jobwire - ReadWriteWeb http://www.readwriteweb.com/feeds/tag/jobwire en Copyright 2009 Richard MacManus readwriteweb@gmail.com Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:36:29 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.23-en http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss HubSpot Scoops Up Marketing Hacker Dan Zarrella What does the new media pro of the future look like? One snapshot can be seen in Boston marketing firm HubSpot's newest hire Dan Zarrella. Zarrella is the creator of publishing tools like Tweetbacks, a script for displaying Twitter mentions below any blog post, and a collection of plug-ins that provides instant odds of a blog post hitting Digg's front page based on the keywords in its title.

HubSpot used the new submission form on Jobwire, our site tracking new hires, to tell us about the move this morning.

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]]> Check out our full coverage of one of the most interesting new media marketing firms on the web today and their high profile hire of Zarrella over at Jobwire.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hubspot_scoops_up_marketing_ha.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hubspot_scoops_up_marketing_ha.php News Wed, 04 Feb 2009 06:22:31 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick
Ginx: Pierre Omidyar's Stealthy New Social Recommendation Service eBay founder Pierre Omidyar has joined the executive team of a stealthy new startup called Ginx, according to financial filings unearthed by PEHub. Very little is known about the company but based on passing whispers from early testers of the private data we have have some guesses about what the service does.

Ginx appears to be a people and news recommendation service built out of a Twitter publishing tool and a URL shortener. We think that sounds great, those lightweight technologies hold huge stores of valuable data. The company has raised about $2 million in funding so it's the real deal, not a fly by night operation. Check out a screenshot below and our full coverage of Omidyar's new gig over on Jobwire, our blog covering new hires in tech and new media.

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Update: Omidyar pinged us on Twitter this afternoon to point us to a very short press release confirming that Ginx "is a Twitter client that aims to provide Twitter users with a rich experience for sharing and discussing links. Ginx was created to enable people to become more actively engaged in the news and topics they care about."

For the rest of what we've been able to find out about the service so far, please see our post on Jobwire.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ginx_pierre_omidyars_stealthy.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ginx_pierre_omidyars_stealthy.php News Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:45:51 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick
Google Scoops Up Del.icio.us Founder News just broke that Google has hired Joshua Schachter, the founder of social bookmarking service Delicious. Schachter left Yahoo! six months ago, two and a half years after it acquired his groundbreaking app. We're excited to see what he does at Google.

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]]> schacter05.jpgSchachter was working on some sort of secret project and worked with Upcoming.org co-founder Andy Baio, also rich and free years after a Yahoo! acquisition of his site, on one of the coolest Greasemonkey scripts we've ever seen.

Photo: Schachter at ETech05, prior to the Yahoo! acquisition.

For more details check out our analysis on Jobwire, our site tracking new hires in tech and new media.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_scoops_up_delicious_fou.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_scoops_up_delicious_fou.php News Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:01:33 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick
January Kicks Off With Cool Hires in Tech The economy is depressing but there's no shortage of cool new individual hires in tech to report already this year. Mozilla, Dell, AOL Sports and some of our favorite startups have picked up new engineers and executives this week. The biggest tech job news of the New Year, though, may be that Lifehacker's long time editor Gina Trapani announced yesterday that she's leaving her position.

Check out some of the young year's first highlights in tech hiring as reported by our site Jobwire below. Jobwire is sponsored by VisualCV, which is a service for job seekers. Jobwire reports on 10 to 15 completed new hires in tech and new media every weekday.

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  • Changes at Lifehacker After four years at the helm of the wildly popular productivity blog, lead editor Gina Trapani announced yesterday that she's "stepping down from the site lead position to work on Some New Stuff." Will that be Lifehacker work? Gawker work? Something entirely new? We'll see! Read our full coverage of Gina's announcement.
  • Mozilla Developer Tools Lab Adds a Crew Member Who in web tech wouldn't love to work in the new Mozilla Developer Tools Lab? That's what Kevin Dangoor gets to do now, we found out this week.
  • AideRSS Grows Its Team One of our favorite companies on the web, AideRSS/Postrank, has hired two more engineers. Fresh from a new round of funding, we're really excited to see what kind of technology they develop. See our coverage of this Canadian startup's new additions.
  • Old Media and New Media Make a Trade Former Chicago-Sun sports columnist Jay Mariotti got scooped up by AOL Sports and Talking Points Memo blogging star Greg Sargent has come on board the Washington Post.
  • Louis Gray Joins SocialToo as Advisor Web 2.0 uber-early-adopter Louis Gray took an advisory position at an otherwise unknown startup, he announced this week, and in comments Gray explains exactly what he'll be doing for the company.
  • Head on over to Jobwire to find out about other new hires at RedHat, MindTouch, Stack Overflow and more.

    We're reporting on 10 to 15 new hires in tech and new media every day at Jobwire. From executives to engineers, if you've got a new job or your company has made a new hire - let us know!

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    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/january_tech_hires.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/january_tech_hires.php News Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:21:05 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick
    Suits Up, Geeks Down: The Latest Tech Hiring Numbers Hires of software developers and web designers slowed last week, while tech and new media company hires for Director level positions increased substantially over the six weeks prior. Developers and designers still remained among the season's most in-demand people in tech while marketing and IT firms saw big increases in hires. A whole lot of surprising hires we've been seeing in the publishing world (new and old) finally slowed down this week.

    We've tracked these and other interesting stats and stories about people still getting jobs at a time of economic downturn. Check out our chart-laden full coverage of this season's new hires in tech and new media over at our hiring news site Jobwire.

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    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/fall_tech_hiring_numbers.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/fall_tech_hiring_numbers.php News Mon, 22 Dec 2008 03:00:28 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick
    Hiring Numbers in Tech Show Which Sectors Are Strong, Which Skills Are in Demand jobwirechartpic.jpgWe've just published aggregate stats for the past 6 weeks of new hires reported over at Jobwire today and we think the numbers are pretty interesting. Marketing and social network companies are making lots of hires and both developers and community managers/new media specialists are getting a lot of those jobs.

    Join us over at Jobwire to check out our pie charts and where tech and new media companies are putting their money these days.

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    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hiring_numbers_in_tech_show_wh.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hiring_numbers_in_tech_show_wh.php Analysis Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:00:23 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick
    Microsoft Hiring From the Open Web: Assimilation or a Changing Redmond? Microsoft_logo.jpgAs we reported on Jobwire, OpenID thought leader Dick Hardt announced Friday that he has joined Microsoft. Hardt's hire will be added to a recent history of the software giant making controversial hires from among its presumed opponents, advocates of open source and open culture. Is this assimilation or are we seeing a company change, with the infusion of new and different DNA?

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    ]]> Check out our full write-up over on Jobwire, ReadWriteWeb's site that reports on new hires in tech and media. But we'd also love to get your opinion here via this poll:

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    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsoft_hiring_from_the_open_web.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsoft_hiring_from_the_open_web.php Polls Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:57:20 -0800 Doug Coleman
    Who's Getting Hired in Tech? Last Week's Jobwire Graphs We all know the economy is in shambles and there are massive layoffs across most industries, including technology - but there are still new hires happening in tech and new media! Who's getting hired? That's what we're tracking at our blog Jobwire - the stories of lucky people with exciting new jobs.

    Who's getting those jobs? What kinds of positions are being filled and in what sectors? Check out our first set of charts below from last week's aggregate activity on Jobwire to find out the answer to those questions. One interesting tidbit? Software developers are getting hired by social networking companies. If you got a job or your company made a hire in tech or new media this week - send us a note about it at jobwire@readwriteweb.com. Read on for details on how last week looked.

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    ]]> Hires by Title

    We reported on 48 hires last week and the following is the break-out by job title. We're sure that there are more interesting hires of developers going on and we're doing our best to find them - but they are a little harder to find than some of the executive hires that get announced by companies. None the less, we find these first numbers interesting.

    Jobwire by Title November 17-24th 2008.jpg

    Hires by Sector

    What kinds of companies did we report on last week? Here's the break-out by sector.

    Jobwire by Sector November 17-24th 2008.jpg

    Note: "Other" includes sectors like retail, search, security and gaming this week. For specifics, see the Jobwire site.

    We expect next week's numbers by sector could look very different, but we'll be tracking them closely and we'll let you know. We think that people's new jobs are a lot of fun to find out about and we think the information can prove quite valuable.

    RWW Jobwire is sponsored by VisualCV and reports on about 10 new hires in tech and new media every day. We hope that you'll join us there for all the daily news about the hottest new hires.

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    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/whos_getting_hired_in_tech.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/whos_getting_hired_in_tech.php Analysis Tue, 25 Nov 2008 08:41:02 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick
    Twitter Hires Rael Dornfest, Shutters Values of n Twitter just announced on the company blog that the company has acquired the assets of Portland, Oregon based Values of n and brought its well-known engineer founder Rael Dornfest on to the Twitter staff. Dornfest's latest project at Values of n was an anthropomorphized personal assistant service called Sandy.

    We're covering the deal in more depth on our new blog about tech company hires Jobwire. Please see our coverage there for more details about what's sure to be a very interesting move.

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    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_scoops_up_shuts_down_d.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_scoops_up_shuts_down_d.php News Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:39:55 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick
    IRS Hires its First CTO IRS logo 150.jpgWhile the tech world eagerly waits to see who Barack Obama will appoint Chief Technology Officer of the United States, a similar appointment of more immediate impact to many people has just occurred. Terence Milholland began work this week as the first Chief Technology Officer in the history of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

    He enters an IRS that the General Accounting Office said last week suffers from technology so outdated it leaves the agency with inadequate integrity, reliability and security for sensitive taxpayer information. Check out our coverage of the first IRS CTO and the daunting problems he'll face on our new blog the RWW Jobwire, sponsored by VisualCV.

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    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_irs_has_hired_its_first_ct.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_irs_has_hired_its_first_ct.php Jobs and Events Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:12:08 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick
    RWW Live: Online Tools for Career Discovery & Job Searching We recently launched a new product, Jobwire, to track who has been hired for new jobs in tech and new media. In this week's episode of RWW Live, to be broadcast live at 3.30pm PST Monday (6.30pm EST), we will discuss the state of online tools for career discovery and job searching. We have executives from Path 101, Indeed and Simply Hired joining us.

    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.

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    ]]> This edition of RWW Live is sponsored by our main Jobwire sponsor VisualCV:

    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

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    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rww_live_jobs.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rww_live_jobs.php Podcasts Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:55:42 -0800 Richard MacManus
    Community Manager Jobs Are Hot commmanager150.jpgWhat kinds of jobs are companies hiring for right now? In the move towards a social media world, we've seen a series of hires in the past week for variations on the theme "community manager." Companies are hiring, candidates are hunting and competition for the best people and positions is heating up.

    Check out our coverage of recent community manager hiring news over at Jobwire - our new site tracking completed hires in tech.

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    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/community_manager_jobs_are_hot.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/community_manager_jobs_are_hot.php Analysis Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:30:32 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick
    Featured Hire: Mozilla Gets a New Voice in Europe Are there any tech companies you love so much that it would be a dream come true to be hired as their evangelist? That's what happened to Paris-based Paul Rouget, Mozilla's new European evangelist and our most recent Featured Hire on our new Jobwire site. Jobwire tracks happy stories of new jobs in tech, new media and related industries and this is a particularly happy story.

    Click here to read more on Jobwire about why Rouget's is our hire of the day.

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    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/featured_hire_mozilla_gets_a_n.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/featured_hire_mozilla_gets_a_n.php Browsers Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:30:17 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick
    Five Ways to Keep Your Momentum After A Big Announcement eddiev.jpgCongratulations! You made a big announcement and got great reviews, feedback and an influx of people to your website. Yesterday. Today, any number of other organizations and individuals are having the same experience and except for (hopefully) a long tail of residual late bloomers stumbling through your door - you run the risk of being old news already.

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    ]]> What do you do to maintain the momentum of that big announcement? If we knew for sure, we'd probably be in another line of work - snagging PR contracts away from firms left and right. We can, though, offer some educated suggestions based on our own experience and our observations watching thousands of startup tech companies launch their products. We offer those suggestions below and invite you to share in comments your strategies for maintaining momentum.

    This question came to mind after a friend of RWW emailed us yesterday asking, "how can my startup keep the momentum from our launch event going?" We sent them thoughts based on our own strategy for maintaining momentum after our launch yesterday of a new content channel called Jobwire, a site dedicated to reporting on new hires in tech and new media. It was pretty clear, though, that this question is one of universal interest.

    As we said in an internal email to team members last night, and again to our friends at the other company that happened to ask on the same day (if you'll indulge me for a moment):

    We've got to come out strong for the rest of this week and keep as much of this momentum as we can. If there's one thing I've learned about winning in the blogosphere it's that every day is a new day, it's a "what have you done lately" kind of field if you want to be at the top. We've got a great foundation to stand on (RWW and the Jobwire work done so far) but in order to emerge victorious we're going to have to take the same awesomeness we've leveraged so far and just keep on cranking it up, notch after notch.

    Hopefully our teams will find those words inspiring but what kinds of tangible strategies can be put into action based on these ideas? First let's start with a few words about what not to do, which unfortunately is what most companies do.

    What Not to Do

    As a new media press outlet that gets tens if not hundreds of emails a day pitching us for coverage, we can tell you three things that do not work.

    First, how many of you in marketing or PR have heard the boss say that what you need is a press release one month after launch touting user numbers or new partnerships since the first announcement of a product? This happens all the time and in the rare case that the user numbers are genuinely shocking or the partnerships are substantially innovative - that's great. They almost never are though and these kinds of follow-up announcements feel like a crude attempt to manufacture a news event. A month is a long time to wait to take action after a launch announcement, too. It's a new world and there's a new news cycle. Monthly is too often to expect to have your announcements covered and it's too infrequent a period to make yourselves publicly visible.

    Second, companies often try, shortly after their initial launch, to announce new features or services that aren't big enough to warrant coverage. That's the kind of thing that decreases your credibility in making future announcements.

    Finally, be really careful about tying a campaign to a big public event of general interest. Thank goodness the US Presidential elections are almost over, for example! If several of the biggest web companies on earth launch a relatively innovative portal dedicated to the elections, our readers still yawn. Your tiny company's "unique" way of facilitating conversation about the election is not something that anyone cares about, unless it's really honestly new tech being used and is going to reach outside your tiny userbase as a matter of course. It's probably not, though.

    Strategies We Suggest Instead

    The following suggestions are listed in order of least to most effective and we offer examples as much as we can.

    Do Something Else Remarkable and Announce It

    You might think this would be the best strategy, but we find that it's less effective than some others. If you can do something different and new, quickly after your previous announcement, then you can leverage some of that initial mindshare and momentum to build even more. That's made harder by all the companies making false claims of new achievements shortly after their last one, though.

    We spoke with a company yesterday who was putting out one press release every month, in order to maintain momentum. That's exhausting and probably not a good idea. It can lead to each status update from the company being perceived as less credible.

    If a company has multiple people working on the kinds of projects that can be announced publicly, then sometimes the timing can be right for one after the other announcements. When we announced last month, for example, that we got a syndication deal with the New York Times, that was a different group of people than the group that built our Jobwire site we launched yesterday. Had those been closer together, we would have maximized that proximity.

    Ultimately, though, visibility in the new social media space isn't based on big-bang announcements, it's based on small daily successes, ongoing engagement with other people and consistently building a reputation as a provider of value to the lives of others. It's consistent, light contact, to build traction over time, not big weighty announcements that shove the needle over all in one day.

    Follow Up With People Publicly and Privately

    Following up with people privately might seem intuitive but it's one of the most important things you can do immediately after launch. We paid close attention not just to blog posts linking to our Jobwire announcement yesterday, but also to the people who posted Twitter messages about it and even those who gave it a "thumbs up" on FriendFeed. Some of those people are folks that could appreciate some more in-depth engagement with the project. There's business development potential in some of those Tweets.

    It's also useful to respond publicly to initial feedback. Leaving comments in response to other peoples' comments on blogs helps answer common questions and give the impression that you're honestly engaged - not just pushing announcements to press like they were your PR toys and then forgetting about them and their readers.

    Many companies will post a round-up blog post on their own blogs a day or two after they make an announcement, linking back to all the blog posts that were written about their news. This serves many purposes but one is that it sends a track-back email to the writers who covered them. You might be surprised to know how quickly journalists forget who we've written about even earlier that day. Make a blog post that links to our post and we'll quite likely return to your site to see what you said about us. If we haven't subscribed to your blog yet, we may well do so then. Either way, the weight of our memory of you will be increased substantially. We hate to say it, but if it's bloggers you're reaching out to - installing the MyBlogLog recent visitors widget and using the BlogJuice bookmarklet to check out the 20 most recent visitors to your site throughout the day or two after your round up of coverage is one way that you can know exactly which bloggers responded to the bait and returned to your site.

    blogjuicescreen.jpg

    These kinds of tangible tech steps are helpful to understand. Want another example? Our wonderful MobableType FriendFeed plug-in allows us to copy any comments we make on posts over to their corresponding items on the popular aggregator FriendFeed. Each time an item gets a new comment there, it's moved to the top of the timeline for everyone who has themselves interacted with that item or who has a friend who has. Thus just replying on our site to comments left by readers can help keep our announcement visible off-site.

    Say Smart Things in Public Conversations

    Mindshare is a big thing, but it's a resource that can slip through your fingers quickly if you don't maintain it. Leaving knock-out smart comments on blog posts around the web and resharing high-value resources in your social networks are always good ways to get noticed. Doing so in the days after a major announcement and making sure an appropriate URL is in your profile field (not cheaply spamming the comments field above your name) is a great way to subtly establish yourself as a company that's a part of the scene.

    "Who is that person that just left that great comment on this post about cloud computing?" blog readers ask. "Well if it isn't someone from that comic strip aggregation service I read about yesterday on another blog! I wonder how they use cloud computing? That sure is a smart comment they posted, that must be a smart company that I should keep paying attention to." As journalists, we notice these things and they influence our coverage of companies and their sectors and as tech users they influence our decisions regarding which services to use and recommend.

    In old media authors went on book tours and made TV appearances. These days you can try to be a guest on a podcast, but just ratcheting up your engagement in the public sphere online shortly after an announcement is really helpful in maintaining your momentum.

    Self-evaluate Publicly or Deliver Some Other Kind of Value

    People love case studies - so why not make yourself one? If not yourself, any case studies and other data points that people can use for their own work aren't just "link bait" - they are the kind of contributions to the community that leadership is built with. Good examples of this are:

    • Nonprofit consultant Beth Kanter, the Queen of public self-evaluation. Her studies of her own online fund raising campaigns using social media can bring a crowd to its feet and increase her visibility substantially.

    • Benchmark studies based on anonymized aggregate user data is great stuff, check out what Mint and Freshbooks have done in this department lately.

    • AideRSS relaunched this week as Postrank.com and now would be a great time to do another blog post like their recent studies of the most engaging marketing blogs on the web and the best times of day to put up blog posts for maximum social media impact.

    • Everything Sam Lawrence posts on his personal blog makes people more likely to pay more attention to whatever his employer JiveSoftware has announced lately.

    • Finally, we hope that this blog post right here will help drive people to the announcement we made yesterday about Jobwire, our new site about people who've been hired to new jobs in tech and new media. Check it out!

    Eat Your Own Dog Food and Rock It

    Like the Postrank example above, other vendors follow up announcements by publicly using their own tools to deliver high value resources that demonstrate how valuable those tools can be. This is easier said than done but it's the best way to follow up momentum from an announcement that we know of. Two of our favorite examples are Slideshare adviser Dave McClure's slideshows about what startups in general should know about and the graphic design tutorials made by SaaS design tool company Aviary. These are the kinds of media items, built with the company's own tools, that get passed around to audiences far wider than just those who would be interested in the companies themselves. They demonstrate though, just how usefull the tools can be. Instead of marketing to one thousand people who might be interested in Slideshare or Aviary, these resources reach audiences of hundreds of thousands of people, of which a smaller percentage but larger absolute number of people will be interested in the company itself.

    Got that? After a launch event, follow it up by using your own product or services to create a resource that "goes viral!" No problem, right? Of course this is much easier said than done and is done poorly far more often than it is done well - but nobody said any of this would be easy. We're going to try to do this ourselves with our new Jobwire product - we're going to try to use it to break news and write great Hire of the Day posts for this, our primary blog. We think that some new hires are important, fascinating news. We'll put that to the test by posting some of that news here and we'll see if our readers agree with us and share these items throughout social networks as you do many of our other posts.

    These are the steps we suggest as ways to keep momentum rolling after a launch event, do you have other strategies you've found to be effective? We'd love to read about them in comments below.

    Photo credit: Eddie Van Halen pic, Creative Commons by Flickr user Anirudh Koul

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    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/five_ways_to_keep_your_momentum.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/five_ways_to_keep_your_momentum.php Analysis Wed, 29 Oct 2008 09:10:59 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick