Tag Archive for 'social networks'

How to keep privacy in social media?

Published on January 30, 2010 in Facts, figures & trends. 6 Comments Tags: facebook, privacy, social networks, Twitter.

We read several posts here in nowEurope about the latest social media services. You can also see these fancy tools around this site.

However, I personally still keep myself away from Facebook, Twitter etc. My biggest doubt is how to separate the different aspects of my real and virtual life from each other. What are these aspects?

I work on several projects with interesting people, but basically they don’t care about my sport or hobby activities.
I do different sports. In one of my sport activities, most of the team don’t know each others’ business background. It is simply not important, we are there to enjoy the same sport.
I’m a member of an online community. We are there for a certain hobby, but don’t care about others’ business or sport activities.

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Good news: Central Europe can skip SEO (according to Scoble)

Published on December 16, 2009 in Business innovation and Current events. 6 Comments Tags: central europe, facebook, google, optimization seo, quality content, relevant title, robert scoble, search engine optimization, search engines, social networks, target audience, tiger woods, title tags, Twitter, web agencies, web marketer.

Search engine optimization (SEO) has always seemed to me like voodoo. Webmasters (and businesses) obsess over their position on the search page, while the search engines regularly adjust their algorithms to weed out cheaters – those who use technical tricks to inflate their ranking. In the middle of all these are a legion of dodgy SEO consultants promising the moon for a monthly retainer.

You still don’t see too many of these types in Central Europe. I know a handful of local SEO consultants, but the bigger web agencies avoid the whole topic. (Somebody correct me if I’m wrong on that.) My view has always been that as long as your website follows best practices (relevant title tags, URL slugs, etc) it’s best to focus on creating quality content which is relevant to your target audience and forget SEO altogether.

Now, according to US blogger and tech evangelist, Robert Scoble, SEO is about to become irrelevant:

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Twitter revisited

Published on November 30, 2009 in Austria and Business innovation. 0 Comments Tags: CITT, clusters, EEN, Europe, facebook, marketing, social networking, social networks, Twitter, vienna, vite.

I have been following the nowEurope blog for a while now after my colleagues at VITE directed my attention towards it and want to take the opportunity to thank Steve for welcoming me to the community. It is very interesting to see how opinions are shaped and also can change in just a few months of time. In March this year, a discussion about Twitter took place in this blog. Back then, my colleagues from VITE both had the oppinion that Twitter is an interesting phenomenon but they didn’t believe in its full potential yet.

Now it is November and VITE has it’s own Twitter and Facebook accounts that are being constantly updated and utilised to be in regular contact with the IT community in Vienna and beyond it’s national borders. Being hesitant about the usefulness of Twitter at first, we at VITE have received very positive feedback for offering this additional source of information to our members and to everyone who is interested in the Viennese IT community.

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The social dimension of cluster construction

Published on May 26, 2009 in Business innovation and Czech Republic. 5 Comments Tags: cluster competitiveness, social networks.

We have already discussed a lot of different views about clusters at NowEurope: What are the impacts of clusters, how to facilitate and manage them, how to finance clusters, what are the administrative and obstacles of building clusters etc.

But what about social dimensions of clusters? As cluster facilitators, we were taught that cluster members should live or work not far away from each other. Maximum half an hour by car. Why? Just to be able to meet in person regularly, best in some informal way …

While facilitating a wooden-industry cluster in the Czech Republic, I realized the economic impacts of cluster is just one point of truth. Managers need to see tangible results, but perhaps more importantly they need to see the leadership of other cluster members, and have a good relationship with them as well.

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Coming to Budapest for the ICT Proposers Day?

Published on January 17, 2009 in Current events, EU funding programmes and Hungary. 2 Comments Tags: call, Centrope, cooperation, event, FP7, ICT, ideas, Innovation, media, meeting, reputation management, research, smes, social networks.

On Thursday, Jan 22, the ICT researchers and innovative companies are going to meet at a large event in Budapest. The ICT Proposers Day organised by the European Commission’s Information Society and Media Directorate-General, in cooperation with the Hungarian National Office for Research and Technology, should help them to form FP7 consortia for the 4th upcoming call and especially the SMEs from Centrope countries have a unique chance to network with their peers.

Already now you can browse research ideas on the web and add your own presentation (by Monday noon). I may attend for example Computational trust and reputation management, CrowdSourcing with Logica or Advanced Social Networks covering projects integrating social excluded groups, a new generation of on-line games, education & training and content aware networks & network aware applications.

If you are coming to Budapest, let me know at vesely@park.cz and we could have coffee together while discussing how CITT can help you to find the right partner in the region. Moreover it’s always nice to see faces behind your comments.

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Online opportunities in Central Europe

Published on June 16, 2008 in Austria, Current events, Czech Republic, eCommerce, Facts, figures & trends and Hungary. 0 Comments Tags: achieving success, digital businesses, online advertising, social networks.

I was in Prague earlier this month conducting a partner search for a social networking company. While I cannot comment on the specifics of that business, I can pass on a few observations about the Central European Internet market.

The online populations of Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and Austria are relatively small. They are linguistically and culturally isolated. Even the Austrians, who share a common language with Germany and part of Switzerland, prefer to use Austrian websites. This limits the scale of any online business that addresses a single Central European market.

However, it would be a mistake to conclude that there aren’t any decent opportunities in these markets.

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NETIES is ending

Published on January 10, 2007 in Current events. 0 Comments Tags: business plans, central and eastern europe, consortium, foreign partners, framework, individual consulting, internet development, networking events, smes, social networks, technology innovation, Venture capital.

The 6th Framework Programme is practically over and so it is our NETIES project. In last two years we surveyed over 750 SMEs, organised 32 networking events, workshops or conferences attended by 1750 people in six countries. The consortium provided 84 individual consulting sessions and coached 31 companies in the area of finding foreign partners, improving and presenting their business plans or FP6 applications.

22 contributors from 11 countries published more than 300 posts here sharing their experience, views and comments on the topics of technology innovation, R&D funding, venture capital and Central and Eastern Europe. NowEurope attracted totally 30,000 unique visitors over the period. Thank you all.

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