Twitter hires 140th employee

The fact that Twitter now employs 140 people is a nice little coincidence which probably had to happen sometime…

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What’s more interesting is that the company has pretty much doubled in size since last summer. and there are still at least 27 more job openings available at the moment. While things have been quiet for a little while, is this a sign that the core product is going to ramp up in terms of development or is this the cost of dealing with so many users producing so much content, along with increased threats from hackers etc?

A compilation/best of/round-up/braindump…

Call it what you like, but for various reasons I’ve been blogging-lite, and have 100 things floating around my head which I need to expel in the blogging equivalent of an exorcism. And I’m sure you know all about Facebook’s new interface/look, and Google adding comments in Google Reader, so I’ll at least try and unearth some other stuff.

A great post by friend and former colleague Angus, which adds to the interesting and equally great original post on newspaper business models.

That somehow led to me thinking about ‘micro-careers’, and how the collapse of ‘a job for life’ and fears about security can somewhat be alleviated by the internet, and the fact you can form several careers by playing around and experimenting with different skills. E.g. writing, photography, video would have been entirely silo’d careers, but look at Christian.  It allows you to experiment for little or no cost, and then focus on the things that give you the most enjoyment, best results etc – and you’re able to still do a day job to pay the bills if the fun stuff doesn’t support you.

The most idiotic attempt to cash in on a ridiculous patent award goes to worlds.com, for claiming a patent on all virtual worlds (From Venturebeat).

The most interesting thing for me about Robert Scoble leaving Fast Company, and Jason Calacanis/Mahalo employing a now convicted hacker, isn’t the idea that the loss of Scoble’s sponsor means social media has failed, or the fact that in a 3-5 interview process, the Mahalo team failed to perform a quick Google search.

The interesting aspect is that both Scoble and Calacanis published their stories as soon as news broke, and that we expect it and accept it. Compare that to the hundreds of more traditional companies which are issuing redundancies at the moment.

If you’re wondering why politicians seem to be increasingly ridiculed and ineffectual, here’s a good example of the reasons why. The Conservative Party have wasted time and money that could have been used to benefit voters/constituents for a service to send a fake letter from Gordon Brown.

Compare that to the amount of brilliant apps coming from quick, effective and cheap hack days, like the Guardian Hack Day, for example.

I feel better after that! Incidentally, when I’m not writing a new post, I’m normally twittering: @badgergravling, sharing stuff via Google Reader,  or starting to get a handle on using Friendfeed effectively.

Adding some new functionality despite spam problems….

For some reason, Akistmet and IP blocking doesn’t seem to be countering the tide of spam comments I’m getting – I’ve had some good suggestions for causes via Twitter, but not solved it as yet.

So while I delete 101 really, really obvious spam messages, I’m also playing around with some more functionality – you can see an early start on the monetise Twitter/Jobs page.

A warning for employers – block social networks and lose employees

In the spirit of the internet, I found this fascinating bit of research, which originated on Vnunet.com, via Rialtas.net and eventually the Wikinomics blog!

“A survey of 1,000 office staff has found that nearly a third of younger employees would consider quitting their job if Facebook was banned in the workplace.

The survey by IT services firm Telindus found that 39 per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds would consider leaving if they were not allowed to access applications like Facebook and YouTube.

A further 21 per cent indicated that they would feel ‘annoyed’ by such a ban.

The problem is less acute with 25 to 65 year-olds, of whom just 16 per cent would consider leaving and 13 per cent would be annoyed.”

As someone in the *ahem* slightly older age bracket (closer to 25 than 65 though!), I paused for a moment to consider my own response. Considering my role in community strategy and management, I surprised myself by starting from a position of thinking quitting was overreacting and I’d just do my networking via mobile/at home. Then I thought about how useful and valuable the networks have been to my company, considering the knowledge, experience and contacts it’s given me.

Why would I spend time networking to benefit my company (rather than just myself), without my company giving something back? It’s exactly the same value exchange that drives user-generated content, and yet employers seem quicker to accept the general internet population need a value exchange more readily than for their own employees!

(Obviously some of the survey respondents might be less brave if the situation presented itself, but then again, in an age in which the network is probably the most valuable asset, companies risk losing the employees who are most valuable)