LinkedIn and Branding: Great Tool for Employ

LinkedIn is a social networking service (SNS) website for business customers, founded in December 2002 and launched in 2003. The purpose of this site is to allow registered users to maintain their contacts from business dealings and trust, commonly known as Connections. “As of June 2013, LinkedIn reports more than 225 million acquired users in more than 200 countries and territories.” (LinkedIn) There is a new member to join LinkedIn every second. And the United States the number of users has dropped to only 38%.

With the development of LinkedIn, it also gradually inclined to build a bridge between college students and enterprises. Social media develop rapidly in the field of job searching, which is gradually replacing the traditional job search model and has become increasingly popular for graduates. LinkedIn, as a social media, has made remarkable achievements in graduates job searching. It’s because LinkedIn continue to provide more interaction between companies and graduates.

To some people, LinkedIn is the most boring website; and to other people, it is a powerful tool to help people hopping and getting promotion in workplaces. No matter how you look at LinkedIn, they have opened up their own piece of the market. In my opinions, the game and IT professionals get most benefit on LinkedIn because the of mobility these two industry are huge. Game industry staff always change their workplaces so that they need immediate effect. For example, a company is got attention by a game publisher. Then they suddenly need 50 experienced art staff, 5 designers, and 7 programmers. This project maybe can last one to two years. But these staff have to start looking for a new job at the end of the project. Game companies are looking for experienced staff. If they already had LinkedIn accounts, everyone will immediately know they are currently unemployed. So it can create the chance to hire again.

I’m new to LinkedIn. But after the introduction from my professor and some researches, I realize LinkedIn is a great platform to sell myself as a product online. As well, I can gain lots of super helpful information, such as current available positions and companies.

Reference:

"LinkedIn." Wikipedia. 20 Sept. 2013 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn>.

QR codes: Why Do They Become So Famous

These years, QR codes are widespread used and there must be a certain reason.

If you are not familiar with QR codes, you must have seen some barcodes in the back of the merchandises' packages on the shelves of the store. These barcodes are used to track inventory information and commodity price information. QR code is similar to the barcode. But the most significant difference between them is the amount of data they can carry. "A single QR Code symbol can contain up to 7,089 numerals—over 200 times the amount of data as a traditional 1-D barcode." (QR Code® Essentials)

A barcode is lots of one-dimensional lines in the same direction. And it can only carry 20 characters. On the other hand, QR code is "a two-dimensional (2-D) matrix code that belongs to a larger set of machine-readable codes, all of which are often referred to as barcodes, regardless of whether they are made up of bars, squares or other-shaped elements." (QR Code® Essentials)

There are great advantages of using QR codes in different areas.

(1) Order Processing and Product Tracking

In the automotive parts manufacturing industry, invoices and receipts are encoded with QR codes. QR Code contains customer information, shipping company, cargo code, quantity and other relevant information. These data can be used for order processing and product tracking. The advantage is that we can collect a large number of transport data by scan once and it greatly reduces the variety of waybill data entry and manually comparison.

(2) Food Logistics Management System

In a Coca-Cola canning factory, product code, expiry date, production history, and other data are incorporated into a QR code. These data are used for logistics management. According to the control of expiry date, it can guarantee the implementation of the first in first out. What's more, it can improve traceability base on the production history.

(3) Personal Business

Compilation of information processing based on mobile phone, it provides personalized, secure transmission method for various types of consumer groups' demands. Scanning a QR code can simplify the cumbersome input of the Internet web site before mobile phone users access the internet. The images, text, audio, video, and other information are generated to url. Therefore, it achieves fast landing and download.

As a result, with such excellent benefits,  we should use QR codes as personal or commercial.

Reference:
"QR Code® Essentials." 2011. DENSO ADC. 13 Sept. 2013 <http://www.nacs.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=D1FpVAvvJuo%3D&tabid=1426&mid=4802>.

Social Networking and Security. . .or Lack of When Promoting Your Brand

Nowadays, more and more enterprises begin to use social media platforms in order to create customer interaction, brand building, and information communication. But for business, social media brings more than just good impression, friends, increasing recognition, or potential customers. For many organizations, the use of social media will bring real risk to damage the brand image, leak private information, and maybe even lead to legal proceedings.

There are some security threats created by social media.

Social engineering is an ubiquitous method that eloquent fraudsters prefer. Even before the advent of computer networks ,social engineering already exist. However, the rise of the Internet make fraudsters easier to find potential victims. Social media put this threat to a new level. There are two reasons. First, comparing to before, people are more willing to share their personal information on some social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Myspace. Second, social media platforms will encourage people to assume that some person or thing is credible. And it reached a dangerous level. With this foundation, it just need a small step to reveal our companies’ secret plans to your friends. For example, if we want a friend to help us to receive a protected file from our corporate network, we can just tell him the password. But there will be an unimaginable consequences.

Sometimes, hackers can find the source code directly. Then they inject malicious code into social networking sites, including the use of advertising and third-party applications. On Twitter, abbreviated URL can be used to trick users to visit a malicious site. And if we are using a company computer, these sites maybe can extract personal and corporate information from the computer. Twitter particularly vulnerable to be attacked by this approach because it is easy to forward and millions of people can see the content.