Patent Research on Social Networking Technologies

I just skimmed Boston Patent Research’s new report on patents in social networking platforms and technologies. This is a very thorough report on IP in this space and certainly provides lawyers with fertile hunting ground for monetizable lawsuits.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RESEARCH: SOCIAL NETWORKING TECHNOLOGIES

Boston Patent Research is pleased to announce the upcoming release of its Intellectual Property Survey devoted to Social Networking Technologies. It covers recent and older patents and patent applications relevant to the field.

Social Networking technologies join friends, family members, coworkers and other social communities together. These technologies are convergent, emerging from a variety of applications such as search engines and employee evaluation routines while running on equally diverse platforms from server clusters to wireless phone networks. As such, social network platforms and the multi-sector markets from which they emerge present special challenges to engineers, market specialists and product development managers who wish to discern industry trends and isolate emerging technologies beneficial to their own business.

This research attempts to address these challenges through review of published patents and patent applications. Published patents lend the reader a view of the companies who may be in the best position to shape the market while published applications give the reader a view of the emerging market itself.

In addition, this research gives companies wishing to enter this market (or product development managers wishing to carve out a new niche) an important intellectual property resource, highlighting over 200 of the important patents that should be reviewed before a company commits time and resources to an endeavor in a highly competitive (and, judging from some of the market sectors—highly litigious) marketplace.

The research includes:

  • A review of intellectual property held in over 120 companies in the social networking space (includes social network providers, dating companies and HR companies)
  • A review of over 200 patents selected from a search-based pool of over 10,000 candidates — the review highlights a variety of patents highly relevant to one or more social networking sectors.
  • A review of the intellectual property associated with the Microsoft and IBM social computing groups
  • A review of litigation relevant to the world of social networking
  • Questions regarding research specifics, price and availability should be addressed to John Boddie, owner of Boston Patent Research.

    LinkedIn Introduces Reference Check Capabilities

    I just received this email from LinkedIn, showing another way they can leverage their database. Reference checks via this channel will likely be more honest than traditional reference checks (whom the candidate always pre-vets).

    Dear David,

    You know that checking references is a critical step in the hiring process. Unfortunately, tracking down references, outside of those provided by the candidate, typically requires a significant time investment. Not with LinkedIn.

    LinkedIn has recently introduced Reference Search Beta. Now, by simply entering a company and time period, you can instantly access a list of LinkedIn users in your network who were with that company at that time. The list is sorted by the degrees away from you so you can quickly find and contact the people who may be able to provide the reference.

    With over 1.2 million users, you’re bound to find people that can provide valuable information on your candidates and you won’t be solely dependent on the names that they give you. Try out LinkedIn’s Reference Search Beta today, you’ve never seen anything like it.

    Relationship marketing for professional services – NYC event November 3

    BDI, the Business Development Institute, is hosting a one-day symposium in New York City November 3 on Building New Business With Breakthrough Relationships: Relationship Marketing and Business Development in the Professional Services Sector.


    The keynote speaker will be Troy Waugh, author of 101 Marketing Strategies for Accounting, Law, Consulting and Professional Services Firms.

    David Teten and I will be panelists in an afternoon session on “Business and online networking that makes a difference” and “Gaining a technological advantage with business networking applications”. The panel will also include:
    - Jason Dinwoodie, Director of Communication, Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe
    - Stowe Boyd, COO & President, Corante
    - Cem Sertoglu, CEO, SelectMinds
    - Peter Hutto, Vice President of Business Development and Marketing, ZeroDegrees

    If you are interested in attending, as one of our readers, you can enter the promo code “speaker” on the registration page for $50 off the registration fee.

    LinkedIn Looks to the eBay Way

    From LinkedIn Looks to the eBay Way:

    “eBay has built a billion dollar business around the concept of collecting fees from a small percentage of its users. If you look at it, the power sellers that drive eBay’s is a very small percentage of the active user base,” Guericke said in an interview with internetnews.com. “It’s safe to say that eBay does not monetize about 90 percent of its users, and that’s exactly what we’re aiming for.”

    RSS for non-techies

    In case you’re wondering what RSS even is, or you’re unclear on how exactly you would use it, here’s the best resource I’ve seen on RSS for non-techies.

    Here’s what all it covers:

    Elite/Selective Online Social Networks

    Time magazine reports on an online network focused on the rich and famous: Clubs for People Who Point and Clique — Oct. 25, 2004. This is consistent with the emergence of other selective online networks we have profiled, such as TheSquare; Value Investors Club; and the International Executives Resource Group (all featured in our networking site guide). I suggest that these online communities are typically much more valuable than the more open ungated communities.

    Summaries of Dale Carnegie's Books

    One of the inspirations for our work analyzing how people leverage online social networks is Dale Carnegie:

    “CARNEGIE, DALE (1888-1955), was a pioneer in public speaking and personality development. He became famous by showing others how to become successful. His book How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) has sold more than 10 million copies and has been translated into many languages. His books became popular because of his illustrative stories and simple, well-phrased rules. Two of his most famous maxims are, “Believe that you will succeed, and you will,” and “Learn to love, respect and enjoy other people.” His other books include How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948). Toward the beginning of his career, Carnegie wrote Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business (1931), which became a standard text.”

    For summaries of his two most prominent books, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, visit The Dale Carnegie Page.

    How to Use Social Software to Find Your Next Job

    This past Tuesday, I spoke at a University of Chicago Business School Seminar on “Managing Your Career for Success”, in Manhattan.

    You can download my own talk (“How to Use Social Software to Find Your Next Job”) from the page where I keep the slides from my past presentations.

    Following are my notes on the other speakers. My thanks to Jim Penny of Heidrick & Struggles and the rest of the U. Chicago GSB club for putting this event together!

    Jim Penny, Heidrick & Struggles:
    Commonalities of successful execs.
    - Love their job
    - have a great mentor
    - have a great network, especially recruiters

    Roy Cohen specializes in the delivery of career services primarily to senior and mid level executives. For over 10 years, he has also served as the sole ‘in-house’ career and outplacement counselor to Goldman Sachs. Roy maintains an active private practice for both individuals and corporations in the areas of career management, executive coaching and leadership development. He is a former adjunct faculty member at New York University and the New School University. Academically, he holds an MBA from Columbia, a master’s degree in counseling from Colgate and an undergraduate degree from Cornell.

    Career mgmt is:
    Thinking about it.
    Focus.

    Choose a goal thru assessment and research.
    followthru and consistency.
    market your personal brand.
    Package yourself.
    New season: make resolutions.
    Ask people you respect for feedback.
    prune your network.
    Try something new.
    Create a board of directors for yourself.
    Network. Letter campaigns. Recruiters.
    sound fresh when responding to ?s.
    remember your storylines.
    Reconsider your targets in light of market.
    if you don’t like networking, write great letters.
    Do you get it? Can you ID problems, and solutions?
    network with busy people.
    Don’t send thank you note, send an influencing note.
    Reassess where you are.
    Career search is a marathon.

    Doug Hanslip is a Managing Director at Korn/Ferry International and a member of the firm’s Global Financial Markets Group specializing in the recruitment of senior investment management and capital markets professionals. Mr. Hanslip’s focus includes operating executives, fund managers, and marketing/operations professionals for the mutual fund, hedge fund, and general institutional marketplace. Mr. Hanslip is also responsible for the firm’s North American Equities-related search assignments. Prior to joining Korn/Ferry, Mr. Hanslip was a Managing Director for Banc America Securities. Mr. Hanslip graduated from Northwestern University with a Bachelor of Science degree. He also holds an MBA degree from Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, with concentrations in Finance and Management Policy.

    Don’t expect a recruiter to remember you when you call. Send a resume first, and re-introduce yourself when you call.
    Be upfront about your baggage (e.g., getting fired).
    Put your cell on the resume.
    Put personal email on the cv.
    Don’t have gaps on cv.
    Cover letter should be the body of the email.
    Be current.
    Have conviction in what you say.
    Neutralize your clothing.
    Speak slowly. Be calm.
    Attend conferences.

    Barnako's blog blast blunders

    Frank Barnako, who I ordinarily have the highest respect for, really blew it today with his comments about political blogs. Commenting on MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann’s new blog, Barnako says, “Almost no one reads them.” He then goes on to quote some statistics from HitWise comparing blog traffic to other political news sources:

    In a recent week, traffic to WashingtonPost.com was almost 650 percent greater than that of the most popular such blog.

    650%?!? Wow!!!

    Wait a minute! 650% is just 6.5 times. In other words, the most popular blog, DailyKos.com, which only covers the fairly narrow topic of Democratic politics and a little bit of news commentary, is on the same order of magnitude with WashingtonPost.com, which in addition to covering politics also includes:
    - Local news
    - National news
    - World news
    - Business
    - Technology
    - Health
    - Education
    - Real Estate
    - Obituaries
    - Columnists
    - Editorials
    - Sports
    - Style
    - Entertainment Guide
    - Movie Listings
    - TV Listings
    - Food & Dining
    - Travel
    - Music
    - Museums
    - Message Boards
    - And more…

    Get the picture?!? I called up HitWise myself to verify the numbers and what exactly they’re measuring, and they’re counting traffic to the entire domain, not just the political section. That’s right… DailyKos’s 3-4 posts a day, created by one person, are on a par with the Washington Post, a major national daily newspaper.

    I thought I’d do a little checking of my own. CBS Marketwatch’s share last week was 0.048%. Daily Kos was 0.005%. That’s about 1/10th of ALL of CBS Marketwatch.

    If you want to do a fair comparison, let’s compare these bloggers to a single columnist. And let’s talk actual numbers, not just market share, which is deceptively small. DailyKos has about 350,000 readers a day; Instapundit about 250,000; and Wonkette about 70,000.

    But “almost no one reads them”.

    BlogOff – why blog?

    Ecademist Steve Holmes begs the question as to why people blog:

    To show off ???
    To be noticed ???
    To make a point ???
    To sell something ???
    Because they’re addicted ???
    Because they need to be liked or admired ???
    To find friend and lovers???
    Because they believe they are good networkers and must keep up the exercise???
    To capture the beauty of their own enlightenment???
    Because the cat doesn’t laugh at their one liners????
    Another chance to admire their own logo !!!!
    To get themselves a butterfly
    To scratch the itch of other people’s comments
    To share important knowledge
    To be cool

    Is there a truly worthy reason…

    My favorite response came from Nick Gendler:

    I like to talk, but I’m also lazy. This way I can do it from home without even opening my mouth.