, Representing $18 Billion

Facebook announced in an SEC filing that founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg now owns 29.3 percent of Facebook shares (NASDAQ:FB), up from a 28.2 percent stake on the day of the IPO. With 632.7 million shares currently trading at $28.50, it represents a bit more than $18 billion.
Remaining the largest shareholder is one of Zuckerberg’s most impressive achievements, not only for his personal wealth, but for his voting power as well.
Back in May when Facebook started trading, its founder used to own 443 million shares and 60 million unexercised options. As the company’s shares started trading at $38 a share, it represented $16.9 billion, making him one of the youngest multi-billionaires. Again, this is only for his stock-based wealth.
Even though the stock had a roller coaster year and the company recently released more shares, Zuckerberg increased his wealth in shares thanks to stock-based compensation. Shares were trading above $30 a share for most of the month of January. Now at $28.50, it seems like Facebook shares have finally found a stable price around the $30 mark.
Facebook’s IPO price was $38 a share when the company started trading in May. But in August, the stock fell to its lowest price at the time — $19.69 — as the initial lockup expiration of 271 million shares kicked in. Other lockup expirations brought a few days of downturn.
Yet, investors looking for short-term profit based on potential share price drops and short selling have slowly moved away from Facebook shares since October, leaving committed investors on board. These days, price changes reflect more closely product updates and earnings.
Back in September, Zuckerberg declared that he wouldn’t sell his shares for the next 12 months in order to dampen lockup expirations and drive confidence. That’s why his virtual wealth will continue to increase and decrease alongside Facebook shares in the coming months.

Original Source : http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/15/zuckerberg-now-owns-29-3-percent-of-facebook-representing-18-billion/

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Facebook Wins Court Challenge In Germany Against Its Real Names Policy

Facebook has won a court challenge against its real names policy in Germany. Yesterday an administrative court in the North of Germany granted Facebook’s request for “suspensive effect” against a ruling made by Schleswig-Holstein’s Data Protection Commissioner that Facebook was violating German and European law. The court ruled that German data protection laws aren’t applicable because Facebook has its European headquarters in Ireland — meaning only (the less stringent) Irish data protection laws apply.
Back in December the German data protection body in question, the ULD (Unabhaengiges Landeszentrum fuer Datenschutz), issued a ruling against Facebook’s real-name policy, arguing that it erodes online freedoms and calling for the site to allow the use of pseudonyms. The ULD said it had received complaints from citizens about Facebook’s policy. It said its aim was to seek clarification of Facebook’s legal position in regards to European data protection law — and its intention was to pursue a “regular lawsuit” against the company.
At the time, Facebook said it planned to “vigorously” fight the ULD’s ruling — and its vigor appears to have paid off, with the Schleswig-Holstein Administrative Court granting it suspensive effect against the ULD’s ruling, meaning its business as usual for Facebook in Germany.
However the ULD said today it intends to appeal. In a press release (translated via Google translate) on Facebook’s court win, entitled ‘Administrative Court of Schleswig granted Facebook free ride’, the ULD said it plans to appeal the court’s decision before the Schleswig-Holstein Higher Administrative Court.
The head of the ULD Thilo Weichert described the court’s rulings in Facebook favour as “more than amazing” and “contradictory”.
The ULD has two weeks to appeal the court’s ruling.
At the time of writing Facebook had not responded to a request for comment.
The news was reported earlier by the AP news agency.

Original Source : http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/15/facebook-wins-court-challenge-in-germany-against-its-real-names-policy/

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8 Tech Trends for Financial Services for Year 2012

Original Article : http://www.sentronex.com/2013/02/tech-trends-infographic-for-2013/

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Hospitals begin to recognize social media’s potential to improve patient experience

“In Canada in health care we’re at a point where most hospitals accept the role of social media for branding and communication, but only the lead adopters are using it for patient engagement and for clinical use.” – Ann Fuller, public relations director,   Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO)
Call up the website home page for any large Canadian hospital and you’ll likely spot the familiar icons that link to the institution’s facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts.
Hospitals are inherently conservative institutions and, as such, have been relative latecomers to adopt social media, which are broadly defined as digital channels that can facilitate timely, collaborative and interactive communication.
As they enter the social media fray, hospitals face a host of challenges and decisions. These range from basic upkeep—nothing is more frustrating to a potential user than a neglected or stale-dated facebook or Twitter account—to deciding how interactive to be with patients, and what staff should be trained and involved in social media use.
From marketing to improved care
Not all hospitals haven entered the fray—for example, smaller hospitals may not be able to afford the expertise and time involved in establishing a social media presence—and among those that have, how they use social media varies significantly.
Many still use the channels for marketing and old-style public relations communication—for example posting news releases—while some larger hospitals are more active, have thousands of followers, and can track and address patient concerns.
But the potential of using social media to improve patient care and patient experience is only beginning to be realized, according to health care digital communication leaders. 
That’s not surprising because it’s only been a few years since hospitals began to take social media seriously; the Ontario Hospital Association hosted its fourth Social Media in Health Care conference just last month; the first was Jan 21, 2010.
Social media policies can allay concerns about risk
The issue of privacy and risk dominated discussions about social media several years ago, but that concern has begun to be addressed as hospitals formulate and adopt social media policies (see CHEO policy, for example) that spell out ground rules for use.
An emerging debate contrasts the approach of hospitals that use a single channel “firehose” social media approach—institutions that have just one facebook and one Twitter account for all communication—and those that have multiple social media channels.
To Ed Bennett, who manages web operations at the University of Maryland Medical System, the progression from hosting single to multiple speciality channels—from addressing patient concerns at a broad level, to also addressing narrower concerns of specific patient groups—is a natural evolution.
Social media: this is where the public is talking about you
Part of his job is to monitor all online mentions of his medical centre and decide which ones are appropriate to respond to, and who should respond. “This is where conversations are moving, where they’re [the public] is talking about you, and if you don’t participate, you are cut off from the discussion.”
A lot of concerns are about services such as parking, or long waits in the ER, or how to get test results, he notes. “If you are able to resolve these, or just respond in a polite way, you can turn a negative into a positive.”
Craig Thompson, director of digital communications at Women's College Hospital in Toronto, says  the  "low hanging fruit"  that  social media can address involves better communication about issues that frequently frustrate patients, such as hospital access and how to prepare for procedures.  Beyond that, opportunities to use social media to improve patient experience "present themselves at different times, every organization has to find its own solutions."
Social media such as facebook also present the opportunity to create “extensions of real life face-to-face patient support groups,” says Bennett. The Maryland University Medical System sponsors four or five of such groups, including for transplant and for trauma patients; participants have to be invited to join (the groups are closed) and the groups are moderated by a health care professional.
“Still, we explain that nothing on the Internet is 100% closed and warn people not to put out any information that wouldn’t be comfortable with the world seeing,” he says.
The multiple channel approach
Michelle Hamilton-Page is the manager of social media at CAMH (the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto), which has a multiple channel model approach to social media (see, for example, its foundation-associated endstigma facebook page).
Hamilton-Page’s position is based in education, rather than communications, and she spends much of her time helping groups within CAMH think through whether social media can help them meet their objectives and, if so, how to go about it.
A similar approach is taken at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, notes digital media manager Anthony Lucic. “People think of social media as mass communication, but it can be really focused and targeted. Sometimes, it’s about just wanting to talk with a core group of peers. Our approach is very grassroots, we sit down with people to find out who they want to engage, and what networks they could use.”
Children's Hospitals have been early adopters of social media
Children’s Hospitals, like CHEO in Ottawa and the SickKids (the Hospital for Sick Children) in Toronto, are among the most advanced in terms of using social media. That’s partly because the patients, and their parents, are younger—and members of age cohorts that are relatively more comfortable using social media.
“Our patients, and their parents, have different expectations” compared to adult hospitals, says Ann Fuller, public relations director at CHEO. “New generations are used to sharing more and have different expectations of privacy than my mother did.”
And Fuller notes some doctors are saying it is time to relook at the idea that that physicians should not interact through social media with patients, point to “niche applications” where, for example, a clinician could be on facebook with a group of young patients with diabetes.
A recent research study at CHEO into patients’ use of facebook underscored its importance to teenagers with long-term and chronic illnesses and noted that only a few disclosed any personal health information on their facebook pages.
It concluded that that the need for social-network-based communication between patients and healthcare providers—now forbidden by some institutions—will increase and that “age-appropriate privacy-awareness education” should be strengthened.
Calls for more education, literacy 
Better education about social media is something that Sivan Keren Young, manager of digital communications at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, thinks is essential. “Everyone is using social media, but no one gets any social media literacy training, there’s nothing in schools, and that can cause mistakes, people can unintentionally do the wrong thing.”
Interestingly, it was disappointment about the level of public uptake for H1N1 vaccination was the inspiration for the first major Canadian examination of how health care institutions could use social media to understand and improve the patient experience.
“For us, the light bulb went on” when the Toronto-based Health Strategy Innovation Cell went online to find out what was being said in patient websites and chat rooms about the H1N1 vaccine, says Cathy Fooks, president of The Change Foundation , which co-authored a report on using social media to improve health care and worked with two health care organizations to explore the potential of social media.
What the investigators discovered was a whole series of anti-vaccination conversations about concerns about the vaccine—concerns that were inhibiting people from getting vaccination. “Public Health had no idea—none of that concern had turned up in their formal communication channels,” Fooks noted.
The foundation went on to co-author with the Innovation Cell a seminal report on using social media to improve health care and a report based on work with two health care organizations exploring the potential of using social media.
According to Bennett, those who are still sceptical about social media should stop thinking of it as brand new and different: “It’s still people talking to each other.”

Original Source : http://healthydebate.ca/2013/02/topic/innovation/social-media-in-hospitals

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How To Erase Your Ex From Facebook

Nowadays it's rare to share something like a photo or status update on Facebook and not have it live on permanently.
But what happens when you want to rid yourself of that digital baggage in the case of a break-up or falling out with someone?
That's where KillSwitch, a new Android and iOS app launching today, steps in.
"KillSwitch is for anyone fresh out of a break-up looking to move on. What if they have a lot of pictures of their ex and they don't want to be reminded of that?" Co-founders Erica Mannherz and Clara de Soto told Business Insider. "KillSwitch is also for anybody that has had a falling out, be it a friendship or coworker, any relationship that you really don't want to have evidence or traces of on Facebook."
KillSwitch works by discreetly identifying a "target" from your list of Facebook friends, it will then find every photo, status update, and post related to you and the individual and will wipe all traces from Facebook without them finding out.

All images are then put into a hidden album that only the KillSwitch user can view. This is to make sure you don't regret doing something in the heat of the moment.

"We have a friend who deactivates her Facebook profile after every break-up," Mannherz and De Soto said. "We don't see KillSwitch as a vindictive tool but part of a greater healing process."
Killswitch is very simple to use because everything is done from behind the scenes, seamlessly.
The app is available for Android starting today and iPhone very soon, for $0.99. We haven't been able to test it, so we can't vouch for how well it works. So, buyer beware!
A portion of the proceeds will go to the American Heart Association so "broken hearts can help mend broken hearts."

Original Source : http://www.businessinsider.com/killswitch-app-2013-2#ixzz2KuI50FJq

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Trintme, A Classier “Bang With Friends,” Lets You Find Facebook Friends Who Want To Hang Out, Not Just Hook Up

If you kind of liked the idea behind viral sensation Bang With Friends, the controversial Facebook app that lets you privately nominate friends you want to hook up with, but balked at the idea of using an app that’s all about the sex, then you might find newly launched Trintme to have some appeal. The name, a combo of “true intentions,” is not as clever, sadly – seriously, people, stop making up silly fake verbs! – but the app is similar in spirit. And a little classier, too.
Like Bang With Friends, the app works on top of Facebook, allowing users to privately indicate their interest in their Facebook friends or friends of friends using one or more simple icons that express how they feel. These include things from the more platonic ”you’re cool” and the casual “let’s hang out” all the way up to the player-baiting “hook-up” and the seriously hopeful “romance.” The company worked with its advisors, Stanford Sociology professor Dr. Daniel McFarland and relationship expert Dr. Karen Ruskin, on the app and how to properly translate people’s feelings into these clickable emoticons.
Your true intentions are never revealed to others on your network, of course, or embarrassingly posted to your Facebook Timeline. Instead, everything is kept private until there’s a match. Then, both users are alerted via email and can proceed further if they so choose. After 30 days, your “trints,” as these digitally expressed feelings are called, are discarded so you can start over again.

Based in Mountain View, founder VS Joshi said he had the idea after catching up with a woman he knew from his past asked him why he had never asked her out when they were in college. “I thought of asking her out a hundred times,” he says. “But I didn’t take the next step because I didn’t want to spoil another good relationship.”
He candidly explains that his experiences with women didn’t typically go well back in those days. “When I took my next step, it was always a disaster. That’s okay, you get rejected. But my relationship with these girls was never the same after. There was always this awkwardness,” he says.
Feeling awkward while navigating the messiness that comes with living a real life? That sounds like a good app idea.
Joshi began working on Trintme about 18 months ago. During private testing, it seems there are quite a few people out there who can relate to his experiences – for example, a test in April saw 1,420 students register over 2,500 intentions on the site, and produced 301 matches. But here’s the promising metric: of that original user base, 60 percent returned the following month to the site to try, try again.
Right now, the idea is to see if the app can go big, not worry about the revenue. (Classic). But if things work out, there’s room for monetization options like charging users to see matches, working with partners on offers for date night, automatically resetting intentions monthly for a small fee, and more. None of these ideas are set in stone, however, and currently the app is free to use here.
Trintme is not the only app to run off with the Bang With Friends concept in recent weeks. UK-based Would Love 2 just launched a similar product. But Would Love 2 is an iOS app, while Trintme is just a website for now.
The company is basically bootstrapped, having won a couple of startup competitions following its participation in the Babson College Venture accelerator program. There’s just Joshi, two engineers and a designer involved.
Bang With Friends went viral because…well, it’s hilarious. It’s also easily understood. But there’s a chance that it wasn’t just the joke that caught on with people – it may have also tapped into users’ dormant desire for a more dating-focused layer to Facebook. If that’s the case, then there’s potential for a new breed of apps to carve out a niche in the online dating market – a market that doesn’t always work. I’m not sure that one with a name like “Trintme” will catch on, but stranger things have happened.


Original Source : http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/14/trintme-a-classier-bang-with-friends-lets-you-find-facebook-friends-who-want-to-hang-out-not-just-hook-up/

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How Instagram Can Help You Find Love

it turns out Instagram is great for more than just stalking friends and celebrities through their filtered photos.
Santiago Perez Grovas, @santiagopgm, and Taylor Dee, @thisgirl_, credit Instagram for their relationship, Jessica Fee of Mashable reports.
Before Instagram became incredibly popular, Dee stumbled upon one of Grovas' pictures featured on the popular page. But at first, Dee thought Santiago was a woman. 
"I thought, 'Wow, this girl's amazing! I love her pictures' for about four about four months," Dee told Mashable. "And then he posted a picture of himself and I realized he was a guy."
It wasn't until a few months later that Dee actually popped up on Grovas' radar. Grovas posted a competition to his page, asking people to submit photos of themselves and virtually "cheers with him."
Dee won that contest, and the two started chatting via Kik and FaceTime. They've now been together for almost eight months, even though Grovas lives in Mexico City, and Dee lives in Colorado.
But Dee and Grovas aren't the only couple that got their start on Instagram.
A couple from Seattle met on Instagram after one woman, Bailey Gate, noticed Ryan Williams' photos on Instagram, Joanna Stern of ABC News reports.
Another couple, Robin Coe and Matt Flemming, also found love thanks to Instagram.
"I think (Instagram is) such a cool window into someone's aesthetic and someone's life," Coe told ABC News. "Mat is an avid cyclist and he takes photos of what he is seeing, I got to see what he was seeing through his eyes. I got to know a lot about him just through his photos."

Original Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-instagram-can-help-you-find-love-2013-2#ixzz2KuG8v1Xv

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How To Use Social Networks To Create Laser-Targeted B2B Advertising Campaigns

The bane of most search marketers’ existence is search query ambiguity. Is a user searching for [one night stand] interested in an illicit affair or a piece of antique oak furniture for his bedroom? Does the query [internet security] reflect the needs of a consumer fed up with viruses or a CIO looking for a $10 million enterprise solution?
John Battelle has called a search engine a “database of intentions,” but that database is often fuzzy, to say the least.
In many cases, it would be much easier for marketers to know who the user doing the search was, as opposed to for what they were searching. Take the two examples above: if you knew that the searcher was a 19-year-old college student whose favorite brands were [Axe deodorant] and [Bud Light], you could probably determine quite quickly whether either query was right for your advertising budget.
But, with the exception of the limited use cases of Google’s RLSA (retargeting lists for search ads), the ability to fuse demographic or behavioral intent with query data does not exist on search engines.
In the last few months, however, social networks – led by Facebook and LinkedIn – have rolled out targeting features that enable advertisers to get very close to answering the “who” question. Importantly, these tools work especially well for B2B marketers, simply because they enable advertisers to exclude consumers (or just include businesses).
While still in their infancy, these new targeting tools are opening up big B2B opportunities online. If you’ve been frustrated by too many double-entendre keywords in your SEM campaigns, social media could be a better use of marketing dollars.

LinkedIn: Using Endorsements, Groups & Demographics For Fun & Profit

With over 200 million users, the odds are pretty high that if you are trying to reach a business professional, you can probably find him or her on LinkedIn. When LinkedIn’s self-service advertising platform was originally launched, advertisers could only target based on a LinkedIn user’s self-identified data. I say only because even this data is quite robust. Fields include:

• Languages spoken (I put “Old French – 842-ca.1400” on my profile, but no one has targeted me in that yet)
• Company or type of company
• School(s) attended
• Seniority
• Gender
• Age
• Geography (down to a city)

LinkedIn then upped the ante by allowing advertisers to target users based on their LinkedIn group membership as well. Since many groups are narrowly focused around specific business issues and needs, targeting groups (in combination with demographics) is a great way to find users specifically looking for what you might be selling.
As example, I typed in [data warehouse] into the groups search box on LinkedIn and found more than 250 groups, some of which had over 20,000 members:

In the last few months, LinkedIn introduced “endorsements,” whereby your peers can endorse you for a set of skills. Shortly after rolling out endorsements, this, too, was added to the self-serve ad tool (described in the tool as “skills”), effectively creating a crowd-sourced targeting tool.
Put these three elements – profile demographics, group membership and endorsements – together and you can get pretty darn granular (though note: you must target at least 1,000 LinkedIn users per campaign).
To show you an example of what this looks like, I recently created a LinkedIn campaign targeting PPC experts at marketing agencies in the US at a manager to VP level (as a way to try to recruit people to my agency). I got a list of about 1,200 perfect candidates to market to.

Facebook: Demographics + First Party Data + Search?

Facebook has also been busy adding more refined targeting options to its original ad platform. The first iteration of Facebook targeting allowed advertisers to target based on self-reported data about users, including:

• Geography
• Age
• Gender
• Languages spoken
• Marital status
• Sexual orientation
• School(s) attended and current education status
• Company
• Interests on Facebook
• Connections on Facebook

Again, not too shabby! Since that initial launch, however, Facebook has added two new powerful tools: FBX – which allows you to retarget your Web visitors on Facebook – and Custom Audiences, which enables advertisers to upload a list of email addresses to Facebook and market to anyone on Facebook who has used one of these email addresses to sign up for Facebook.
While you can’t currently fuse Facebook demographic data with FBX retargeting; with custom audiences, you can! So, if you only wanted to target folks that had signed up for your newsletter *and* are married, went to the University of Iowa and are men, voila! – custom audiences combined with self-reported demographic information gets you that deep!
And, let’s not forget the elephant in the room – Facebook’s recent launch of “Graph Search.” Graph Search allows users to run searches on Facebook and get results based on their social graph. So, doing a search for “sushi in San Francisco” would not only give you a list of sushi restaurants, but also tell you which of your friends visited them recently.
While you can’t currently advertise on graph search (and indeed, most users don’t even have access to the feature yet, anyway), most advertisers assume that Facebook will soon roll out “search ads” on Graph Search. Combine the 1^st-party data of Custom Audiences, the self-defined demographics of Facebook profiles, and the intent of a search query and, well, you just might have found the Holy Grail of online advertising!

And Don’t Forget Google

Of course, Google isn’t sitting idly by and letting LinkedIn and Facebook own “who-based” B2B marketing. Google Plus is already integrated into AdWords, RLSA allows for limited 1^st-party data, and there’s no doubt there are many more plans at the Googleplex to fuse behavioral data and search intent.
Google already offers B2B behavioral targeting opportunities on the Google Display Network (GDN) and has really improved the ease-of-use and granularity of their remarketing (retargeting) on GDN, as well.
Compared to the social networks, Google has always taken a much more conservative approach to user privacy, which may limit the amount of behavioral data they will share with marketers; but at the end of the day, if Google is losing wallet share to other channels and the cause of this loss is better targeting, you can expect Google to respond with rival products on search as a result.
And don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of highly-targeted B2B-only queries that get decent volume on AdWords, so this is definitely not a zero-sum game.
Assuming that all this data (and all of these channels) doesn’t either overwhelm marketers or freak out consumers, the combination of accurate behavioral and demographic data with search query intent is a pretty exciting opportunity for B2B marketers. Merging “who” with “what” and “where” on social networks enables advertisers to target business customers with incredible precision. It’s a very good time to be a B2B marketer!

Original Article : http://searchengineland.com/how-to-use-social-networks-to-create-laser-targeted-b2b-advertising-campaigns-147554

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Help Improve Google Maps, Win Prizes

Google announced their unique competition to update Google maps in India.

Users can update Google Maps by themselves, provide suggestions and at the end of the competition, a 1000 winners will be selected and awarded by Google.

Mapathon 2013 is India’s first mapping competition and aimed at improving Google Maps in India. The competition begins on 12th February and ends on 25th March 2013. Participants can update Google Maps via the Google Map Maker. Google Map Maker will help users add details to Google Maps using satellite or their knowledge of a particular area or location. Participants can also update sites presently listed on Google Maps.

Once the changes made by participants are verified by Google, the changes will be uploaded to Google Maps.

The initiative is a smart, wise one as India is plagued by tiny narrow lanes and hidden locations which might not be accurately captured by the satellite. Also, with indepth knowledge provided by locals, the listings that are incorrect can be accurately changed.

The prizes for the top 1000 mappers include tablets, smartphones, gift vouchers and Google merchandise. 
Original Source : http://www.indiatimes.com/technology/internet/help-improve-google-maps-win-prizes-59964.html

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Social Money Transfer Service Azimo Adds Facebook Integration To Squeeze Western Union

Azimo, the UK-based social money transfer service aiming to disrupt an industry dominated by legacy players Western Union and Moneygram, is rolling out integration with Facebook to make it easy for users of the uber-social network to send money to one another. A first for the remittance industry, claims the company, with perhaps PayPal-to-PayPal transfers coming closest.
Using Azimo to send money via Facebook works as follows: The sender invites their intended recipient to sign up to Azimo via an automatically sent Facebook message. The recipient then logs into Azimo’s Facebook app and fills out their details, including where they want the money sent to, which could be one of the 150,000 payout desks in the 125 countries supported, a mobile phone ‘top up’, or a bank account. And since the recipient fills out that crucial information, those details are kept hidden from the sender, while the company claims that less mistakes are likely, too.
In addition, in order to reduce the likelihood of fraud, Azimo says that it analyses “key pieces of information about individual Facebook profiles to verify that they are genuine”. These include the length of time a Facebook profile has existed, how active it is, how many friends the account has and whether it’s linked to a genuine email address bearing the same name as the person who owns the account. That makes sense and serves as another reminder of how our social media data can be minded by companies, particularly in the financial sector, and Azimo certainly isn’t the first to do so.
Joining Azimo’s existing apps for iOS and Android, the decision to build a Facebook app was based on surveying its UK customers who regularly send money home or to friends and family. “[We] found nearly three quarters regularly use Facebook – and of those, over 60% were in touch with the person they wanted to send money to”, says Michael Kent, founder of Azimo, in a statement. It therefore made sense to piggyback the social graph and the way users already stay in touch — and gives a further shot in the arm to the company’s battle with Western Union et. al., who it says charge much higher fees than are needed.
“Azimo’s aim is to charge only what is fair – between 1-2% of the transaction – and to make it quick and easy for anyone to transfer their money overseas,” says Kent. In contrast, Western Union and MoneyGram levy “double-digit charges for a service that amounts to little more than a few clicks of a computer mouse”, claims the company.
That’s a sentiment echoed by another European money transfer startup, TransferWise, which is often seen as a direct competitor to Azimo, when in actual fact the latter is more about consumer transfers via collection points akin to Western Union, while TransferWise largely targets bank transfers, particularly by businesses, not least startups.
Founded in 2012, Azimo launched its social money transfer platform in August 2012. In January 2013, it secured angel investment totalling £300,000.

Original Source : http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/12/azimo/

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