AN ARTICLE OF EMMA KEENS ABOUT SOCIAL NETWORKS AND BANKERS

Hedgehogs – the social network for bankers

Emma Keens

Social media has been the buzzword of the past five years, with everybody, from your best friend to your boss, being a member of Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. Love them or hate them, social networks have changed the way that we communicate, becoming an essential tool for marketers and a barometer of social opinion.

The financial services industry has not let this opportunity pass it by. Banks have shrugged off their stuffy images to promote new products on Twitter and professional services firms such as Ernst & Young have set up Facebook groups to build contacts and relationships with potential employees.

Thus far, the success of social networks aimed directly at financial services professionals has been limited — but change is afoot. Huge numbers of redundancies have meant that go-it-alone bankers have found themselves without the level of support that once they were accustomed to. One site that has identified this gap in the market is Hedgehogs.net, a social network set up by Ken Yeadon and Mike Powell, two former HSBC bankers, that is aimed at smaller hedge funds and investment bankers.

According to Mr Yeadon, the “fundamentally social” nature of banking is what drives Hedgehog’s 2,700-strong membership. “In a large institution, you take for granted that you have a natural set of reference points around you,” he said. “If you come up with a new investment hypothesis, you have instant access to analysts and market makers and so on to test it out. But that is gone once you are in a smaller outfit.”

Experts agree that there is a case for bringing these communities together, but Ian Maude, of Enders Analysis, the media and technology research firm, believes that such sites need to offer more than mere social benefits to succeed. “A lot of these people already have their own networks through the traditional social media sites. What new sites have to ask themselves is what is they offer in addition,” he said.

Mr Yeaden argues, in turn, that he has that issue sewn up. Hedgehogs, which is in its Beta phase of development and feedback as it approaches its fully formed final appearance, not only aggregates news and other social media into one “dashboard” or toolbar, but is said to be the first site to also offer an outlet for members — who could be anyone from analysts to fund managers — to distribute their services.

Moreover, this is only the beginning of Mr Yeadon’s vision of a “social marketplace ... The second issue we identified is that smaller players do not have the same access to expensive data services, such as Bloomberg terminals,” he said. To address this, Hedgehogs is in discussions with financial data providers, such as Thomson Reuters, about offering ad hoc subscription models to members. “The idea is to create a supply chain, where users can get access to the services they need, but also sell their own product and grow their brand at the same time. If they are good, then other users will comment and recommend them.”

Joe Omansky, the founder of SkyRank, the Princeton-based hedge fund rating system, joined Hedgehogs a few months ago and already sells some of his services on the site. He plans to offer a full range in the near future. “Time will tell how much business it will bring in the long run, but if you annualise the performance over the past couple of months, I would say between 25-50 clients,” he said.

Another reason that many financial social networks have failed in the past is the diverse nature of their membership, drawing users from across the industry. Alistair Newton, research vice-president of the banking group at Gartner, thinks that common goals are the key to success: “Generalist sites work because they get lots of people together to talk, essentially, about nothing. Professional sites cannot work that way. They must focus around specific objectives, where sharing and collaboration can deliver tangible business benefits.”

Dawid Konotey-Ahulu, co-founder of Mallowstreet.com, a pension industry network, agrees that a clearly defined membership is key to building a productive dialogue. Mr Konotey-Ahulu and Rob Gardner, his fellow founder of Redington Partners, the pensions advisory firm, launched the site two months ago and already have signed up 200 members, all directly involved in the British pensions industry.

“Asset levels have declined catastrophically and it was clear that there was not enough communication in the industry,” Mr Konotey-Ahulu said. “Now trustees can draw from the wisdom of the crowd, but a targeted crowd, in a way that was not easily available before.”


MY PERSONAL OPINION:

From my point of view, I articulate this one the Emma Keens of Timesl, it reflects very well as the companies and the banks have started being interested for the phenomenon of the social networks. There is evident the impact that this are having in the companies, and these social networks can be in use for being announced or to invest in them as financing source for some banks.

When it started many social networks like facebook did not want to have advertisers in his pages, because it towards more attractive, but when this did not obtain anything, and they needed to pay the expenses that it needs to have a web page, it is for this that it started to having some advertisers and companies were announcing in these pages, like that some companies began to announce and the banks to begin to invest in this phenomenon that nowadays this is having very much success.

So, like say Emma Keens: "the financial services industry has not let this opportunity pass it by", and "banks have shrugged off their stuffy images to promote new products on Twitter", and the most important "the success of social networks aimed directly at financial services professionals has been limited"


BY: LLANOS MESEGUER

FACEBOOK ADDICTION

       This video is talking about the addictive of social networks, Facebook. In the video we can see different examples of people telling how many times they connect to Facebook in a day. The most of the people connects once or twice a day. But how many time, an hour, two hours? They are a lot of people that waste a lot of time being connected; they post comments, see photos, watching videos. But the question is: why is so addictive? In my opinion probably is so addictive because it is a social network that is around the world. As the video said, Facebook it has been translated into 70 languages, all of them are very different. That makes connect a lot of different people, with different culture, ideology, society...  Personally I think that is a good point to share information, photos, from different parts of the world because let learn you from other ones. The problem comes when that starts to be extremely addictive.

Nowadays there are more than 500 million people on Facebook that spend 5 billion minutes on Facebook each month. You can enter to Facebook any electronic device, for example if you have to wait for someone, you can enter to Facebook with your mobile phone if you have internet, and it’s a way to not get bored. But sometimes, people prefer stay at home and being connected to Facebook than going out with friends or learning new things.  The users of Facebook try to have the most possible number of friends from different ages. Are they friends? It´s a real relation friendship? In my opinion to have a friend you have to meet face to face. Facebook makes people to live in a virtual world.

 By: Ana Figuereo

social networks and social media

This viedo questions if the social media is a fad, or is the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution.

The social media and it includes the social networks, is a revolution. In facebook added 100 millions of users in less than nine months, and this is a revolution, because never before it happens. It is a reality that the social networks are revolutionizing the forms of comunicaion and work of this world, the globalization is a reality that is lived nowadays. Nowadays everything is faster, we are in a constant change that taking this one to us to another stage of the history. When it will finish? We don't know it. But what we know is that to be able to live nowadays is necessary to be connected to the network.

The manners of obtaining information and of knowing of the rest of countries this one changing, already we don't resort to the former encyclopedias, now we use Internet. The Web more comon to serch information is Wikipedia, and the more comon to serch viedos is Youtube. the users of this webs is growing every day.

The use of all these new forms of communication and of obtaining information, are changing the traditional habits up to the date. Nowadays there are a lot of schools that use these sources of information and of communication to teach his subjects.

Now our duty is take advantage of these new inventions and to extract a maximum benefit of them, doing that they all are of benefit and not only someones.

BY: LLANOS MESEGUER

PRIVACY AND SOCIAL NETWORKS

This video is about the privacy in the social networks, like facebook, tuenti...

Since already we have seen previously, the topic of the privacity in the social networks is one very controversial. It seems that it is very easy to know everything on other persons and that they all can know on your life. Nowadays the people hang on his profiles all his emotional life, photos, videoes, condition ... thinking that only his friends can see it. We have a blind faith in the social networks, but I could have verified wiht my computer, that I can enter and see the friends' photos of my friends that I don't take it as friends, and also I can enter the profiles of the friends of the above mentioned, and this way constant.

When you create your profile you mark a few points of safety, but there are things of your profile that you cannot do that others do not see. There are persons that this it is not important if his profile has a privacy, but they are true the cases at that when someone looks for a working place the company to which the curriculum comes to him looks in the social networks to know more on this person whom they are going to contract.

In my personal opinion, I am one of the users of facebook, and realy I don't matter of the privacy, the think that I do is not post anything that could me take problems. I think that this is a very good solutiont of this problem. Don't post the thinks that can hurt you.

BY: LLANOS MESEGUER

Facebook VS MySpace

         In this video we can see de fluency of the different social networks. I choose the first two minutes of the video because I think that it´s enough to understand the content. When you are a member of a social network you speak with other users, add videos, create and participate in events, add photos, videos, a lot of things. The different social networks have different format of pages, and also different tolls. Some of them are more formal, other more informal, also can focus in the organizations another on entertainment. In the end all of them have the same finality that is permit de communication with others.  

In the video, explain the attitude of the picture that try to express that he don’t want to collaborate more with the social network MySpace and that he is going to connect with Facebook. There is a lot of competence with all of the different social networks, but the ones that are more famous are: Facebook, Tuenti (Spain), My Space .

In my opinion I think that those socials networks are a good way of communication but we have to decided to register only in one because if we register in a few of them, can takes some consequences, for example: have aggregate a lot of strange friend, a lot of events, play a lot of plays, that means that we lost a lot of time, and it’s not necessary to do all that things. We have to be responsible and try to make as way of entertainment without depending in it.

VS

BY: Ana Figuereo

Precautions to Take When Meeting People Face to Face

• Introduction:    

      As we get to know people online, there may be times when we want to meet them in person in the real world. It is extremely important that we take precautions before meeting face-to-face with someone from online. Criminals and fraudsters can easily fake their identities and pretend to be someone else while online in order to lure victims into meeting with them in person.

You can also chat with a person on the phone before meeting them in person, but be careful to block your caller ID or use an anonymous phone service like Skype. Never use your home phone or give out your phone number as this information can be used to identify and locate you.

• Warning Signs

Review the following tips to avoid running into trouble with people you meet face to face.

Trust your instincts and pay attention when something doesn't feel right. Watch for "red flags" and questionable characteristics. Is the person too controlling? Do they talk badly about others? Do they avoid certain questions? Are they quick to get mad? Your "gut instincts" are a good measure of whether you should proceed with someone or end things right away.

Take your time and maintain control. At any time you feel uncomfortable, you have the right to walk away and end communications without any need to explain. Do not allow someone to persuade or badger you into moving forward before you are comfortable with doing so. If a person is genuine, then they will understand your need to take things slow.

End things with someone who brings up "sex talk" too soon or asks about money. These people are almost always insincere and could end up scamming or harming you.

Avoid drinking alcohol before or during your meeting, as this can impair your ability to judge another person and the safety of the circumstances.

  In my opinion:

Nowadays, a big number of teen of our society are not able to speak face to face. Why? Personally, I think that the reasons are the social networks, like Facebook. The people who us it they are always write at the computer all the things that think but then when they have to express face to face in a real and not virtual conversation, they are not able to do it, because they get nervous and they start to think that they are saying stupid things.

At social networks the people can connect and speak with people that they don’t know. In my opinion I think that is very dangerous because that people can take you personal information to do bad things and with that information they can manipulate our identity. However with those social networks the companies can used to be communicating with the client. You can post propaganda, events, and also make a directly contact with the client and trying to explain the products o services that the company gives.  It’s an advantage because is not necessary to met face to face to all that number of people that want personal information, you can do it with the red. This article gives some advices and rules to know if a conversation is going in a good way or not. The writer says that have to trust your instincts and pay attention when something doesn't feel right. Also say that we have to take our time and maintain control and when the other one start to speak about “Sex” too soon or asks about money you probably should go out.

BY: Ana Figuereo

A video of how to use a social network

           This video tell us the history of the Christian religion, is a way to give example of some characteristic from social networks. The persons comment all the things that think. For example, they create events, aggregate friends, make comments, changed the profile... All the things that happened during the day they put it at the red. For example we can see at the video when they put it “ its a boy”, is something that they put it to show to all the people, this video is only an example of the mechanism. Is a way to be interconnected with our friends .But not only with our friend, because some people don’t want to have privacy and they prefer to show all about them.                                                                                                                      

 Being connecting the 24 hours of a day it has positive things, however in my opinion it has more negative. Here I’m going to give some reasons of my opinion. The first thing is that if you start to connect all the day it can be addictive and also dangerous, you start to depend, you stay all the day thinking different ideas to make a publication... When you speak with a friend face to face you don’t have anything to say because all the things are mentioned. I think that the social networking is a way to get entertainment but not for write important things of our lives, in this case, they speak about a wedding, a baby... Important things of our lives.. why we put it and all of the people knows? Those things give the happiness?

To conclude, I personally think that all social networking are making bad for the people and only a few know de dangerous of the problem and think that the social networks don’t have any responsibility.  

BY: ANA FIGUEREO