Feel lost in the world of social media? When you feel like you’ve been buried, you’ve been stumbling upon all the wrong things, the birds have stopped tweeting and you don’t know how to face the world of social media there’s no need to worry. Blonde 2.0 can help you learn about all the tools you need to manage a successful social media campaign!

I spoke to Yossi Dan, CEO and Co-Founder of KonoLive, at the TechCrunch and KonoLive sponsered party at LeWeb.  KonoLive is a free application that, in their words, “lets you get things done together with your friends and colleagues.”  Through the KonoLive application, friends and co-workers can create and share documents, To-Do lists and other activities while collaborating.

In our interview (which took place in a very unusual spot ), Yossi talks about what you can do with KonoLive, the company’s revenue model, and his experience at LeWeb.  Watch the video below to see my full interview with Yossi:

Publing is a new site for local classifieds, activities and events where you can actually post your ad or message on bulletins in your neighborhood on Google Maps.  Users can navigate to their address, or the address of their business, and pin up a message advertising a service, asking a question, looking for new friends, looking for love or anything.  Then, other users looking around that neighborhood can see the bulletin and if they are interested, contact the poster, comment on the bulletin with public or private chat or share it with friends.

Publing began in Denver and is also big in France but is not limited to these places.  You can start the ball rolling in your community as well by creating a bulletin board and posting your own classified activity or event.

At LeWeb I attended a presentation of Publing by Co-Founder Laurent Weill who described Publing as “a website which helps people to connect through their hobbies, activities and interests.”  He says that “Publing is love.  Publing is about gathering, helping people, chatting, exchanging, selling, buying, renting…”

To see Laurent’s full presentation, watch the below video:

Last month I had the pleasure of talking with Ezra Butler, LuckyStartups’ Israel correspondant.  In our interview, Ezra and I discuss everything from my personal life and where I grew up to the services I provide as a “one-stop-shop” for startups, plus of course, let’s not forget, Ezra’s love for alcohol and chocolate. We also discuss the difference between American and Israeli mentality, the amazing Israeli tech scene and I offer my own 2 cents to startups:

1. If you don’t know social media, don’t do it on your own!  If you want to do social media on your own then read up first– if you try to do it without guidance, odds are your campaign won’t be a success.  If you want to learn more about how to use social media in the right manner, a few good bloggers to read are Chris Brogan, Chris Heuer, JD Lasica and my own blog.

2. Don’t rush things!  A lot of startups are being pressured by investors to launch, especially during these difficult economic times.  Don’t launch until your product is at its best or you may suffer an unwarranted flop!

Watch the below video to see my full interview:

I recently attended the Facebook Developers Garage in Tel Aviv.  At the Garage, my good friend Net Jacobsson from Facebook, whom I worked with at ICQ, gave a lecture about the new evolution of Facebook– Facebook Connect.

Nat began his lecture by emphasising that Facebook has always seen themselves as a platform for change with the mission of giving users “the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”  Over 140 million active users use the Facebook platform to connect with their friends, organize events and mobilize their communities and social graphs for change.  Facebook looked for ways to give users even more ways to connect and to improve the quality of their experience on Facebook.  Facebook began by translating the site into different languages and actively searching for quality applications and even funding them.  However, Facebook Connect takes the platform to a whole new level, allowing users to take their friends with them to third party sites, creating a whole new experience on the Web.  Facebook Connect is, in Net’s words, “the natural evolution of the Facebook platform.”

Facebook Connect allows you to use your Facebook profile around the Web as your personal identity card.  You can use it to easily create your profile in participating sites, find your Facebook friends on these sites and easily send your activity and content from these sites back to your Facebook feed.  This is great for Facebook because it drives new content to their site and great for participating sites because it drives traffic back to them as well.  Everything is also opt-in so none of your online actions will be published to Facebook without your permission.

Facebook Connect introduces a new way for users to connect with friends, share and control information across the Web.  It will be exciting to see where Facebook goes from here!

To see Net’s full lecture, check out the videos below. Due to YouTube regulations, I had to divide the lecture into 3 videos:

You’ve probably heard about this thing called cloud computing– the convergence of virtualization, utility computing and software-as-a-service (SaaS)on a massive scale.  If you want to learn more about cloud computing and the kinds of amazing services that Amazon is offering, you will definitely want to be at the Amazon Web Services Meetup in Tel Aviv. The event is organized by Yossi Vardi and hosted by Tel Aviv University Professor of Microbiology Mel Rosenberg and Martin Buhr, European Business director for Amazon Web Services.

Cloud computing is a concept which refers to SaaS, Web 2.0 and the emergence of new online technologies and services.  In other words, it is a type of computing in which software and resources are provided to users over the Internet as a service.  Instead of purchasing software and installing it and caring for it themselves, users of cloud computing rely on the Internet for their computing needs.  Sound confusing?  I’ve found that this video from rPath, Cloud Computing in Plain English, helps to clear up the confusion.

Amazon Web Services is at the forefront of cloud computing technologies, offering new levels of operational flexibility, scalability and costs savings.  Therefore, it will be very interesting to hear what they have to say about the technologies and future of cloud computing.  The Amazon Web Services Meetup in Tel Aviv will begin on Tuesday at 5pm at the the Bar-Shira Auditorium at Tel Aviv University.  The schedule is as follows:

5:00 – 5:30  Networking
5:30 – 5:45  Opening remarks, Prof. Mel Rosenberg
5:45 – 6:15  Amazon Web Services Overview, Martin Buhr
6:15 – 7:00  Customer Panel
7:00 – 7:15  Open question and answer session
7:15 – 7:30  Closing Remarks, Martin Buhr
7:30 – 8:00  Networking

For more information and to register, visit Amazon Web Services Meetup Tel Aviv

Barack Obama used social media to get himself into the White House and thousands of companies are using social media to create brand awareness and an online buzz.  However, social media can also be used for many other purposes as well. If you work in Human Resources, you may be thinking, “I dont want to get to the White House — I just want to recruit some employees”.  Social networks are an amazing channel for finding potential employees and increasingly becoming an even expected way of finding them.

Social networking is a great recruitment tool for several reasons:

1. Social networks make it easy to build relationships with potential candidates and to create an open channel for discussion through which candidates can feel comfortable enough to approach you and ask you questions. It’s often the case also that people are dissatisfied with their current place of employment but are too afraid to actively look for a job online. By becoming their friend, you build a trusting relationship with them where they feel comfortable to let you know about their desire to find new employment. If you create real close relationships with people, they will feel comfortable enough to forward you their friends’ resumes as well.

2. Through social networks you can easily find relevant candidates for any position by searching for candidates with the skills your company is looking for.

3. When you recruit in social networks your company will reap the added benefit of spreading brand awareness and increasing the desire of others to work at your company.

4. One of the most popular ways to find a potential candidate is through connections.  When you begin recruiting in social networks you expand your personal network so that you can reach a much larger number of potential candidates.

5. Job boards are on the way out and more and more employers are turning to social networks for recruitment.  In fact, according to a recent survey done in the US, 78% of HR executives said that they use social media to recruit employees (see video). If your company doesn’t want to be left behind in the dust, it’s important to start acting today. Especially since there are many unemployed people right now just waiting to find the right job for them.

888 which stands for innovation is one of the first companies in Israel to recruit employees through social networks. I recently gave a lecture at the largest HR conference in the Middle East about how I help them recruit employees through Web 2.0 tools and the benefits of HR 2.0.  Watch the below video to see my lecture:

Technorati tags: social media, brand awareness, online buzz, HR, recruitment, social networking, social networks, potential candidates, employment, Human Resources, job boards, recruit employees, HR conference, 888, HR 2.0, innovation, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 tools

I’ve been receiving a lot of gifts lately as my birthday and the holidays just passed, but one of the coolest things that I’ve received lately was the new Sumsung Omnia i900 phone, which Samsung was kind enough to give me as part of their marketing campaign with McCann Digital.  McCann Digital is turning to social media with this campaign and is actually giving the phone to bloggers to use in their daily lives and share their experiences with their followers/friends.  The phone is pretty neat so I thought I’d share some of its best features with you.

Like the iPhone, the Samsung Omnia has a large touch screen and is based on applications and widgets.  The phone includes a main screen that you can customize with widgets of your choice, including the time in multiple time zones, games and more.  The phone also comes with a variety of useful applications, including FM radio, the “Touch Player” mp3 and video player, enhanced GPS, full Microsoft Office including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote so you can view all of your Office files on the go, the Opera mobile browser and more.  Additionally, the camera on the Samsung Omnia has a really simple interface and shoots nice photos and videos.  One of my favorite features of the Omnia is the RSS reader that updates all my feeds throughout the day to bring me content from my favorite bloggers and friends around the world, as well as a podcast player that I can use to watch all of my friends’ recent podcasts. Thank you Samsung for this very lovely gift.

With all the information on the Web today, it is becoming harder and harder to find good quality content.  There are over 180 million bloggers worldwide and over 150,000 new blogs created each day.  How can you sift through all of this data to get down to the quality content that is most relevant and interesting to you?

BloggersBase is a new Israeli startup, still in Beta, with a vision of making the Internet a better place by bringing quality content to readers.  The site is a competition-based content discovery platform in which bloggers can submit content on a variety of topics, and based on readers’ ratings, the highest quality content is discovered and featured.  The topics on BloggersBase span the content spectrum from Entertainment and Lifestyle to Technology and World Affairs.

BloggersBase takes the form of an online magazine made up of multi-authored blogs, each on a different topic.  The content of these blogs is moderated by an algorithm based on reader ratings and responses, which discovers the highest quality content on the site.  Readers can rate submitted content based on a variety of criteria from professionalism and presentation to value and imaginativeness.  The more accurately you rate, the higher your influence becomes in deciding which content makes it to the top!  This reader influence is one of the things that make BloggersBase so unique — bloggers need to appeal to their readers in order to gain recognition and success.

As a blogger on BloggersBase, not only can you take advantage of the unique opportunity to reach a targeted reader base instantly and receive ratings and critique from your readers, but you can also monetize on your talent in BloggersBase competitions.  At the end of each competition time slot the three most acclaimed bloggers in each topic earn the honor of co-authoring the main blog for their topic, resulting in respect from their peers and exposure.  In addition, the top two bloggers in each blog receive monetary compensation and special prizes.

BloggersBase is bringing bloggers and readers together in an entirely new way and bringing the world an easy way to find targeted, quality content.

I would like to invite you all to join the Social Media blog powered by Blonde 2.0 where anyone who has quality tips to share regarding social media tools, how to enhance your blog, how to utilize social networks, how to create a successful social application, etc. should definitely come and share their findings. To become an author, click here.

Technorati tags: bloggers, blogs, quality content, bloggersbase, Israeli startup, Internet, content discovery platform, online magazine, multi-authored blogs, reader influence, targeted reader base, ratings, competition, social media, social media tools, social networks

Tellmewhere is a collaborative site where users come together to create a database of points of interest in their local areas.  On Tellmewhere you can share your favorite local places, point them out on a map and even upload pictures. You can also search for new and interesting places in your own area that have been recommended by other users.  Tellmewhere also gives users personalized recommendations based on their friends and places that they like.

Tellmewhere isn’t only limited to places to go out to eat or party.  You will also find consumer goods, sighseeing attractions, moving companies, hospitals and more.  You can use this new tool to find everything you need in your local area and spice up your life like never before.

Check out this video of Tellmewhere’s presentation at LeWeb and learn more!