Draper earned his "Captain Crunch" nickname after he realized that the toy whistles packaged in boxes of Cap'n Crunch cereal created the perfect 2600 Hz tone - the same tone used on telephones with single frequency controls. From here, Draper was able to create a "blue box" that mimicked the tones used by various phone companies and was able to take control of the international phone network to make free long-distance calls.

After reading an Esquire article about Draper in 1971, Wozniak admits he then went on to create his own devices to emit similar tones and even went so far as to make a prank call to the Pope. A number of articles including one quoting John Draper go on to suggest that Wozniak and Jobs sold blue boxes out of their dorm rooms for money.

So how on earth has Apple's playful hacker spirit manifested into such a culture of fear? While it's true that phone hacks can be well utilized by unsavory criminals, the vast majority of iPhone jail breakers simply want to utilize 3rd party applications that are not available in the App Store. ReadWriteWeb has already covered a number of reputable applications in this category including Spotify and Google Voice.

Says EFF spokesperson Fred von Lohmann," The culture of tinkering (or hacking, if you prefer) is an important part of our innovation economy. Many iPhone owners will be happy to choose solely from the applications that Apple is willing to approve...but if you want to pop the hood, the DMCA surely shouldn't stand in your way."

Photo credit for Steve Wozniak's Blue Box at the Computer History Museum: Wikipedia User RaD man

As "volunteering" is defined as "working on behalf of others without being motivated by financial or material gain," this seems like a strange use of the word. In the case of employees deferring pay, this seems more like an unfortunate burden rather than an act of volunteerism. If you're an experienced professional looking to stay sharp and you've got the freedom to contribute to actual volunteer-driven efforts or you'd like to try working for a cause-based organization, below are some great resources:

2. Care 2: Care 2 claims to be the world's largest listing of jobs with socially responsible companies. The site offers a list of environmental and renewable-energy related jobs including positions for design and construction specialists with LEED certifications.

3. Idealist: Idealist is a project of Action Without Borders and lists a number of job and volunteer opportunities for those looking to become change agents. The site focuses specifically on addressing social and environmental problems and volunteers can do everything from building a shelter in Ghana to becoming a board member with a North American environmental agency.

4. Volunteer Match: San Francisco-based Volunteer Match helps almost 70,000 nonprofit organizations provide direct services and advocacy to our communities. Whether you're interested in driving a Meals on Wheels van or trekking to Nepal to rebuild structures of historical significance, Volunteer Match offers a variety of options.

5.Nonprofit Technology Network: NTEN is an extremely well-known group in the nonprofit world. Their annual conference draws some of the industry's best cause-tech experts including my personal favorite, Beth Kanter. The job site lists IT support, development and media director positions with great organizations across the country.

6. Opportunity Knocks: Opportunity Knocks is a great place to find jobs in the non-profit sector. The site allows users to narrow search results down by salary, city and cause-related interest. There's also a resume tool where users can upload multiple CVs and apply to jobs within the system.

7. Treehugger: Treehugger is one of the leading green networks and was acquired in 2007 by Discovery to help power their Planet Green channel. The site has always offered a variety of tips and articles on sustainable living, environmental justice and holistic health. The jobs site offers volunteer and paid positions for companies and organizations who've made a real commitment to sustainability.

8. NetSquared: While not specifically a volunteer or job site, NetSquared offers cause-tech innovators the opportunity to contribute to global solutions. The site issues challenges to tech-savvy innovators, and volunteers answer the challenges with mobile SMS aid solutions, social action map mash ups and Twitter fundraising tools.

9. YouTube's Video Volunteer Program: As a project of All For Good, the YouTube Video Volunteer Program matches budding filmmakers with NGO's that require promotional or educational video material. Some of the current project applicants include Alaska's Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Heart of America's Warriors and Earth.org's Open Travel Guide.

If you've got additional volunteer matching resources, feel free to add them in the comments below.

Choosy is designed to help get all of those applicants from various job sites into one place for team review. It's a straightforward and simple system - with some very thoughtful technical features.

Given that HR tools aren't usually where one looks for technical innovation, I was pleasantly surprised to see Choosy using Clickpass to establish its accounts. This made setting up an account incredibly easy.

Once the account is set up, users can began adding job postings. Each posting automatically creates a reference page containing all of the job information - designed to be used as the reference URL in postings on job sites - and a form that allows applicants to upload a resume to apply for the job. There's also the option to upload other documents, like cover letters. The system even fires off an automated message, letting the applicant know that the resume has been received. (The only thing that would have made applying easier would have been the option to point to a LinkedIn page, instead.)

As resumes enter the system, you'll encounter the second thoughtful technical feature: Scribd integration. Thanks to Scribd, every resume is viewable through the Choosy. No need to download PDFs or convert file formats. Multiple users can review and rate the resumes. Or the team can decline the applicant with the option of sending a rejection letter.

All in all, Choosy does a fine job of simplifying the usually arduous process of collecting resumes and rating applicants. And it streamlines the all too often ignored communications between the applicant and the organization.

Companies can get one job posting with unlimited applicants and unlimited company users for free. Plans start at $24 per month, with a free 30-day trial.

The Resumator

Like the idea of simplifying the hiring process but need more power? Then The Resumator may be exactly what you're seeking. The Resumator offers the same sort of functions as Choosy - including Scribd integration - but it adds a number of other interesting features to assist with promoting jobs and tracking the flow of resumes through the organization.

At every step of the way, The Resumator is more complex than Choosy. For some that may be a detractor, but for smaller companies that do a great deal of hiring or HR departments in larger organizations, that complexity - in the form of more granular information about the jobs, the applicants, and the review processes - should be a very welcome addition.

Enabling organizations to more easily review applicants is incredibly helpful. But there need to be some applicants to review. With that in mind, The Resumator appears to have focused a great deal of attention on the process of job listings - the thing that brings applicants in the door in the first place - from providing a simple line of code that allows companies to embed job listings on their site to helping them select and manage the right job boards for their postings:

"When you create a job, The Resumator examines it and works to find global, local and niche job boards for you to potentially advertise your position. Instead of defaulting to the big boards, you may find smaller boards at a lower cost that also deliver more-qualified candidiates."

But it doesn't stop there. As applicants encounter the postings and begin applying, the system collects metrics on which job postings and listing services the candidates are coming from - giving the organization a better idea of where to post jobs in the future.

Once the applicants are in the system, The Resumator allows the organization to collaborate on candidate review. In addition to applicant particulars, the service provides the organization with a 5-star rating system, an area for team comments, and a list of communications with the candidate - all of which are accessible to every member of the hiring team.

The Resumator is available for a flat fee of $59 per month for unlimited jobs, applicants, and users. Registration includes a 30-day free trial period.

So, Who Gets the Gig?

Both of the products do a laudable job of organizing applicants and introducing the "team" dynamic to candidate review. Both tools will save companies the disjointed and disorganized hassle of sharing resumes and feedback via email by moving the candidate review processes to a central location that the entire hiring team can share.

Choosy is simple and straightforward. For small organizations or companies that don't do a great deal of hiring, its ideal for managing the job listing and application process in a team environment - especially if you're sure of where your candidates can be found.

For organizations that are looking for more granular data and metrics - or who aren't sure where their best candidates live and breathe - The Resumator delivers the power of a much larger HR management system for a comparatively infinitesimal price.

It's up to you which way you go: streamlined or analytical. One thing is for sure: either solution will improve the hiring process with which you're struggling today.

Image courtesy woodleywonderworks. Used under Creative Commons.

Companies are being forced to cut costs and let people go. Some smart people aren't sitting around waiting to be downsized - instead they're jumping ship and hopping aboard another.

Whether you are let go or you leave on your own, there is an impact. Of course conventional wisdom says that everyone is replaceable. That may still be true, but the really important question is: at what cost? Is the cost of replacing someone today the same as it was 10 years ago? Just because technology is cheaper and more abundant it does not mean that it is cheap to replace people.

The fact is that we are increasingly becoming a real-time information processing society. Because of that, each one of us processes an increasingly large amount of unique information on a daily basis. Knowledge-based workers are very different from workers on a factory line, and the cost of replacing them is also very different. While companies save money in the short term, the longer term impact of losing a person is not so clear. In this post we look at the impact cutting jobs has on modern companies and try to figure out: are YOU replaceable?

Somewhere In Corporate America 20 Years Ago...

Story 1: Sorry Bob, you've been wonderful, but we will not be needing your services any longer. Here is Jack, fresh out of college, his salary is 25% of yours. Please train him in the next two weeks to do what you do.

Story 2: Hey boss, you've been wonderful, but I found a job that pays twice as much. Here is Jack, fresh out of college, his salary is 25% of mine. I will train him in the next two weeks to do what I do.

The aftermath of both stories is the same: Bob trains Jack in two weeks and then leaves. And even though Jack is very bright and had a 4.0 GPA in college, it is impossible to learn Bob's job in two weeks. It takes about two months for him to become productive. And this is quite a find. The long term cost is substantially lower and company benefits from the employee churn.

Why Today is Different

The problem is that today, two months ramp up time is not acceptable. It is just way too long. For a startup, two months is an eternity, but even for large companies two months is a long time. Today, people need to be replaced real-time - one is out and the next one is in full-speed, day one. This is difficult, particularly because of the incredible amount of information that we end up processing daily.

Increasingly, modern business is becoming a complex, distributed information processing system. The nodes of this system are employees, tirelessly passing bits around to each other, crunching and filtering with the goal to compute, to gain competitive advantage, and to help the business survive.

The problem is that unlike factories or boxes in the computing cloud, employees in the modern company are not identical. Each one knows a unique piece of the information puzzle that makes a company tick. Two weeks is not enough to do the transition and two months is way too long to waste training the new guy. This is why the old adage that everyone is replaceable may need some re-thinking.

The Days of Slackers are Over

Certainly, there are still plenty of examples where slackers are growing old getting paid to work their 9-5 jobs while getting little done. But safe havens for slackers are rapidly diminishing, because they are losing out to smarter, more agile, and faster competition.

A few years ago my wife, who is a clinical pharmacist, worked with a character that ultimately managed to get a pink slip in a huge company that had probably only ever fired one person - him. He started his day by searching the Internet for a rich relative. Yes, you read that correctly, the guy was searching for wealthy family members. At 11am, he walked around the office and asked what people thought would be offered in the cafeteria for lunch. Between 1pm and 2pm, he spent time reading the news, and then typically called his wife to discuss the dinner menu. This is funny, absurd, and sad at the same time. But think about it, can someone like that work in your company? No way! Companies can not afford to have people like this anymore.

The Emergence of the Digital Elite

In a way, the pressure of real-time information is polarizing - the hard-working people are becoming harder to replace, while slackers and perhaps less knowledgeable people are just not needed. We have seen this trend in software engineering for a while - a handful of smart people can accomplish much more than an army of mediocre workers. A skilled, quick professional stands out these days. The people who shine are the people who get the new world - a no-nonsense approach, courtesy, and most importantly, speed.

Recently, my insurance broker switched companies. He quickly contacted me, offered an attractive new package, and then drove 1.5 hours from his office to my home to sign the papers. His commission would not want warrant the trip, but he was smart to make the investment of his time because he won me as a client. On the other hand, the cost of losing a talented employee for his old company just increased - they also lost a client, and I am sure I was not the only one.

Although my insurance agent lives in the technical world, he is part of new breed of folks that I call the digital elite. He uses Facebook to keep in touch with his friends, he was savvy enough to look up my company on the web, and he knows all the cool financial websites. In other words, he is on top of what's going on. He knows all about the speed of information in our world. And this makes him a serious and important player, of the type that is really hard to replace.

Are Leaders and Visionaries Replaceable?

Clearly, after Bradley Horowitz moves to Google, Yahoo! survives. He will be replaced by someone else just as talented and as passionate and the ship will sail forward. But saying that he will be replaced is very different from computing the cost of his departure. Losing leaders and visionaries is very, very costly. The knowledge, the vision, and the game plan that was in his head is unique and can not be replicated.

Great companies are defined by the great people behind them. There are no great companies without visionary leaders. And if you agree that all knowledge workers are becoming increasingly more valuable, the leaders are then 10 times more valuable. Retention of key leaders and managers is paramount to the success of modern large companies. So I am sure that Bradley, who grew through the ranks at Yahoo! and was one of the faces of the company, will be greatly missed.

Conclusion

And yet, churn is such a huge part of nature! Our world is based on transition and change. Changing jobs is an integral part of your career path. When people move around, society benefits from knowledge sharing and new alliances that lead to great new ideas. Remixing is good for both individuals and companies, so there is no way that churn will ever stop.

But still, it is now becoming more costly for the companies. Because of the increasing amount of information processing done by individuals and the uniqueness of each, getting replacements up to speed is more costly. Retaining and motivating the digital elite should be recognized as a high priority for any company.

So, tell us how you feel about all of this? Do you feel insecure in your current position? Are you looking for a new job? What is your company doing to motivate and retain key people?

Top image credit: New York Times

You can tune into the show, and interact with us via the chat, by clicking here. You can also use the Calliflower Facebook app to tune in and participate.

Join the regulars from RWW Live, plus:

• Charlie O'Donnell, co-founder and CEO of Path 101, a "Community Powered Career Discovery" service.
• Paul Forster, co-founder and CEO of Indeed, a search engine for jobs.
• Dion Lim, President & Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Simply Hired, also a job search engine.

RWW Live is hosted as always by Sean Ammirati, with Marshall Kirkpatrick and Bernard Lunn from ReadWriteWeb on the call.

Before the show starts, we're interested in what questions you have for the panelists. Please leave a comment on this post and one of the RWW crew on the call (Sean, Marshall and Bernard) will do our best to ask your question.

We will post the audio from the show at the end, but we hope you join us LIVE on Calliflower or Facebook.

Example questions:

• How has the current economic environment effected each of their businesses?
• What career needs of individuals are not currently supported by online tools but should be?
• What do the panelists think is the most common misunderstanding among people using online career tools?
• If someone is listening to this podcast and looking for a new job, what advice would the panelists give them?

UPDATE: the show is now finished, here is the audio:

Download MP3

We asked 20 top-tier tech bloggers and social media consultants to tell us how much they get paid, by the post, by the hour or by the month - however their rates are set. Half of them told us, on the condition that we wouldn't disclose who they were or where they worked.

There are a handful of people in tech blogging that make even more than this but the vast majority of people who get paid to blog get paid far less. To be honest we have no idea what it's like outside the Web 2.0 world. (Honestly, is it raining?) We hope that no one will be too angry with us if these numbers lead their employees to feel newly shortchanged and protest. These folks are at the top of their field.

Our methodology was to email people we trust to be honest and who trust us to keep their identities secret, and ask them to post anonymously their rates and the rates they can confirm of co-workers or employees they've overseen within the last year. We realized after performing the survey that we should have asked our respondents whether the current US economic downturn was impacting their rates but to be honest, it didn't occur to us to ask. Maybe that tells you something, too.

We were told pay rates for per-post blogging jobs, full-time blog and social media jobs and for hourly consulting.

Payment Per Blog Post

Most people who are paid to blog are paid per post. What kinds of rates are our respondents seeing? The low end of the scale was $10 per post for very short posts. Almost everyone else said they were paid $25 per post. One person said they were paid $80 per post! One respondent said they were paid $200 per item of long-form writing; bloggers often do other kinds of writing as well.

How does this work out long term? Based on our experience working for many different blogs, we believe that most per-post blogging gigs assume you'll write an average of 3 blog posts in 4 hours. It often takes longer than that to write 3 posts but ambitious bloggers, like the ones we surveyed, know that at this stage you put in extra unpaid hours just to get ahead.

Let's say these people are half-time pro-bloggers making $25 per post, writing 3 posts per day. That's $75 per half-day, a little less than $20 per hour, about $1500 to $1750 per month for half time work. Take two of those jobs at once, do it for a year, and you'll make about $40k. Everyone's got different arrangements, though, so it's hard to take these kinds of annual projections too seriously.

The world is full of people who would be insanely jealous of people who make $40k a year blogging, if it was widely known that you could do that for a living. The biggest rewards aren't the money, though, but the thrill of writing and the ability to dedicate time to the subject you love.

The truth is, very few people are able to get jobs like this. A small number of those who are so lucky take the next step, financially, and move into a full time position with a blog or go in-house doing social media work at a marketing agency or software company.

The Wages of the In-house/Full-Time Blogger

Career minded bloggers coming up through the ranks of the per-post writers sometimes land full time jobs writing, managing other part time bloggers and performing other social media activities like events planning, promotion, etc. Sometimes this work is done as an employee, sometimes as an extended "consulting" relationship. Some of them get work at blogs, others do similar work for marketing firms and software companies. The founders of the big tech blogs now spend most of their time running the businesses they started. These second-in-command type social media positions have a wide range of pay rates.

Our respondents reported annual pay rates ranging from $45k and $55k with benefits (!) up to $70k, $80k and $90k with bonuses. We're tempted to say, based on the anonymously submitted but descriptive replies we got, that the closer to pure journalism our respondents were doing the lower their wages were. That's not always the case, but social media management and working for marketing firms were clear indicators of higher end pay rates. That makes sense.

Based on our experience and conversations in the industry, we can say that all of the people doing this work full time are putting in at least 50 to 60 hour work weeks, often longer. That means most are making the equivalent of $20 to $35 dollars per hour. One factor not taken into consideration here is equity, the full time bloggers and in-house social media pros who are working for startups are hoping to get a nice payday in the unlikely event that their company is acquired.

There are certainly a handful of full time bloggers making six figures, as well. Robert Scoble famously noted that even after everything he did to humanize Microsoft, they never paid him $100k annually, so we presume he's making more than that at Fast Company. He's barely a blogger, but Walt Mossberg is rumored to be paid $1 million per year. It's safe to assume that some in the upper echelon of traditional media reporters now blogging for mainstream press are making more than anyone we surveyed as well.

Consulting - The Big Money

Social media consultants, expert practitioners with multiple years of success in the kinds of positions discussed above and in some cases in traditional marketing jobs, are the ones making the most money.

No one we surveyed named an hourly consulting rate below $150 per hour. $300 per hour was the most common rate named. Some listed monthly rates of $2k to $4k per engagement, which we assume probably means 20 to 40 hours per month.

Social media (or in many cases Search Engine Optimization) consulting is probably making a fair number of people six figures. What are these people doing? They are advising companies on how to set up and run blogs, how to reach out to and relate to bloggers, how to use Twitter (seriously) and how to make advanced use of RSS. The SEO work is probably the most technical, but degrees of technical challenge are all relative. A lot of this work is about communication skills.

It's a new world online and people with experience succeeding in it are widely sought-after by businesses wanting to catch up fast. There's a nearly bottomless need for and a strong demand for high-quality social media consulting - the big challenge is bridging the gap between living a Web 2.0 life and reaching out effectively to people.

We believe there are a fair number of snake-oil salespeople in the social media consulting field as well, but we didn't survey any of those people.

Conclusion - This Part of the Economy Has Been Strong, if Small, So Far

We don't want to claim that there are a lot of people making the kind of money discussed above for blogging or consulting. It's still a very small sector. Between advertising and venture capital, revenues in this sector can't be considered secure during a time of economic down turn.

There are far more people working in social media industries making less money than the people discussed above and the vast majority of participants don't make any money at all in this economy. Making money isn't really the point for most people, but there is an economy around social media and so some people are making money. We believe that this informal survey shows how much money some of the top people in the sector are making. Does this sound crazy to you? Compared to other professions does it seem like too little money? Far too much? Let us know what you think in comments below.

Illustration titled "Blogging Au Plein Air, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot" by Flickr user Mike Licht

Many of today's web sites for seeking employment seem like they haven't been updated in years - many don't even offer RSS feeds! It's as if the whole shift to a more social web has completely passed them by. It's about time those static sites received a little competition...and now they have it. Compared to the others, PaidInterviews is more innovative, but, like most new sites, it will only be disruptive if they can build a large enough network of users.

What makes PaidInterviews different is that it's more of a social network than a job search web site. And before the LinkedIn comparisons start up, remember that this site is designed solely to connect potential employees with employers - a feature that's only one aspect of what LinkedIn offers. PaidInterviews is more focused on "careers" than "contacts."

Using PaidInterviews

On the site, users create profiles and fill them out with the expected info like education, work history, skill set, etc. But there are also Web 2.0 aspects to these profiles - things like profile photos and tags, for example. Also, one of the big differences is that on PaidInterviews, potential employees have the option to upload video resumes along with their other information. Several spots are provided where you have the option to upload any sort of videos you want. The site does offer some suggestions, though, based on traditional interview questions ("What are some of your strengths and weaknesses?", "Why should you be hired?" etc.)

Video resumes may be the next big thing for job seekers, but few sites have implemented them so far. (We looked at few of those sites earlier this year on the post "The Resume, Rebooted" available here).

Optimatch Technology

Another difference between PaidInterviews and the current crop of job sites is the way they match candidates to jobs. Instead of simple keyword-based matching (which leads to spammy invites from recruiters who just scour the database for a particular word), PaidInterviews uses a patented "Optimatch" technology. Like "eHarmony for jobs," optimatch works by having candidates fill out and rate various aspects about their ideal career (pay, lifestyle, benefits, commute, skills, etc.). On the other end, employers then see matches ranked by percentage of the best (highest %) matches to the worst (lowest %) .

Optimatch in Action

Business Model

Employers don't get to see a candidate's personal info unless they're ready to interview, at which point they need to make arrangements to pay. However, the business model for PaidInterviews is very different - commission fees aren't paid to recruiters, but to the candidates themselves - sort of a "sign on" bonus thanks to using the site.

Candidates name their asking fee which is then matched to an employer's bid fee and this fee is paid by the employers on top of the employee's salary. If a candidate and employer are a good match but the asking fee and bid don't match up, they can both negotiate to reach an agreed ask fee. PaidInterviews believes this will lead to higher-quality candidates - it may or may not, but it's an interesting experiment. Considering that the youngest crop of workers (Gen Y) sees their skill set as a commodity available to whichever employer makes it most worth their while, this creative model might just gain traction.

Watercooler

The other big feature of this site is an area called the "Watercooler," which is a place where you can ask and answer questions about what a particular company is like. Here you can talk about what you liked/didn't like about the company. Since your username will display here, you may not want to go with your traditional web handle when signing up for PaidInterviews. Let the site instead generate a user ID for you so you can anonymously share your real thoughts.

Conclusion

Will PaidInterviews take off? It's too soon tell, but they have a lot of great features that make it a more appealing career search web site than what we currently have available today. There is certainly a lack of social media-infused innovation in this market, so it's nice to see they are doing something unique.

"Community Manager" is a position being hired for at a good number of large corporations (see Jeremiah Owyang's growing list of people with that kind of job) but what about smaller companies? We asked a number of people what they thought and the following discussion offers some great things to think about, pro and con.

A community manager can do many things (see below) but the most succinct definition of the role that we can offer is this. A community manager is someone who communicates with a company's users/customers, development team and executives and other stake holders in order to clarify and amplify the work of all parties. They probably provide customer service, highlight best use-cases of a product, make first contact in some potential business partnerships and increase the public visibility of the company they work for.

True believers can't emphasize the importance of the role enough. John Mark Walker, the Community Manager at CollabNet articulates this perspective well: "I firmly believe that the community manager should be one of the first hires - right after a solid engineering group and before you invest in corporate marketing people."

Not everyone sees it that way, something that causes substantial distress for people in the supply chain who are advocates for the CM role. "Start ups and all companies that exist online need to be looking at a community manager as a salaried position," said Dylan Boyd of eROI. "We have been working with big brands and it kills me when they just give 'social media' to someone that already has 10 other roles...At Omma Social last month in NYC that topic came up asking all the people in the room from Big brands if they had a community manager. 90% of them did not and are still trying to find out how to spec out a job description in order to hire for it."

Dissenters: Community Management Does Not Need to Be a Full Time Job

Others see community management as something that doesn't need to be a full time job. "Community management is essentially a public relationship issue, so whoever picks up that gauntlet is on point for representing their company to the rest of us," consultant Peat Bakke told us. "It doesn't have to be a specific person or a full time job, but it is part of starting and running a business, almost by definition: if you're in business, you're doing community management whether you like it or not."

Some would go so far as to call an explicit community manager position a bad idea in the early days of a startup. Darius A Monsef IV, Executive Editor & Creator, COLOURlovers.com told us he thinks that in the early days founders need to be in the thick of managing their own communities.

Jonas Anderson voiced concern about community managers being caught between loyalties to the company and its users, while being tripped up by employer nondisclosure agreements. (Others though, such as former BBC blog producer Robin Hamman, point out that having a community manager can greatly reduce legal risk when a company engages extensively with its users.)

Startup founder Sachin Agarwal splits his time between community and other work. Though he wishes he had more time for this kind of work, a full timer isn't necessary, he says. "Our contact us page encourages people to ask each other and post on other sites before coming to us - we're happy to help, but I'd wager that other users know how to get the most out of our site better than even we do."

Similarly, Twine's Candice Nobles says after some consideration being given to the position, her company found that their users have been incredibly self-organized and regulating so far.

While those thoughts might seem valid, consultant Dawn Foster emphasized that for some companies - making one person ultimately responsible for community work can be essential. "For startups where community is a critical element of the product or service," she told us, "I think that a community manager should be an early hire. Without a community manager, the frantic pace of the startup environment can mean that the community gets neglected simply because no single person is tasked with being responsible for it. This neglect could result in failure for the startup if the community is critical."

Can Founders Manage Their Communities?

We talk to a lot of CEOs on the phone here at ReadWriteWeb and we'll try to be polite in answering this question. Andraz Tori, CTO at Zemanta answers this question diplomatically. "The [community manager] role can be played by one of the founders early on, but as the project grows you need a person that knows how to listen," he told us. "Founders have a vision and might be a bit stubborn about what their product represents and offers (that's why they are founders). Someone a bit more distanced might be much better community manager since he has a lot more empathy for users and their problems and can relay that to developers and managers. And vice versa."

Pete Burgeson, director of marketing for online marketplace crowdSPRING says that a good community manager can help raise the voice of the users themselves. "We want to be able to build a platform for our community to have a voice, showcase their talent and become as active in speaking for crowdSPRING as we are speaking for ourselves."

Still others believe that users may not want to talk to the founder or a community manager, but some one with tech chops and focus. "I think a startup should put a developer in the community as opposed to a 'community manager'", Rob Diana told us. "Even though the developer may not be as good of a communicator as a marketing guy, there is a different type of understanding of what people want."

What Does A Community Manager Do?

There are many ways that a community manager can benefit a startup company and it often varies from company to company. Eva Schweber, co-founder of CubeSpace says "it depends on the community and what needs to be managed...the style and distractability of the folks in the startup, how they like to collaborate with peers and how they define their peers."

It's a complicated job, but one that can help bring cohesiveness to the life of a company. "Any opportunity to interact with the community forces one to think about the product/feature considerations and ramifications of one choice over another," says Nagaraju Bandaru of SmartWebBlog. "In many ways, community manager is the evangelist for company's products and the voice of the customer in internal discussions. It's critical to react to online discussions with skill, consistency and aptitude; The role is hard to understand from outside but impossible to miss once a startup is in execution mode."

This coherent communication can have business development benefits as well. This seems to us to be one of the most important benefits of the position. Graeme Thickins, VP of Marketing at doapp explains:
"Their world includes the online community that represents both prospective customers/users, as well as strategic partner companies, possible future investors, future employees, and more. Perhaps thinking in terms of a 'listening manager' would help a lot of startup founders better come to grips with what this job is all about."

Carol Leaman from AideRSS says investing in a community manager position has helped her company "gain maximum benefit from our early adopters and growing base of users, as it's a key link between them and our development team. NOT having someone on this full-time would impede our growth and success. We consider ourselves fortunate to have both realized this need early, and to have found an amazing Community Manager to fill the role."

Does that have to be one person in particular? AideRSS's Melanie Baker explains that specialization is as appropriate in this role as in others. "While especially at startups there's a shortage of bodies and it's all hands on deck, not all hands are best suited to all activities," she said. "No one would want me writing code, and I wouldn't necessarily want just anyone talking to frustrated users, for example. It's also totally a hybrid role. My background involves marketing, web, QA, and writing, and I use all of it as a community manager. Someone with a more specialized background can certainly learn what it takes, but might have a hard time wrapping his/her head around the customer service/marketing/business analysis/tech support/software testing/documentation/journalist needs of the role."

"You need someone who understands the fundamental distinction that while you want to grow your user base, a user base does not equal a community," Baker said. "The best success involves growing the former while making every effort to evolve them into the latter. Because communities grow themselves organically a lot more easily than user bases do."

Isn't it ultimately about marketing? Kim Bardakian, Sr. Communications Manager, at the wonderful music site Pandora put it this way: "Pandora just created this position about four months ago and it's been INVALUABLE to our company, in such a short time! It's opened a whole new world of communications for us! Lucia Willow fills that role for us and she's great. With the iPhone/Pandora launch on Friday, the Twitter network and followers were making tons of buzz! It was very exciting.. "

Is Community Management the New PR?

Others see PR evolving towards a community management type of role in this increasingly social world. "I particularly liked the reference to PR as 'public relationships', interjected Kathleen Mazzocco ClearPR. "[That] conveys the directness and transparency of today's new PR. How can it not be given the open conversations going on? That's why Community Managers are the critical new PR position."

PR has long got a bad rap, though, and if PR pros are going to get into social media (they are already here in large quantities) then there may be some challenges to their ability to play a community management role. "The idea of a 'community manager' is a good one as long as that person has the freedom to discuss the negatives as well as the positives of the company's efforts," says Dave Allen of Nemo Design. "If we consider all the aspects of social media as PR 2.0 then I would argue that it is a very important position given that companies would hardly have gone without PR 1.0. I posted a top 10 list of what you might call a 'community manager's' activities might be like here."
(Disclosure: the author has a consulting relationship with Nemo)

Is This Worth Paying For?

Why would a busy little startup spend precious money on this kind of role?

"While a Community Manager isn't the same as a traditional PR role, ideally they should work together," says Meredith from A Little Clarity. "Startups are in a blur; often they're being run by engineers with VCs looking over their shoulders -- they don't know from community managers; so there should be some accountability, and that's the tricky part. Do you measure connections? Responsiveness? Transparent 'public relationships?' Whatever it is that your company will value, get it out there and agree on it, because one thing startups don't always have is time to do it right after getting burned."

You want tangible? Semantic web researcher Yihong Ding will give you tangible! He says that community managers are tasked with tending the most precious asset that many startups have staked their future on - user content.

"As we know, most of the Web 2.0 companies are built upon user generated content," he told us. "Philosophically, User Generated Content is embodied human mind. This embodied mind is generally the fundamental asset for the company. Maintaining a proper community so that users may embody their mind with high quality is thus a central issue for the growth of the company. The duty of community managers is to supervise and maintain the high-quality production of the fundamental mind asset used by the company. Therefore, I would say that community manager is a critical job title for most of the Web 2.0 companies."

We agree with Yihong. User data and community content are the foundation that web 2.0 style innovation and company valuations rest on. Failing to focus meaningfully on tending those assets is a foolish choice.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this conversation. We hope readers will contribute their thoughts in comments below.

CC photo by Flickr user ItzaFineDay.

Hiring college students to work online is desirable for a number of reasons. Below we discuss some of those reasons and offer a short list of alternatives to working on the dark side online.

We hired our two newest because they are awesome, but here are some general themes underlying why college students in general have some key advantages in the new online economy.

Why Hire College Students?

Schedule flexibility

While some news blogging work is done on a strict schedule, it's also regularly going on at all hours of the day and night. Presumably that's even more the case for online criminal organizations - the labor being hired for can go on at any hour but sometimes there's probably some code-busting that needs to be done in a hurry. College students are more used to working in short bursts, at odd times, than a typical family-aged full timer responsible for a mortgage is.

In the competitive worlds of professional blogging and organized crime, you can either work 24-7 or you can be ready and able to work at just the right times, no matter when those might be.

They have at least some training

New tools have enabled a far wider number of people to work online than ever before. How many of us bloggers would be writing online all day were it not for easy to use CMS software? Similarly, the barriers to entry in coding get lower every day as well. While all of that is wonderful for the world at large, when companies are making hiring decisions, it's nice to have access to some candidates with at least some formal training in the basics and beyond. It's great when people come up from outside academia (it's better than great - it's fantastic), but for day in and day out hiring - college students are very nice to be able to evaluate to fill positions.

High turnover is OK

The new economy of online work is one of high turnover, including quick occupational advancement. Students are often available for a summer, or a single year, and are far happier with such arrangements than the vast majority of people would be.

They are affordable

Let's not kid ourselves - the traditional reason businesses hire college students is that they don't have salary requirements as high as other people. An interesting wrinkle to this part of the story, though, is that the organized criminal groups hiring students are paying them particularly well.

Paul Simmonds, chief information security officer for AstraZeneca, commented on the original story linked to above, highlighted in subsequent coverage on Geek.com:

The root cause of the issue is that the bad guys are better funded than we are ... They have research and development programmes, they are putting people through university, they are calculating return on investment and they have better quality assurance. By comparison, the legitimate security industry is under-funded, under-resourced and constantly on the back foot.

Ouch, that hurts. Insurgent blogs challenging traditional mainstream media cannot say the same thing - we are not in a position to outbid old media in pay. As web-based new media grows more competitive, though, we may find more startups changing their priorities to offer premium pay to hot college workers.

Resume driven

College is a time in a person's life when building up the resume from scratch is a top priority. Right now this is mitigated to some degree by the relatively low profile of even most top players online (low brand recognition) but that's sure to change soon.

While students working legitimately online have a great opportunity to work as hard as possible and greatly strengthen their resumes, it's sad to think about students unwittingly hired by black-hat firms they thought were legitimate security consultancies. They may very well find themselves in a endless downward spiral of code-breaking, long nights of opium smoking and a resume that grows increasingly seedy every day. It might not be all that bad - but we're sure there are some people who would like to avoid such a fate!

Other places you can look for work

Are you a coding or social media savvy college student? Consider looking for tech work in the non-profit world. Sites like Idealist.org, NetSquared or NTEN are good places to find nonprofit tech jobs or introductions to organizations that might be hiring.

They won't pay you as well, their tech will be lagging behind the bleeding edge (that's where you come in?) and you'll likely spend a fair amount of time frustrated watching the for-profit sector eat your lunch - but for many people it's a great arrangement.

Or, if you'd like to get a job blogging - that's a great option too. You missed your chance for now here at RWW - but try checking out the top blogs in any other niche, keep your eyes peeled (or a spliced feed filtered for keywords) and you may very well get a chance soon. The opportunities for students to work online, for good or for evil, are growing in number quickly.

In your email, tell me a bit about yourself and why you want to write for RWW. It also helps if you are a current blogger and point to a few examples of your best work.

Photo credit: ekai

Companies are being forced to cut costs and let people go. Some smart people aren't sitting around waiting to be downsized - instead they're jumping ship and hopping aboard another.

The fact is that we are increasingly becoming a real-time information processing society. Because of that, each one of us processes an increasingly large amount of unique information on a daily basis. Knowledge-based workers are very different from workers on a factory line, and the cost of replacing them is also very different. While companies save money in the short term, the longer term impact of losing a person is not so clear. In this post we look at the impact cutting jobs has on modern companies and try to figure out: are YOU replaceable?

Somewhere In Corporate America 20 Years Ago...

Story 1: Sorry Bob, you've been wonderful, but we will not be needing your services any longer. Here is Jack, fresh out of college, his salary is 25% of yours. Please train him in the next two weeks to do what you do.

Story 2: Hey boss, you've been wonderful, but I found a job that pays twice as much. Here is Jack, fresh out of college, his salary is 25% of mine. I will train him in the next two weeks to do what I do.

The aftermath of both stories is the same: Bob trains Jack in two weeks and then leaves. And even though Jack is very bright and had a 4.0 GPA in college, it is impossible to learn Bob's job in two weeks. It takes about two months for him to become productive. And this is quite a find. The long term cost is substantially lower and company benefits from the employee churn.

Why Today is Different

The problem is that today, two months ramp up time is not acceptable. It is just way too long. For a startup, two months is an eternity, but even for large companies two months is a long time. Today, people need to be replaced real-time - one is out and the next one is in full-speed, day one. This is difficult, particularly because of the incredible amount of information that we end up processing daily.

Increasingly, modern business is becoming a complex, distributed information processing system. The nodes of this system are employees, tirelessly passing bits around to each other, crunching and filtering with the goal to compute, to gain competitive advantage, and to help the business survive.

The problem is that unlike factories or boxes in the computing cloud, employees in the modern company are not identical. Each one knows a unique piece of the information puzzle that makes a company tick. Two weeks is not enough to do the transition and two months is way to long to waste training up the new guy. This is why the old adage that everyone is replaceable may need some re-thinking.

The Days of Slackers are Over

Certainly, there are still plenty of examples where slackers are growing old getting paid to work their 9-5 jobs while getting little done. But safe havens for slackers are rapidly diminishing, because they are losing out to smarter, more agile, and faster competition.

A few years ago my wife, who is a clinical pharmacist, worked with a character that ultimately managed to get a pink slip in a huge company that had probably only ever fired one person - him. He started his day by searching the Internet for a rich relative. Yes, you read that correctly, the guy was searching for wealthy family members. At 11am, he walked around the office and asked what people thought would be offered in the cafeteria for lunch. Between 1pm and 2pm, he spent time reading the news, and then typically called his wife to discuss the dinner menu. This is funny, absurd, and sad at the same time. But think about it, can someone like that work in your company? No way! Companies can not afford to have people like this anymore.

The Emergence of the Digital Elite

In a way, the pressure of real-time information is polarizing - the hard working people are becoming harder to replace, while slackers and perhaps less knowledgeable people are just not needed. We have seen this trend in software engineering for a while - a handful of smart people can accomplish much more than an army of mediocre workers. A skilled, quick professional stands out these days. The people who shine are the people who get the new world - a no nonsense approach, courtesy, and most importantly, speed.

Recently, my insurance broker switched companies. He quickly contacted me, offered an attractive new package, and then drove 1.5 hours from his office to my home to sign the papers. His commission would not want warrant the trip, but he was smart to make the investment of his time because he won me as a client. On the other hand, the cost of losing a talented employee for his old company just increased - they also lost a client, and I am sure I was not the only one.

Although my insurance agent lives in the technical world, he is part of new breed of folks that I call the digital elite. He uses Facebook to keep in touch with his friends, he was savvy enough to look up my company on the web, and he knows all the cool financial web sites. In other words, he is on top of what's going on. He knows all about the speed of information in our world. And this makes him a serious and important player, of the type that is really hard to replace.

Are Leaders and Visionaries Replaceable?

Clearly after Bradley Horowitz moves to Google, Yahoo! survives. He will be replaced with someone else just as talented and as passionate and the ship will sail forward. But saying that he will be replaced is very different from computing the cost of his departure. Losing leaders and visionaries is very, very costly. The knowledge, the vision, and the game plan that was in his head is unique and can not be replicated.

Great companies are defined by the great people behind them. There are no great companies without visionary leaders. And if you agree that all knowledge workers are becoming increasingly more valuable, the leaders are then 10 times more valuable. Retention of key leaders and managers is paramount to the success of modern large companies. So I am sure that Bradley, who grew through the ranks at Yahoo! and was one of the faces of the company, will be greatly missed.

Conclusion

And yet, churn is such a huge part of nature! Our world is based on transitions and changes. Changing jobs is an integral part of your career path. When people move around, society benefits from knowledge sharing and new alliances that lead to great new ideas. Remixing is good for both individuals and companies, so there is no way that churn will ever stop.

But still, it is now becoming more costly for the companies. Because of the increasing amount of information processing done by individuals and the uniqueness of each, getting replacements up to speed is more costly. Retaining and motivating the digital elite should be recognized as a high priority for any company.

So, tell us how you feel about all of this? Do you feel insecure in your current position? Are you looking for a new job? What is your company doing to motivate and retain key people?

Top image credit: New York Times