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

When should kids be allowed to use social networking sites? By Jenney Cheever

Social networking sites have become a way of life for teens today. Sites like MySpace and Facebook allow teens to chat with friends, share photos and videos, support causes and play games. While all of those activities sound innocent enough, these types of social networking sites are not without danger. Posting a profile can expose your child to potential cyber hazards, such as Internet predators and cyber bullying. Before allowing your child to post a profile and use a social networking site, it is essential to make sure she is old enough to use them responsibly and safely. But how can you tell if your child is ready for social networking?

Check Age Limits
The two most popular social networking sites, Facebook and MySpace, require that users be at least 13 years of age. However, this does not mean that all 13 years olds are ready to use these sites. Before allowing your young teen to join, made sure he is old enough to understand the potential dangers involved, and that he knows how to keep himself safe while online.

No Identifying Information

Make sure your child knows not to reveal any identifying information about herself, such as her full name, school or address. It is best for kids to use a nickname, or just their first name when making a profile page. Make sure your child knows not to "friend" anyone she doesn't know in real life. Remind her that online friends are not the same as real-world friends, and that people can pretend to be someone they're not. Personal information should never be given to online friends, no matter how well you think you "know" them.  

Long-Term Consequences
It is also essential to make sure that your child understands that the Internet is visible to everyone, everywhere. Anything he posts on his page could possibly be viewed by anyone in the world. It is easy for younger kids to feel like what they are posting is only going to be viewed by their own friends, but in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Be sure your child knows not to post anything on his profile page that he wouldn't want to show Grandma or the school principal. Pictures and comments could come back to haunt your child years later when he's applying to colleges or looking for a job. Whenever something is posted, it's forever, because other people can download it and save it.  

Above all, use your own judgment when determining is social networking is appropriate for your child. You know your kid best!.

My personal opinion:

This article is talking about the consequences of using a social network and gives some advices to the parents to know when they can allow their child to use it.

They are two social networks that are the ones that are more used by the teens, Facebook and MySpace. With these social networks you can make a lot of things, like share photos, videos, also you can play games. These things can be addictive for the teens because they don’t realize the dangerous of something so simple.

The writer gives for the parents some advices to make sure that the children use it correctly. The first one is check ages limits, I’m completely agree with her because if a child is very young are not sufficiently mature to know if they are using correctly or not. The parents have to make sure that they understand the responsibility and know some of the consequences. The problem comes when without the permission of the parents the child make a social network, they can do it behind the parents it’s very difficult to control if they have a Facebook account.  It can influence the friends, nowadays everyone one have and speak about that social networks and it’s very difficult to ignore. Another advice is to control de information that you publish at the red. The child´s have to now that everyone can look that information. The writer explain that we cannot put in that webs personal information for example the place where we live, personally I think that every one put it. The person don’t realize that everyone can take that information and used for know about that person, also they can take the photos.

 I´m not agree in one think that the writer mention at the end of the article when tells that “other people can download it and save it”, because you can choose if you want to permit if people can download or not, these social networks give the opportunity to prohibit some thinks that help to control the privacy and also this social pages are make to entertain and share information. But we cannot forget all that points before using. 

To conclude, I think that parents should not permit children to us these social networks, In my opinion it´s more convenient for people are around 16 years old, this since is the time when you start to be aware of the consequences that internet make gave on their lives.

BY: ANA FIGUEREO

AN ARTICLE OF THE SOCIAL NETWORKS, BY: MATHEW INGRAM

Will Social News Make People Use LinkedIn More Often?

In its latest attempt to build social-networking features into its business, LinkedIn, which has filed to go public, launched a news recommendation service on Thursday called LinkedIn Today that it hopes will function like a specialized Twitter for business networks. Although some believe that it has a chance to be “the Wall Street Journal of social news,” it remains to be seen whether LinkedIn users really want it to become a news aggregator, or whether this is yet another copycat social feature the network is bolting on that few people will ever use.
The idea behind LinkedIn Today is a simple one: The network pulls in Twitter feeds from many of its users who have connected their accounts, and links to websites are also shared in other ways. So the new service compiles theoretically personalized — or at least topic- or industry-focused — lists of relevant links from the people you follow or are connected to through the LinkedIn network, and displays them as a newspaper-style page. You can also see what people in a particular industry are sharing. (LinkedIn also launched some other new features during its call on Thursday, including a network-visualization tool called InMaps and some enhanced search features).
Former LinkedIn staffer and CrossLoop founder Mrinal Desai is enthusiastic about the idea of LinkedIn curating the news for him, because he says it can target headlines and links more effectively based on the connections he has made inside his LinkedIn social graph. But the screenshot that Desai includes in his post provides a perfect example of the flaws in this strategy: The number one most-shared link is about Charlie Sheen and how he got a Guinness World Record for getting to one million Twitter followers.
Is that the kind of crucial business-related news that can only be curated by a business-focused social network? No. It’s the same most-shared link you would find by going to virtually any other aggregator such as Yahoo News. And that’s a potential flaw for LinkedIn’s new service in terms of getting traction with users.


MY PERSONAL OPINION:

The article is about LinkedIn, the finantition of this, and the time that people spend conecting and cration relations. From my point of view this article treats the social networks as a merely economic business.

The networks socials are much more than simple connections between persons and companies, the social networks are the future and there are going to change the way of reporting and will also change the mass media.

It wiil be a moment in which to be connected will be a way of living and it will be the only way of living. All the companies, schools, universities ... they were using this way to be internally related, and this for me will be a negative aspect, because you will be constant in connection with the work.

As it says the article the journalists who write the news will be using the social networks to write his news, and his influence on the society will be stronger. We can see clearly nowadays the strong influence of the social networks, we have a great example, the current conflicts that it is being in egipt, it come unleashed by the social networks, the population was move because of the social networks.

To finish I only want to say that partly I agree with the article for the fact that LinkedIn is going to be used more frequently, because it needs several sources of information and not only one to have relations with other companies and take true information.

By: Llanos Meseguer

A FILM ABOUT FACEBOOK

This video is the official trailer of the film The Social Network, about Facebook.
Nowadays facebook is one of social networks more used, this have millions of members in the whole world. This movie speaks about the creation of this social network that is the most important social network nowadays. It shows what, when, who and where it became. Furthermore it shows the conflicts that this company has taken, like the financial conflicts on who was the real creator of facebook, and the social conflicts of the creation of facebook, like the privacy.
The creator of Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg he created facebook when he was studying in Harvard, his principal idea was creat a place where the people post his tastes, friends, relationships, feelings, photos, videos, coments... Nowadays Facebook has more than 500 million users registered about the whole world.

Facebook is not only a social network, it is much more, it is a way of knowing new people, also a way to entertainment. It is a way to knowing new people because you have the option to search friends, facebook joined many people that were taking a lot of time without knowing anything of each other. Also it is a way of entertainment because it has games and applications, with you can play with others, and each one from his own computer.

By: Llanos Meseguer

Who we are?

Hello, I am Llanos, I’m 18 years

old, and I am one of the creative

ones of this blog. I am from Barcelona,

but actually I live in Cornellà.

Now I’m studying first of publicity and

public relations in UIC (international

university of Catalonia), as my friend

Ana, the other creative of this blog.

One of my big interests it’s the painting, I do draws in water-color,

and I paint streets and landscapes. Furthermore I like act in plays,
already I took part in different contests with a group of theatre and the

experience was wonderful, moreover we won some contests.

Moreover all the plays in which I have taken part have been musicals,
some of them are: Cuidam, Fama, Los arboles mueren de pie,
El espantapajaros, Rayo de luna, Oriente… and now I’m testing in
the musical The ghost of the opera.
Finally you have to know that I am very sincere, so many of the
articles and thinks that we are going to upload in this blog about the
social networks, it’s possible that you will see in our comments
our opinion.

My name is Ana, I am 18 years old,

I am the other member of this blog.  I am from

canary island to be more specific from the island

of Lanzarote (Spain). Now I’m leaving in Bcn

in a resident of students.   I’m studying First of

Publicity and   public relations in UIC (International

University of Catalonia).

I will explain you my life on Lanzarote. I was
living  in a medium house near de coast , with
my parents and my big sister. I went for a private
bilingual school during all my life. It´s an island
that doesn’t have a lot of things to do but the few things that have are very
special and spectacular.

On the other hand, I have a lot of hobbies, but the one that I prefer is playing tennis.

I started going to a small centre of tennis when I was 7 years all. Here in BCN I

haven’t got enough time to practice but on my free times I organized a tennis match

with some of my friends.

To sum up, Llanos and I , we are creating this blog about the social networks, and

we are going to be able to proportionate a lot of  knowledge of this topic, with

comments, personal opinions, videos, articles…

The reason of our choice

The reason of our choice is becuase  the great importance
that the social networks have nowadays in our world  we
have been changing  the traditional forms of communication 
with the new technologies and technological advances.   
The Internet has substituted as communicative channel the
telephone, the television and the letters.


Lets start with a short introduction about the history of the
social networks:

About 2001 and 2002 they began  the  friends' networks.
About 2003 they become popular by the appearance of
such sites as Friendster, Tribe and Myspace.
Companies enter to the social Networks.
The social networks start when a group of initiators invite
friends and acquaintances to forming a part of the social 
network, every new member can bring and  obtain
members and the growth of this social network can be 
geometric.

And is here that transforms in an interesting business.
We believe that a good example of this is Facebook,a social
network based on students, very similar to myspace, with
million registered users and where there has been an important
advertising investment of Microsoft. 

The social networks have taken prestige that is considered 
to be fundamental and necessary for the communication and
to create our capacities.


Will this change carry a positive result?
Why? Wh not?


Nowadays Tuenti and Facebook are the social networks more
used every day by people in our world. To enter the social
network it is not necessary to have many previous technological 
knowledge. The format is very simple and thanks to his chara-

cteristics the persons prefer using the Internet to communicate.

Because  is cheaper and effective friends, to share his experiences,

to take part in events, holidays .

Thanks to these social networks you can meet again with the

persons that at any one time the contact got lost, it is necessary

to try to support a link.The social networks not only are using

for gossip the life of the others. Also they are in use from a

professional point of view: companies, political parties.

Across the social networks the companies can do advertising 
of his products or services

Disadvantages of Social Network 

Another disadvantage of this “new” technology is that it is

addictive,and in the social networks you can lose your

privacy. This is a really insecure factor because one

person of another part of the world, can damage you,

if they know all about you.

And the use of computers and mobile phones makes you

write worse, because principally the young people, write

texts messages and post something in their social networks,

writing with abbreviators and a bad spelling.

How is our blog going to be organized?

Our blog is created by a series of income, videos, comentss,
links, articles.... All of them related to the topic of the social
networks.

a video about the social networks