Riding the Digital Fast Lane

In 1993, Marc Andreessen and NCSA and the University of Illinois developed a graphical user interface to the world wide web and called it Mosaic. The digital fast lane was then officially opened to early adopters with this first graphical browser. Fortunately for you and me, today it’s easy to ride the digital fast lane, without being a techie.

If you already have an online profile at Ziggs, congratulations! You are officially on the digital fast lane. You have successfully merged onto the high speed lane of Internet life. Maintaining your Ziggs Profile - refreshing it when needed, typically once a month – helps ensure that your online image drives well and always looks great on the digital highway.

But what about your friends and family. Are they on the digital highway with you? Have you brought them online to join you? Having an online professional profile listed at Ziggs is quite frankly the easiest and safest way to participate in the online world in the good company of millions of other professionals. Once in Ziggs, your people can create their own profile, then you can all create groups, discuss topics, even send polls online – the digital fast lane, all within the privacy of your own online world at Ziggs.

See you in the fast lane.

A Tale of Two Profiles

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

The opening line from Charles Dickens’ historical novel A Tale of Two Cities, written in 1859. For those who missed this in 8th grade English, it’s a story of two cities, London and Paris, and two characters. Charles Darnay is the high-standing, romantic French society man, who is respectable but not interesting. Sydney Carton is the English barrister who is charismatic and magnetic but seedy and secretly exciting. It would be interesting to ask Dickens for his reaction to today’s world where millions of people have created their own online “characters” or profiles to portray themselves as either respectable and honest or to present a more alluring living-in-the-fast-lane life of hipness and hotness.

Just as Elvis and the Rolling Stones were considered provocative and erotic in their day, so today’s adults sometimes see the explicit online imagery and communications expressed in some social networks as out of bounds for them and their own children. It will be fascinating to watch how the new generation growing up in social networking websites matures into professionals with careers and to mark how their online personas or profiles morph with them from social to professional. Which type of profile have you created?

From Profiles to Avatars

Beyond an online profile, virtual worlds, such as Second Life, give you the ability to create an avatar, a virtual online representation of yourself. Depending on your goal, your virtual self can be similar to you or complete fantasy. For example, one of the most famous avatars in Second Life is the one created by Ian Hughes, virtual world pioneer and evangelist. Known inside as epredator, it’s befitting that his avatar is fantastic (and looks nothing like him).

According to Irving Wladawsky-Berger, even IBM now has policy guidelines on creating an avatar: "Virtual worlds give you the ability to create the way in which you want to represent your digital persona visually. This can be anything from a reasonable likeness of the actual person to a fictional creature... In general, your digital persona’s appearance is up to you. When you are using your avatar or persona in association with IBM, however, your judgment in these matters should be shaped by the same general guidelines that apply to IBMers in physical environments – i.e., that your appearance be appropriate to the context of your activities. You need to be especially sensitive to the appropriateness of your avatar or persona’s appearance when you are meeting with IBM clients or conducting IBM business."

So, how many identities can one person have? Actual, virtual, physical, student, work, home? The list could go on. How about having just one?

Now Back to the Physical World

For the majority of us living in the physical and professional world, here are some tips on portraying your best professional self online while also projecting interest and depth - in other words, be the best of both Darnay and Carton:

For the career-minded, it’s a must-do today to post a profile in two professional networking websites. The first, of course, is Ziggs. For those unfamiliar with Ziggs, this website offers you the most comprehensive profile template for daily use in your current profession as well as for visibility to recruiters for both passive and active job searches. In addition to Ziggs Bio-Builder which helps you easily write up your own bio, your Ziggs Profile gives you several ways to build honest interest into your professional points. For example, by answering a few of the interview questions offered in your Ziggs Profile, you can present a more well-rounded view of yourself that gives a newcomer a better chance to bond with you. Here's a great example of a very professional yet expressive online profile at Ziggs: Meet V. Cheryl Womack.

Ziggs also offers daily utility by giving you the ability to import the people important to you into Ziggs from most popular email systems. Then easily create and use groups, discussions and polls to better stay in touch with your colleagues, your clubs, your charities, as well as family and friends.

In addition to Ziggs, LinkedIn is the other important professional networking website that lets you create an online profile. It’s a good tool for the job seeker needing to network outside the immediate circle of contacts.

And for the edgy at heart, MySpace and Facebook will continue to be home to the online profiles of date seekers, band promoters, music followers and collegiates.

How to Get a Better Job While on Vacation

Just the simple act of creating an online profile at Ziggs immediately puts you in front of thousands of recruiters, including Fortune 500 blue-chips like Microsoft, Sony and Pfizer, who come to Ziggs daily looking for new candidates for great jobs...new candidates such as yourself. So even when you're off on your summer vacation, your professional profile at Ziggs remains on the job in the eyes of recruiters.

CNN's Money Magazine recommends Ziggs for this purpose:

"If you recoil from networking events, never get around to putting out feelers and have no clue how to 'work a room,' congratulations! You're the ideal candidate for a terrific new job."

"More than a fifth of the Fortune 500, including blue-chip names like Pfizer, Sony and Microsoft, use these outfits [i.e. Ziggs] as part of their recruiting process."

"The bottom line: Even if you're not looking for a new job, you want potential employers to see you in the most flattering light. Fortunately, it's easy to take control of your [online] profiles."

If you don't have a free professional profile at Ziggs, create one today. If you already have one, be sure it is complete and compelling. Maximize your profile by answering the Interview questions offered in the Interview section of your Ziggs Profile. Your answers to these questions give you the opportunity to share more of the real you in a positive light with your audience, far more than a resume could ever provide

Super Brands

Each year BusinessWeek ranks the top 100 Global Brands and reports them in July. This year’s results yielded a repeat in the top positions and an upset just below.

BusinessWeek uses Interbrand to determine the global brand rankings: “Interbrand takes many ingredients into account when ranking the value of the Best Global Brands. Even to qualify for the list, each brand must derive at least a third of its earnings outside its home country, be recognizable outside of its base of customers, and have publicly available marketing and financial data.”

According to BusinessWeek, the top three global brands for 2007 are repeat winners from 2006: Coca-cola is #1, Microsoft and IBM are #2 and #3.

Other movers and shakers: the golden arches stepped over Mickey when McDonalds jumped one position to #8 and Disney fell one to #9. Tech kings increased their global repute: Google vaulted four positions to #20. Apple leapfrogged six other brands to #33. Starbucks jumped three to #88.

Why is brand power important to companies and individuals? A growing global brand equates to increased future earnings and growth in stockholder value.

Super Brand Builders at Ziggs

In the same vein, the power of your personal brand can raise or lower your current and future value in relation to your competition. As you build your own professional brand during the course of your career, the value you bring to your daily team and your yearly initiatives can grow.

Some of the best brand builders at Ziggs are the individuals who have created the most comprehensive profile for themselves and then in some cases, even positioned their profile on top of every search engine (a Ziggs service called WebPro). Congratulations to these super brand builders at Ziggs: Krishna De, Doug McCready, Yvonne LaRose and Kevin Abt.

Designing for Web 2.0

Designing for a web 2.0 company takes patience and an understanding of user behavior - how the user will interact with the site. In this web 2.0 world, designers and developers now have access to technologies that can improve a site’s look and function more dramatically than ever before. For example, AJAX, a development technique, makes a webpage more responsive to the user. It can give the user better navigation or the ability to drag and drop information across a webpage with ease. However, the problem with new technologies, like AJAX, is that many designers and developers overuse them, inserting them where they’re not needed. Crowding a new web 2.0 site with these components leads to a lousy user experience that will only drive visitors away. So, to all fellow designers and developers, choose your 2.0 design components wisely, because mediocre or overwhelming UI's just won’t cut it in a web 2.0 world today.

Feedback on the Ziggs website is always welcome at rkelleher@ziggs.com.

Ryan Kelleher

Graphic Designer, Ziggs

Interning at Ziggs

On today's Web, amateur bloggers command publishing space alongside our most seasoned writers; citizen shoppers join the ranks of Consumer Reports; and classmates create friend groups with the scope and influence of master networkers. Interning at Ziggs has allowed me to experience a striking offline parallel to the culture of the new Web in which amateurs are immediately granted an all access pass to participate on a meaningful level with top professionals. I joined Ziggs while the company was in the midst of launching the Ziggs Hub. The culture of transparency and across-the-board participation that rules the Web was immediately palpable when I was offered a seat at the table at company planning meetings and encouraged to digest and contribute to new business and marketing developments.

I have been using social media for many years, but soon into my internship at Ziggs I realized how much I still had to learn. The biggest challenge was learning the language - the tech code: spider, bug, beta, tag, devweb, CPM, CTR, VOIP, Vlog, build, track, RSS, FTP. It is a language of acronyms and applications and, as a self-proclaimed non-techie, I was not prepared. At my first morning meeting with the team, I could understand about half of what everyone was saying. Ziggs has offered me a crash course in what is happening on the Web where techies have taken over the social spheres of average users and are gradually infiltrating IT jargon into daily communications between friends.

I have never been an intensely out-of-the box thrill seeker, but the Web today still feels like the wild west of the business world. It remains a relatively new, unexplored territory where room for innovation driven by instinct is as much written into business plans as traditional strategy and Six Sigma metrics. While my classmates are on a morning Starbucks run for colleagues at a traditional, vertically structured company, at Ziggs I always need to be totally plugged into the site, exploring new functionality, ready to adapt at the drop of new code for our point releases. As a young professional, this open-source, nimble-enough-to-innovate-everyday pace at Ziggs is refreshing and keeps me on my toes.

Amanda Mooney, Ziggs Intern-at-Large

Ziggs Release 2.2

We have just released some great new features and enhancements to Ziggs that we’re really excited about. Here’s a brief overview of what's new:


My Hub
The Ziggs Hub is where you can get a snapshot of information around your messages, groups, and activities. This section will continue to expand as we integrate more features. Here are some key features in this release of your new Hub:

• View your private messages
• View the most recent messages across all of your groups
• See who’s online within your groups
• See who’s birthday or anniversary is coming up (don’t forget to update your birthday or anniversary in your Profile)
• Know the completion status of your Ziggs Profile with the new Profile status meter

Private Messaging / Inbox
You now have your own private message inbox at Ziggs. You can send someone a private message by clicking on the mail icon next to their listing. When you receive a message from someone, you will be notified by email that there is a message for you. This is a great way for you to consolidate all of your communication with other Ziggs members.

Group Message Board & Polls
When you share a group, you and your members can create topics and have ongoing discussions within the context of your groups. Another group feature is Polls - this allows you to poll everyone in your group and keep track of the votes. You can even have a discussion around your Poll. Features of Group Message Board & Polls:

• Create as many topics & discussions as you want.
• Attach images and files to discussions, which other group members can download or view.
• The group owner can moderate topics within a discussion or poll. Set other members as moderators or make them read-only.
• Get notified when someone posts something new to a discussion or poll.

Invite Multiple People from your Email Distribution Lists
You can now easily invite people to all of your groups at Ziggs by clicking the “Invite People” link in your group header. This will allow you to send out an invite from your email using your email’s contact or distribution lists. This is a great way for you to quickly get a group together on Ziggs with minimal effort.

Apply a Starbucks Gift to your own Starbucks Card
This is a very cool feature we’ve just added. When someone sends you a Starbuck gift, you now have the ability to instantly apply it to your existing Starbucks card, rather than wait to have a new card mailed out to you. I love this new program because by applying a few new gifts to my current Starbucks card on file at Ziggs, I’ve already chalked up $40 in coffee gifts this week! Talk about instant gratification.


We love your feedback. Please keep it coming. You can reach me at skelleher@ziggs.com.


-- Sean

"You're a nobody unless your name Googles well"

That's according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. In fact, More than 80% of executive recruiters say they routinely use search engines to learn more about candidates, according to a recent survey by executive networking firm ExecuNet. Kevin Delaney quotes Ziggs Founder, Tim DeMello, in his Journal article: ‘If you're not found in search results, people start to wonder why."

Thinking back to Google's early days, I wonder if they could have foreseen the power their search engine would some day have... to either make or possibly even break a person's reputation online. To take control of your own online reputation, remember to keep your free Ziggs Profile fresh and polished with your latest professional news and a crisp professional photo.

What are you reading?

Designed to share the depth of knowledge across the Ziggs professional community, the new "People at Ziggs are reading" program lets members present themselves, their profile, and three books they'd recommend on Ziggs' home page. Because a recommendation has more value if you know who makes it, each book recommendation is directly tied to a Ziggs member's profile.

Visitors to Ziggs are now invited to share their book favorites with the Ziggs community. If selected, you'll soon see your smiling face and recommended books on Ziggs home page. So, what are you reading? Submit your personal favorites to books@ziggs.com today.

Browse 95,000 Companies at Ziggs

Ziggs’ new browse feature lets visitors easily explore the 95,000 companies in Ziggs. Browse for your company using our alphabet index and explore the online profiles of your colleagues or your company alumni already in Ziggs. Then instantly list yourself with your company.

If you’ve browsed Ziggs and don’t see your company, be first to list it. Listing yourself and your company in the Ziggs professional community is free. The benefits include taking control of your professional reputation online, gaining top visibility in every major search engine for yourself and your business, as well as connecting with other professionals in the Ziggs community.

Is your company in Ziggs yet? Browse now to find out.