Site Description

As web applications and social networks continue to grow and become mainstream, more and more employers are using them and Google to scan candidates. It’s easy to have questionable content posted either on one of your accounts or one belonging to your friends. Often that questionable content is enough to remove you from consideration for a job.

Luckily, the fellas over at Brand-Yourself.com have come up with a service to combat that problem. Their website takes an aggressive approach towards improving your online presence by helping you create content that reflects a better side than that Facebook photo of you doing a twelve foot beer bong in college. How exactly that’s done is pretty impressive. Equally impressive is how well they explain their service. They have a video that shows the process in detail and it’s so good I decided to save myself some time and post it below.

About Brand-Yourself.com

The Brand-Yourself team, led by Pete Kistler, is compiled of Syracuse University students and recent graduates. They joined together with the intention of designing “tools to establish, track, manage and improve our web presence.” The result is a web service that is effective and simple to use. They have already garnered numerous awards and acknowledgements including a nomination as one of five finalists for Entrepreneur Magazines 2009 College Entrepreneur of the Year.

What I Liked

This website will only continue to gain momentum as it becomes evident that your internet footprint can be a critical factor in whether or not you get a job. I like that Pete and company have found an untapped need and are well on their way toward servicing it. When the rest of the world catches up they’ll have a great jump on the competition.

The part that I’m most impressed with is the ease of use. Not everyone has the technical skills necessary to start a webpage on their own. With Brand-Yourself you don’t need to do so. Anyone with the basic skills to write an email or create a Word document can excel using the tools offered at Brand-Yourself. The interface is a clone of WordPress without the need for servers and hosting plans. The result is a well-crafted webpage that reflects the user in a professional light.

A number of high quality tools are available for your use once you sign up for an account. The Web Presence Breakdown organizes your online appearance by finding your social networking accounts and linking them together. This allows you to easily monitor how they look to a potential employer from one simple location. The Breadcrumb Tracker collects all the digital snippets that are associated with you online. If someone’s left a comment about you somewhere, the Breadcrumb Tracker will find it and you can monitor how it affects your professional appearance.

The site is continuing to grow as new tools are developed. The Recommendation Engine is a yet to be released tool that uses your skills and expertise to determine the next step toward developing a noteworthy web presence. Brand-Yourself likens it to your own personal career coach.

Another tool that is coming soon is the Hireability Monitor. This tool notifies you immediately in the event of a change in web presence. By doing so you’re able to make the necessary adjustments to be sure you’re image is not damaged too badly.

Because you can only do so much to control how others portray you online, the best way to combat negative content is to overwhelm it with positive stuff. By creating a website at your personal domain you’re able to direct people to it, showing them the side of you you want them to see. When you give them a place to go to find good information it limits the likelihood they’ll look around long enough to find the bad stuff.

What I Didn’t Like

There’s not too much to dislike from a concept perspective. The idea is right on track with addressing the most common internet problem currently experienced by young people – a damaged image due to negative web content. Using Brand-Yourself will definitely help you get that image better under control.

There is a small cost associated with this service (3 months/$34.95 $24.95), which I think is both fair and affordable. The hangup for me comes with my being conditioned to receiving many online services for free. I don’t think they’re wrong for charging for a service that most cannot replicate on their own, however I can see the costs to be a small barrier to entry for some people. The alternative option is them putting adds on your personal website, which undoubtedly will take away from your site’s professionalism.

My suggestion, in case they’re listening (and care what I think), is to have both a free and paid version. Currently, you can register for a trial account, which of course they hope will lead you to purchasing a paid account. The free plan I propose is the same as the current trial plan, only with sponsored ads on the personal webpages and limited use of tools. I wouldn’t change the paid version. Eventually many users would see the value and seriously consider an upgrade. Even those that didn’t would still bring in ad revenue. The end result would be a larger user base and mailing list to solicit future sales.

Of course that’s my outsider’s opinion. I’m sure they wouldn’t be getting the attention they have from Entrepreneur Magazine if they hadn’t done their research and carefully thought things out. Despite my ramble on their pricing strategy, I still think they’re onto something and can find no real fault with what they’re doing.

The Final Word

For both the Brand-Yourself.com crew and young professionals concerned about their image, this website is a winner. If you’re someone who is concerned what potential employers might think if they Googled your name, this is definitely a site you need to look into.

Brand-Yourself.com

With the release of my first Tutorial Series product taking up much of my time last week, and the day job bearing down a bit this week, putting together a collection of quality (quality is key) links hasn’t been easy. In fact, I missed the Links post last week; which doesn’t do well for my attempts to start a tradition my readers can count on.

Which leads me to my revised plan for Friday Fun Links. I will continue to make Fun Links posts and they will be on Fridays, but not necessarily every one. At this point, I just don’t have enough time to make any guarantees. I’m still shooting for every week, but I know distractions will come and until this site pays the bills (not there yet!) I can’t overlook responsibilities. I’m sure you understand.

Anyway, this week’s Friday Fun Links Post is centered around Twitter in the news. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of Twitter articles lately, and there’s many more I’m sure that you haven’t seen before. I gathered some of my recent favorites and you can read about them below. Then be sure to follow SiteRoast on Twitter.

Twittering Cat Boasts 500k Followers – Sockington is becoming a very famous cat now that he’s got a Twitter account. His antics are chronicled in a first-person tone and are so entertaining he’s being billed as the Garfield of the 21st century!

6 Steps to Alienating Everyone on Twitter – A tongue in cheek look at the wrong way to use Twitter. It’s funny because I see some I follow doing these exact steps and it bothers me a bit. Maybe this article is on to something.

Twitter, Working to Make Money, Won’t Use Ads – Everybody knows it. Twitter founders are sitting on a gold-mine. However, they have yet to capitalize on it. This article explains their thought process and how they eventually intend to cash in on the microblogging site’s extreme popularity.

Can Twitter Save ‘My Name is Earl’? – Probably not. But the response from the Twitter community regarding the cancellation of this (apparently) popular show is pretty impressive. Read the article to find out how you can join the campaign.

Twitter Dating? – This way you only have to listen to 140 characters worth of your dates boring interests. Now that I think about it, they might be on to something here!

Chick Flicks Summarized on Twitter – Genius! Save hours of your life! Instead of spending two hours watching that boring romantic comedy, read the Twitter version and move on with your life.

I Found My Job on Twitter – Further proof that Twitter is useful for so many things beyond the typical ‘What are you doing’ commentary.

Twitter Causes Brain Damage? – This is just what I’ve been waiting for – a little Twitter controversy. You know you’re relevant when people argue about you.

Twitter has definitely taken the world by storm. It’ll be interesting to see how long it lasts. I don’t see it ending anytime soon, though.

SITE DESCRIPTION

Dogster.com is both a very weird site and a very clever site. With all the recent interest in social networking sites for humans, why is it so bizarre to think that there wouldn’t be one for dogs, too? Well, for one thing, dogs don’t type. For that matter, when was the last time you heard a dog speak? In fact, until computers become scratch and sniff and keyboards start smelling like collie urine, we doubt you’ll find a dog who cares all that much about Dogster.

Luckily for Dogster, it’s the dog owners, or humans, who have taken an interest in improving their dog’s social lives. What we’ve got as a result is the Facebook of the K-9 Kingdom. Users are able to upload photos, list their likes and dislikes, and express their pet’s personalities. Once your profile is complete, you’re then able to search other dog’s profiles. When you find a dog you like, you have the ability to save the dog to your corral, making it easy to find him or her again later.

While we were entertained surfing Dogster, the most glaring fact we discovered is that people are insanely obsessive when it comes to their dogs. They spend outrageous amounts of money on doggie hotels, dog carrying cases, and clothes. Should we really be that surprised that they’re willing to spend the time to make their pup some doggie buddies on the Internet?

ABOUT DOGSTER.COM

Dogster.com launched in January 2004 and has blossomed into an extremely popular and successful website. They claim their goal is to “allow for the purest online reflection of people’s love and enjoyment of their dogs and cats”, and it’s obvious that many people are eager to take advantage of the opportunity. At the time of this writing there are more than 360,000 dogs registered on Dogster.

WHAT WE LIKED

The entire concept of Dogster is really pretty cool. Who doesn’t want their dogs to be popular? The whole idea of building a profile for your dog is one thing, but where Dogster really impresses is with all their additional features. There are so many, from big to small, that we’d be spending so much time listing them, we’d have no time to use ‘em. Here are some of our favorites, though:

Ask a Question: This feature allows dog owners to write in their most pressing questions and have them answered by the Dogster community. Questions are categorized into one of more than a dozen different topics ranging from Laws & Legislation to Behavior & Training. From there the categories are divided even further into subcategories. At the time of this review, our quick math tells us there are more than 2,500 questions already posted on Dogster.

Adoption Center: It’s heartbreaking to think about all the mistreated/homeless/unloved dogs there are. Dogster has taken a giant step towards limiting that with their Dog Adoption Center. More than 2,000 dogs are looking for homes on Dogster, and you can search their listings based on the dog’s breed, size, age, gender and compatibility levels. Once you’re on a dog’s profile you can see even more about them, including whether they’re neutered or not, and how long they’ve been listed on Dogster as adoptable. We think this feature is the best thing to happen to homeless dogs since Bob Barker started his spayed and neutered campaign at the end of each Price is Right episode.

Breed Info: Listing what seems to be all the dog breeds known to man, Dogster offers a description of each breed as well as a doggie dynamics chart that is based on the tendencies of all the dogs listed on Dogster that belong to that breed. The dynamics that are measured are energy, intelligence, friendliness, playfulness, and disposition. Also on the page for each breed is a link to Wikipedia, where you can find even more info on that type of dog.

 Additional Features: Forums, Doglover’s Blog, Store, Diary Central

WHAT WE DIDN’T LIKE

Why should this service be offered only to Dogs and Cats? We’re claiming discrimination until we get a Hamster.com and Lobster.com. Other than that, we approve.

THE FINAL WORD

Don’t, absolutely DO NOT, go to Dogster unless you have a few hours to spare. And unless you’ve got nothing planned for the next week, don’t even think about opening an account for your dog. It’s that much fun.

 www.dogster.com

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