The Good and the Not So Good

Social Recruitment Gaining Popularity

In India, recruitment through social networking sites constitute about 2% of all hiringthe trend estimated to grow exponentially to over 20% in the near future. Looks like recruiters, HR consultancy firms, and various individual companies have finally realized the potential of this medium. Almost 87% of the Indian employees utilize social networks to check up on an organizations work culture, and 75% of the Indian employees depend on social media to stay updated on developments taking place in companies where they are scheduled to appear for an interview. The Jobvite survey revealed that LinkedIn is the most preferred avenue of social recruitment, with over 87% companies depending on it. Facebook comes a distant second with 55% and is closely followed by Twitter with 47%. This further highlights the importance of embracing social media as an indispensable tool on the part of every organization. Social recruitment, currently a trend, is slated to become the norm very soon.

GrouponSailing Through Difficult Waters

Groupons journey in India has been marked with some rough patches. Just last year, it acquired Sosasta.com and re-branded it to Groupon India, but faced a lot of hurdles within 6 months of the acquisition. The company had to admit to a data breach which resulted in sensitive data of the Groupon users being posted openly on the internet. To add to their woes, a rift took place between their global management and the India team with respect to decisions and policies. Groupon seems to be sailing through some difficult waters and sailors too are leaving the ship. Ananya and Udayan Bubna who started Sosasta.com and were CEO and COO, respectively of its re-branded avatar have quit to start another e-commerce venture. Its chief of operations, Margo Georgladis, also moved on to Google. Meanwhile, Rocket Internet, a key promoter behind Groupon International, plans to invest in a new e-commerce website soon. Acquisitions can be very strange indeed!

Cloud Service Online

Its important to have documents and data readily accessible to facilitate important events such as university admissions, property buying or selling, loan applications, legal contract work, insurance claims processes, manage medical records, to name a few. However considerable time and effort is expended in searching, re-producing, authenticating, validating, and archiving of such documents. While many corporations are going the way of the cloud, a good example has been that of Oystor (www.oystor.com) being used as a billing system. Instead of mailing or emailing invoices, some law firms, accounting firms, design studios, and IT companies simply upload invoices and other supporting documents onto Oystor and share it with their clients, logistics providers, accountants, and employees. Being stored safely, like pearls within Oystor!

SkypeTime for Self-scrutiny

Since its $8.5 bn acquisition by Microsoft in 2010, Skype is all set to be integrated into the next iteration of the Windows Operating System (Windows 8). Undoubtedly, Skype has been one of the most used internet services to get in touch with family and friends. But this could soon change if it turns a deaf ear to the warnings. According to research conducted by scientists at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, a Skype users Internet Protocol (IP) address can still be vulnerable to theft even if the person does not accept an incoming call on the service. Your location apart, adept hackers can easily access your download history and your activities online. This has potential to wreak havoc in aspects like politics, business, and even terrorism prevention. Time for self-scrutiny!

Shop the Walmart Way

A perfect example of mix and usage of online social media for e-commerce in retail, the player being none other than Walmart. You can find Shopycat the Social Gift Finder at />



Anand Rajaraman announced the launch of Shopycat, an app for Facebook, for making gifting to loved ones a leisurely and fun task. He is incidentally the co-founder along with Venky Harinarayanan of Kosmix, a social media utility, which was acquired by Walmart for its own e-commerce purposes and where he continues to be involved with the product in capacity as SVP, Walmart Global e-commerce/Kosmix.

Anand says in his blogpost of November 30Today at @WalmartLabs, were launching Shopycat, a Facebook app, that makes gift-giving less stressful and more fun. There are 2 steps to finding the perfect gift. The first step is knowing the tastes and interests of the recipient. Shopycat infers the interests of each of your friends by analyzing their Facebook activity through likes, shares, and posts using our social genome technology. For example, Shopycat notices that my friend Joe keeps posting about the Red Sox, and infers that he is a Red Soxand therefore a baseball fan. Shopycat analyzes likes and shares to infer tastes as varied as Harry Potter, running, Angry Birds, sushi, yoga, and parenting to recommend gifts.

The second step is to search across a large universe of products to find the one wow gift that doesnt break the bank. Shopycat matches users interests to a giant catalog that includes products from Walmart.com, Walmart, and sites including Barnes and Noble, RedEnvelope, ThinkGeek, and Hot Topic. For users who are not very active on Facebook, Shopycat will recommend appropriate gift cards from Walmart, iTunes, Starbucks, and Zynga. And for last minute shoppers, the app also shows the location of the nearest Walmart store to pick up your gifts.

A simple yet innovative strategyone can now look forward to easy gifting and receiving, right from casual to last-minute shopping at Walmart.