The first blog post here is a list of interesting and useful Web 2.0 websites that are useful for online business. I'm sure many of you have heard of at least some of these, but you are bound to check out a few new ones.
Skill #1 – Posting a Presentation on a Public Site
- SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/
- Usefulness: Store presentations online, can make them private, backup for a USB drive
Skill #2 – RSS Readers
- Go into a Google account
- Click “Reader”
- Click “Add Subscription”
- Type in a viable Blog with an RSS Feed
- Viola!
- Usefulness: Keep track of 10-20 different eBusiness news websites
Skill #3 – Tiny URL
- TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/
- Usefulness: Shorten URLs for colleagues
Skill #4 – Historic Web Site Research
- WayBackMachine: http://www.archive.org/
- Usefullness: Use to track trends over time and see what direction your competition is moving in to predict their next movements
Skill #5 – Creating E-Mail Surveys
- SurveyMonkey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/
- Usefullness: Poll customer opinions (remember, garbage in -> garbage out)
Skill #6 - Professional Networking
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/
- Usefulness: The successful eBusiness entrepreneur thrives on professional contacts
Skill #7 – Person Search
- Intelius: http://www.intelius.com/
- Usefulness: Look up potential investors, partners, etc. - this is a last-ditch effort (try LinkedIn first)
Skills #8+ – Ten Cool Services You Need to Know About
- Orkut (http://www.orkut.com/) = Online Social Network through Google
- Ning (http://www.ning.com/) = Social Network creation service, networks based on themes (such as Fishing, Urban Hip Hop, etc.)
- Furl (http://www.furl.net/) = Social bookmarking sit, save/share/browse bookmarks
- Skype (http://www.skype.com/) = (Free) Online internet telephony
- Technorati (http://www.technorati.com/) = Blog posts and news posts that are popular, sorted by subject area
- CEO Express (http://www.ceoexpress.com/) = Large Portal with a lot of business-oriented links for CEOs
- Digg (http://www.digg.com/) = User submitted links that are popular, based on “Diggs,” which are essentially votes by users
- Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/) = Site where users can list their activities so other people can see “What you are doing”
- Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) = Social bookmarking, sorted by popularity
