Monthly Archives: August 2009

CTXM has completed an implementation of its GamingOS online gaming platform to one of the biggest social networking websites in the Baltic States, One.lv™, part of Forticom, a group of leading social networks in Russia, the Baltic States and Eastern Europe. The implementation of GamingOS will enable One.lv to offer casual multiplayer games, increasing audience engagement and providing monetization possibilities.

GamingOS is a hybrid of console gaming, Flash™ games and social networking. GamingOS has been adapted for social multiplayer gaming, providing website visitors with a range of multiplayer casual games. It is open for integration with third-party games and most social networks. GamingOS includes features like monetizing tools, social drivers, leader boards, tournaments and much more. The gaming setup of GamingOS can include casual play, play-for-money and gambling modes.

“We believe this partnership is a logical extension of our YouZang social gaming project on Facebook™, Vkontakte™ and Friendster™. “We are very proud to share our game development experience with Forticom, which is one of the world leaders in social networking” said Victor Stepanov, COO of CTXM.

About Forticom:

Forticom develops leading local social networks in Central/Eastern Europe and Russia (one.lv, one.lt, odnoklassniki.ru, nasza-klasa.pl), having combined user base of over 55 million people. With over 800 thousand registered users, One.lv is the largest social network for Russian-speaking audience in Latvia.

About CTXM:

CTXM provides its clients with innovative, efficient turnkey solutions, including gaming foundation platforms, casino and fixed-odds games, turnkey gaming and payments solutions. CTXM develops gaming solutions for leading operators in the iGaming and eGambling industries. CTXM partners with leading game publishers and IP owners. Since 2004, CTXM has developed over 100 gambling applications, 20 titles for PC, XBOX Live, and iPhone and has co-published over 100 casual game titles in Central and Eastern Europe. More information: www.ctxm.com

Peopleclick, Inc., the leading global provider of talent acquisition and workforce compliance and diversity solutions, announced today at the Society of Human Resource Management Annual Conference and Exposition in New Orleans, LA, the unveiling of Peopleclick Reach. A comprehensive social networking integration package that helps HR professionals leverage Web 2.0 technologies, Peopleclick Reach gives organizations the necessary tools to expand their referral network and extend their company brand.
With new channels of communication continuously being introduced into the market, Peopleclick Reach helps HR professional embrace Web 2.0 technologies such as Facebook®, LinkedIn® and Twitter to find qualified candidates through social and professional networking sites. Peopleclick Reach includes integrations with these sites, and provides comprehensive training that will help organizations increase employee referrals and brand awareness.

The key capabilities of Peopleclick Reach include the following:

Extends an Organization’s Referral Network – With Peopleclick Reach, a job posting listed on an organization’s career site can be forwarded to a network of friends with just a few clicks, making it easy for employees and others to refer their friends to an organization. A majority of organizations are finding new hires by employee referrals, and these are almost always from connections made through online networks.
Extends an Organization’s Employer Brand – By having a corporate presence on networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, an organization will be reaching potential candidates where they are spending much of their time. Peopleclick Reach offers clients training and a best-practice approach to creating their own company profile on their chosen social networking sites. When a company’s networking site is interesting and valuable, visitors are more likely to share the page with their friends, which easily extends the reach of an organization’s employer brand.
Training and Consultation – Since there are many ways to integrate social networking into an organization’s sourcing strategy, it helps tremendously to have training and consultation included. Peopleclick Reach includes training and consulting to help educate and assist an organization with employee adoption, while teaching team members how to measure their success using social networking technologies.
“Today, it is no surprise that social networking sites are significantly changing an organization’s recruitment strategy,” said Ginny Gomez, SVP of Product Management and Marketing at Peopleclick. “By embracing these technologies, an organization will be able to not only increase their sourcing strategy, but also deliver an engaging, positive brand experience and maximize their web presence. With guidance from the Peopleclick Research Institute (“PRI”), Peopleclick Reach provides comprehensive consultation services so that organizations can add social networking to their talent acquisition plan in a compliant manner.”

To learn more about Peopleclick and its products and services, or to follow Peopleclick on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, visit www.peopleclick.com.

About Peopleclick

Peopleclick provides software and services that empower companies around the world to find, attract and hire quality people–in less time, with less risk. Peopleclick’s technology, consulting expertise and support give companies the vision and flexibility to strategically manage all of their talent resources–whether they are salaried, hourly or contingent. Founded in 1997, the privately-held company currently serves over 2,000 clients in 214 countries and territories, including 54 of the Fortune 100. Peopleclick products support users in organizations ranging in size from large, multi-national corporations to small and medium-sized businesses. For more information about Peopleclick, visit www.peopleclick.com.

This September begins a new era in networking for the women of Dallas/Fort Worth. Powerful You! Women’s Network will hold its first Dallas/Fort Worth meeting on September 17, 2009. The network welcomes women from all walks of life who are seeking connections with other women for business and personal growth. Powerful You! meetings provide time for networking, personal promotions (aka 30-second commercials), a speaker presentation, the sharing of business and personal growth strategies and a gratitude share.

“Our network is as unique as the many different women who are attracted to attend.” says Sue Urda, Co-Founder of Powerful You! “Women helping women is a beautiful example for creating communities that work together. We call what we do Networking with a HeartTM and our mission is based upon the Universal Laws of Attraction and Abundance as well as the knowledge that businesses and lives are built upon meaningful relationships. Our meetings are designed to facilitate these relationships.”

The Dallas/Fort Worth meetings will be held on the third Thursday of each month. The meetings are at 11:30AM to 1:30 PM at Ferraris’ Italian Villa, 1200 William D. Tate, Grapevine, TX. For more information, please call Lynn Smith at 817-773-7190 or Juli Miezejeski at 908-399-6092, or visit http://www.PowerfulYou.com

“I am excited to share my gift of professional coaching with the members of Powerful You! and to gather new friends.” Juli Miezejeski, co-facilitator

Powerful You! recognizes that through regular and consistent meetings women create beautiful, long-lasting, reciprocal ties that strengthen and assist the growth of businesses and enhance personal relationships. Because the group also welcomes women who do not represent a business, product or company, the diversity of attendees lends itself to multi-faceted discussions, new perspectives, sharing and growth.

“I joined Powerful You! with the intention of building relationships with other women that will empower me both personally and professionally.” Lynn Smith, co-facilitator

Meetings are open to all women from business owners, corporate executives and non-profit companies to women who do not have a job or a company to represent. Membership in the group is not required to attend meetings, although there are many benefits of being a member including a personal profile on the corporate website for worldwide access, the opportunity to speak at the monthly meetings, free Tele-Networktm Meetings twice each month and discounts to all Powerful You! meetings and events.

“Experts tell us that networking is all about showing up, building relationships and creating connections that serve all parties.” says Sue Urda. “The most valuable connections in business and in life are created on the principles of mutual respect, acceptance and an attitude of sharing, giving and receiving. That’s what’s so amazing about our Members; they are all in it for the highest and best good of the group. The meetings truly are powerful!”

Powerful You! currently has 31 chapters in 10 states and is expanding rapidly. For more information on the Powerful You! Women’s Network and meeting details, please visit http://www.powerfulyou.com

The NYC Wine Report, a trusted voice in the international wine community for unbiased wine reviews and a local source for what wines to buy, how much to pay, and where to get them in NYC, announces the launch of the New York City Wine Club in partnership with Yorkshire Wines and Spirits.

Each month members of the New York City Wine Club will receive two of the six wines recommended by the www.NYCWineReport.com. In addition to saving up to 25% off the retail price, the wines are hand selected by a professional Sommelier based on quality at a reasonable price around $20 retail. Membership is open to wine lovers in over 30 states and delivery is free to members in New York City.

There are three wine packages available online at www.NewYorkCityWineClub.com to suit different tastes. When signing up members choose to receive all red wines, all white or a blend based on season. According to Greg Loeffelholz, Managing Partner of Metropolitan Vintners, LLC, “Whether you are a wine aficionado, lifelong oenophile or a novice trying to expand your wine palette, joining the NYC Wine Club is a great way to taste new wines, share your opinions and learn from others.”

In order to allow its members to share their opinions, the New York City Wine Club is also engaging social media sources like Facebook and Twitter. After tasting their wines each month NYC Wine Club members can exchange comments and find out what others are saying on Facebook.com/NYCWine and Twitter.com/NYCWineReport. The NYC Wine Club Facebook page already boasts over 500 members and is currently adding more than 10 new members every day.

Yorkshire Wines and Spirits has been serving the Upper East Side of Manhattan for over 25 years, but had not launched its own wine club during that time. “We are very excited about launching the New York City Wine Club with Metropolitan Vintners and www.NYCWine.com”, said Sam Choi, President of Yorkshire Wines & Spirits. “I think this will be a great program for our current clientele and will allow Yorkshire Wines a unique opportunity to reach new customers in other parts of Manhattan and across the United States.”

PitchEngine,the leading American PR and online marketing tool, has signed on as a media partner for the Twitter documentary Twittamentary, an to be directed by Singaporean filmmaker Siok Siok Tan.

PitchEngine provides access to over 200,000 journalists and media contacts, putting information, product or business in front of millions of potential customers.All the news releases is routinely indexed by Google news, Yandex, Naver and Baidu news.

Lonnie Hodge, CMF director, said, “This is a match made in social media heaven, a twitter documentary being produced by the world’s cutting edge social media press release service.”

PitchEngine is sending out news releases and updates about the upcoming Twitter documentary and also providing social media insights and strategies for the film.

Twittamentary is still inviting contributions from Twitter users. The movie website is a crowdsourced, interactive platform for Twitter users to share their stories, contribute ideas and even add videos to enrich documentary content. So far the website has received enthusiastic attention and world-wide participation. There are over forty stories contributed by people from around the globe sharing their twitter stories on a broad array of topics from business to friends, travel to languages.

Siok Siok Tan, director of Twittamentary, says, “The most fun and challenging aspect of this project would be to select the most fascinating stories from all these great stories.”

Earlier this week Twittamentary confirmed world top blog ReadWriteWeb as a media partner.So far the documentary has already confirmed ReadWriteWeb, PitchEngine, CFM, Open Web Asia and Electric Brain as partners and is looking forward to announcing more partners in the weeks to come. If you are interested, please drop a note via Twitter to @twittamentary or @sioksiok.

MetraTech Corp. (http://www.metratech.com/), the charging, billing, settlement and customer care product provider has announced that it is now enabling customers, partners, journalists, analysts and the industry at large to keep up-to-date in real-time with news and views via its new Facebook page. The page can be located via the social networking page: http://www.metratech.com/NewsEvents/SocialNetworkingBlogs.aspx
Facebook is a hugely influential social networking website across the globe. Its mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Millions of people use Facebook everyday to keep up with friends, colleagues, information; share links, photos and videos; and learn more about the people they meet and companies they do business with.

MetraTech’s Facebook page will include news, articles, whitepapers, discussions, photos and videos related to company activities. Readers are invited to contribute their own opinions and observations on the site. To start following MetraTech via Facebook, simply go to the link above and click follow, or join Facebook and search for MetraTech.

“We understand the power of engaging in open communication within social networks,” said Vladimir Mitrasinovic, executive vice president, sales & marketing, MetraTech Corp. “Facebook is a wildly successful social network and we are looking forward to participating within the community and taking part in dialogs about billing, customer care and the importance of dynamic business models.”

Earlier this year, MetraTech launched a blog and a Twitter presence. Facebook continues the company’s commitment to social networking.

About MetraTech

MetraTech Corp. offers a new approach to charging, billing, settlement and customer care enabling organizations to embrace change without compromise. MetraNet, our flagship product, is unique in its ability to automate business processes and business models that address rapidly changing, complex or radical business strategies across any industry for an unlimited number of services. MetraNet is deployed globally, enabling diverse customers to build innovative and successful business models, securely collect revenue, and manage their entire customer lifecycle in some 12 languages, 26 currencies and 90 countries. MetraTech offers a variety of delivery options ranging from licensing to outsourcing.

Latest News: http://www.metratech.com/NewsEvents/LatestNews.aspx

Social Networking and Blogging: http://www.metratech.com/NewsEvents/SocialNetworkingBlogs.aspx

Facebook today announced plans to further improve people’s control over their information and enable them to make more informed choices about their privacy. These improvements will include new notifications, additions to Facebook’s Privacy Policy, and technical changes designed to give people more transparency and control over the information they provide to third-party applications.

The changes announced are a result of the company’s work with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, which has spent more than a year reviewing Facebook’s privacy policies and controls. In their report, The Office of the Privacy Commissioner gratefully acknowledged Facebook’s cooperation in the course of the investigation and commended Facebook for providing its users with extensive privacy settings. The Commissioner also made a number of recommendations, to which Facebook has responded with commitments for significant enhancements that will be implemented over the next 12 months. The Commissioner has reviewed these proposals and is satisfied with the commitments Facebook has made.

“Our productive and constructive dialogue with the Commissioner’s office has given us an opportunity to improve our policies and practices in a way that will provide even greater transparency and control for Facebook users,” said Elliot Schrage, Vice-President of Global Communications and Public Policy at Facebook. “We believe that these changes are not only great for our users and address all of the Commissioners’ outstanding concerns, but they also set a new standard for the industry.”

Specific changes Facebook will be making:

• Updating the Privacy Policy to better describe a number of practices, including the reasons for the collection of date of birth, account memorialization for deceased users, the distinction between account deactivation and deletion, and how its advertising programs work.

• Encouraging users to review their privacy settings to make sure the defaults and selections reflect the user’s preferences.

• Increasing the understanding and control a user has over the information accessed by third-party applications. Specifically, Facebook will introduce a new permissions model that will require applications to specify the categories of information they wish to access and obtain express consent from the user before any data is shared. In addition, the user will also have to specifically approve any access to their friends’ information, which would still be subject to the friend’s privacy and application settings.

Work on the planned changes will begin immediately. However, some changes will take some time before they are visible. For example, updates to the Privacy Policy will require a notice and comment period for users. In addition, the changes to how users share information with third-party applications will require significant time and resources, both for the updating and testing of the new Facebook API, and for third-party application developers to reprogram and test their applications. Facebook anticipates this entire process will take approximately 12 months.

“We strongly believe that the changes to the permission model for third-party applications will give users more confidence in Platform and will, thus, help ensure the long-term health and vitality of the ecosystem that has grown around Platform,” said Ethan Beard, Director of Platform Product Marketing at Facebook. “We will be communicating regularly with developers about the changes and we’re going to take our time to make sure the outcome is something users understand and that developers have ample time and notice to adapt.”

About Facebook

Founded in February 2004, Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment. Facebook is a privately held company and is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif.

With the launch of Heritage Auction Galleries has now placed its bidder-members and followers right in the middle of the American Social Media boom.

The recent additions of a Heritage Auction Galleries page on Facebook, where all the latest press releases and pertinent announcements from the company are posted, complimented with frequent updates from Heritage on Twitter.com and daily postings on The Heritage Blog, make it easy for Heritage users to follow the day-to-day media happenings at Heritage Auction Galleries. You can view a compete archive of Heritage press releases at www.HA.com/PR.

Besides updates regarding the latest press releases, prices realized and special lots, visitors to the Heritage Social Media page will also be able to follow Halperin via his Twitter account, receiving updates and insight from one of Heritage’s co-founders.

“The increasing power of social media is impossible to ignore in this day and age,” said Jim Halperin, Heritage Co-Found. “Heritage has always been in the forefront of technological innovation, and we intend to lead the way among major auction houses with our social media initiatives.”

Heritage Auction Galleries is the world?s third largest auction house, and by far the largest auctioneer of rare collectibles, with annual sales more than $700 million, and 450,000+ registered online bidder members. For more information about Heritage’s auctions, and to join and gain access to a complete record of prices realized, along with full-color, enlargeable photos of each lot, please visit www.HA.com.

PeoplePond, a leading online service providing increased personal brand visibility, easy reputation management and advanced identity verification services within a single platform, announced today that bloggers can prove they are who they say they are and claim ownership of their blogs.

PeoplePond is able to confirm blog ownership for bloggers who use blogging platforms that support OpenID or Oauth. Notable examples include Blogger, LiveJournal, Drupal, and WordPress. Ownership will be confirmed and viewable on the blogger’s PeoplePond profile.
“This is part of our continued effort to enable those using PeoplePond to verify ownership of their online identities wherever they may be, including blogs,” said PeoplePond CTO, Al Castle. “Our purpose is to help promote and protect our users’ online identity. Look for more leadership in this area from the PeoplePond team very soon.”

Additionally, the PeoplePond Identity Verification service confirms to profile visitors that the profile owner has proven they are who they say they are. This takes the teeth out of online identity thieves by providing a bona fide point of reference for online identity. Combining personal identity verification with service authentication provides visitors of PeoplePond profiles a means to know exactly who they are engaging online.

PeoplePond profiles enable personal brands to achieve greater visibility in online search results by training search engines to provide higher ranking to their online identity. Each PeoplePond profile is designed to provide the owner full control to implement a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that consolidates, verifies and boosts visibility for their entire online identity.

PeoplePond recently launched a sister site, CompanyPond, that boosts visibility of a company’s online identity by leveraging the numerous PeoplePond profiles a company has. This also trains search engines to promote online content produced by staff, evangelists, board members, etc. in their company’s search results.

About PeoplePond
PeoplePond (www.peoplepond.com) and CompanyPond (www.companypond.com) are part of the Cranberry Venture Partners, LLC network of Web sites. Cranberry is home to an unmatched team of innovative developers led by Internet visionary David McInnis. McInnis is best known for founding the first direct-to-consumer news service, PRWeb, which changed the way the world uses press releases. For more information about PeoplePond, LLC and the Cranberry Venture Partners, LLC network of Web sites visit www.cranberryventurepartners.com.

Los Angeles-based travel tour provider Tours4Fun has capitalized on social media by setting up shop across the spectrum of social networks from Twitter to Facebook to Myspace and Youtube. Social media has taken communication and the sharing of information over the Internet to another level. Recognizing the effective leverage that social media provides to connect with people all over the world, Tours4Fun has established itself on all the prominent networks, providing answers to all customer inquiries.

Twitter and Facebook have taken social networking by storm and Tours4Fun has been active on both sites for quite some time now. By publishing posts related to travel news, destinations and tips on planning your vacation, Tours4Fun has gained an impressive following on Twitter. In addition, Tours4Fun uses MySpace as a platform to interact with travel enthusiasts all over the world. “We realize that in the digital age, having multiple channels of communication is in the best interest of our customers and company” said Kevin Du, Co-Founder of Tours4Fun, Webeez, Inc.

Tours4Fun has also acknowledged the rising popularity of social bookmarking sites, by gaining visibility on Delicious and Newsvine. These sites exercise a non-hierarchical keyword categorization system in which users can tag each of their bookmarks with a number of freely chosen keywords thereby increasing search engine visibility. Tours4Fun utilizes these time-saving and easy to use methods of sharing their exciting travel related news by bookmarking on these sites.

To further spread the word across the expanses of the World Wide Web, Tours4Fun also employs the real time feed aggregator FriendFeed to consolidate all the posts from their social sites and blog. An interactive blog that is rich with travel information, where readers can participate and leave comments regarding some of their helpful “Find Things to Do” or even ask questions about special travel deals. Tours4Fun invites all inquiries and or suggestions, which is why they can be found on all the major fronts of social media.

About Tours4Fun
Tours4Fun, founded in 2006, is a thriving online travel supplier, dedicated to providing the finest online purchasing experience for all your travel needs. Tours4Fun strives to be the ultimate online travel superstore with the widest selection and best prices. http://www.tours4fun.com

What is the next thing for Social Networking? Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and their competitors let you find friends, build brands, and form groups. But a newer site lets you do those things, plus monopolize a chunk of the Internet around a social issue, philosophical question, research problem, niche art form, or environmental challenge that you are passionate about. And all for free. The rationale for the World Mind Network (WMN) stems from events over the last five years or so – the advent of new Web 2.0 tools which have hit society like waves, one after another: MySpace, Skype, Facebook, YouTube, all the various iPhone and Blackberry applications, and now Twitter.

But to a large degree, Web 2.0 tools have been used historically for rather trivial purposes such as games, gossip, silly videos, and inconsequential chatter.

The WMN wants to help people use these tools for grander purposes. Members can use these vastly expanded powers of networking to improve education, do research, build community across political divides, and utilize collaborative online mind-mapping to address common problems. Equally important, their tools allow an individual or small group to attract so much search engine traffic that they may become almost synonymous with their favorite cause.

The WMN Board of Trustees includes five Nobel Laureates.

The first project was helping a multimedia ICT Education center in Kenya receive funding through donation of unused cellphone minutes (SambazaGroup.com).

Joining the World Mind Network is like having a Facebook or Twitter account, but it assumes that one is interested in improving the world somehow. Participants can join a forum devoted to improving science education co-moderated by a Nobel Laureate (Peter Doherty), start a psychological research project, or contribute to an interactive blog on the world economic crisis co-hosted by another Nobelist (Edmund Phelps).

A new project, Twit Lit, invites users to create poems in classic forms short enough to become Twitter feeds (TwitLit.net).

Members are setting up live webcam links between secondary classrooms in South Africa, Macedonia and Japan.

In the works is a program using solar powered cell phones recently invented by Samsung to track the spread of the Aedes mosquito that carries the deadly Dengue fever in East Africa.

The new Institute for Digital Music (Institutefordigitalmusic.ning.com) invites visitors to compose, perform and collaborate with others in creating music through elements such as iPhone apps, Leaf Trombone and Ocarina.

One WMN member is starting a contest to award the best Keitai Shoushetsu, or cell phone novel, a cultural phenomenon that has taken Japan by storm.

A wiki devoted to the psychological effects of H1N1 influenza is at emotionalcontagionandswineflu.wetpaint.com.

For more information, including how to start or co-moderate a project, write to [email protected], or visit www.theworldmindnetwork.net.

This release was issued on behalf of the above organization by Send2Press(R), a unit of Neotrope(R). http://www.Send2Press.com

On the heels of two new online community launches in the past year, Toolbox.com now serves more than 1.6 million members and over 800 advertising partners.

Toolbox.com, the operator of online communities for professional knowledge sharing, announced today that the company is celebrating its 11th anniversary.

In the past year, the Toolbox.com community has grown to more than 1.6 million registered members and receives over 3.2 million unique month visitors. Professionals using the online communities at Toolbox.com have generated more than 2.5 million pages of content.

Since its last anniversary, Toolbox.com has launched new communities and tools to serve the knowledge-sharing needs of executives and professionals. The company has also expanded its team to serve its growing base of advertising partners.

These new offerings include:

Toolbox for HR: launched in October 2008, this new community for HR professionals has grown to more than 20,000 registered members.
Toolbox for Finance: launched in December 2008, this new community for Finance professionals now serves more than 12,000 members.
New Sales Office: opened in April 2009 in San Francisco, this new office serves Toolbox.com’s West Coast advertising partners.
Newsfeed: launched in May 2009, this tool displays updates from a community member’s network of connections directly on their personal home page to keep them current on the user-generated content that matters most to them.
Ask-a-Question: launched in July 2009, this upgrade streamlines the discussion group experience for professionals by suggesting similar asked-and-answered questions as well as the appropriate groups for new questions.
Ratings and Achievements System: launched in July 2009, this proprietary ratings system enables professionals to rate the posts of their peers, earn recognition for their contributions, and build their reputation and personal brand.

“Over the past 11 years, we have seen a clear evolution in the way professionals use online communities, from quick-fix answers to workplace problems to a resource for peer-tested best practices,” commented George Krautzel, president and co-founder of Toolbox.com. “Now these same professionals are using Toolbox.com to build their professional reputations and personal brands. It is also exciting to see our advertising partners take this cue by increasing their engagement with the community, providing relevant and quality content, and building their own brands in the process.”

To learn more, please visitwww.Toolbox.com.

About Toolbox.com

Toolbox.com helps professionals do their jobs better by enabling them to easily share knowledge with experienced peers. The online communities at Toolbox.com include professional networking, blogs, discussion groups, wikis, and a vendor research directory through which executives and professionals collaborate to solve problems, make decisions, and increase workplace efficiency. Through the community, advertising partners can engage prospects and customers either directly or by integrating their message through a proprietary contextual matching engine. This combination of community and advertising value has made Toolbox.com a leading destination for professionals and a leader in online advertising. Toolbox.com is a division of Corporate Executive Board (NASDAQ: EXBD). For more information, visit www.toolbox.com