Description

Social media—also referred to as Web 2.0—describes online platforms and technologies that allow people to interact, collaborate, share information, and publish content on the Web in a simple, user-friendly way. Examples of social media include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, podcasting, videocasting, and RSS feeds, to name a few.

The year of 2008 is another one of increased visibility for social media as use transitions from a novelty to a part of mainstream culture. Social networking sites continue to see significant growth in traffic, while advertisers allocate higher percentages of their marketing budgets toward capturing the attention of those site visitors. The space also has become more crowded as the success of category giants MySpace and Facebook, has opened the door for long-tail niche social networks to emerge.

The acceptance of OpenSocial and Facebook platforms has led to the proliferation of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) by third parties into the space. Even now, amidst an economic recession, the momentum has continued.

Even mainstream recruitment advertising Web sites have started to incorporate social media as part of their product offerings. In January 2008, Monster Worldwide announced that it had acquired Affinity Labs, a network of vertical community sites, for approximately $61 million. More recently, CareerBuilder, like Jobster before it, announced strategic partnerships with Facebook. Job aggregator Simply Hired has created applications on MySpace and Facebook that can be customized into widgets on individuals' profile pages or desktops.

Yet despite the growth and adoption, in the minds of human resources professionals, the question still remains: Can the use of social media positively impact an organization’s recruitment marketing efforts…?