A freelance illustrator Beatriz Torres, best known as Zirta has drawn the ongoing competition between Google+ and FaceBook in a funny way.

I think the most ironic part of the illustration is MySpace Founder Tom Anderson’s advice for Mark Zuckerberg to sell FaceBook before it’s too late. Tom Anderson actually  shared this comic and his thoughts about  the question of “when to sell” on his Google+ account :)

While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics. Shirky, a prescient voice on the Internet’s effects, argues that emerging technologies enabling loose collaboration will change the way our society works.

In this Ted Talk which took place at took place at the U.S. Department of State, Clay Shirky tells the effects of Social Media on our livings.

Health 2.0: Expansive definition “New concept of health care wherein all the constituents (patients, physicians, providers, and payers) focus on health care value (outcomes/price) and use competition at the medical condition level over the full cycle of care as the catalyst for improving the safety, efficiency, and quality of health care” – Last updated on May 25, 2007 (Source: Scott Shreeve, MD – January 24, 2007) .

Health 2.0 is a platform ( techonologies ) including weblogs,social bookmarking, wikis, podcasts, social networks and APIs about healtcare. Approximately 59 percent of health searchers used the Internet to (Source:”How America Searches – Health Wellness, January 2008, iCrossing) get information and women ( % 63 ) are more inclined.  Health searchers are mostly  18-34 year-old ( %65) and college graduated ( %62). Younger and more educated searchers are interested in these popular topics; symptoms, treatment, diseases/conditions, wellness, drugs,vitamins… Which web 2.0 tools are mostly used  to reach information about health? The answers are listed by high percentages are search engines( %67), social media, wikipedia, social network, podcasts and blogs.

Health searchers differently tend social networks to discuss treatment or medication, to get moral, to have  opinions about doctors and hospitals or to get appointment.

PatientsLikeMe, founded in 2004 by three MIT engineers, has lots of subcommunities about neurological, mood and immune conditions. You can reach treatment, symptoms and research information all about these conditions which context is developing by patients.

The other network is HealthWorldWeb founded in 2006. Differently of PatientsLikeMe, you get knowledge from doctors or search the doctor by specialty.  Also you can visit same networks for physicians and nurses

I think when the population gets older in ten years, the health services or communities which offer physicians,nurses or doctors  for home nursing or which analyse the data of self- tests ( pefmeter test for asthma, blood test for diabetic ) will be popular. We can imagine the services analyze the symptoms while driving or looking to mirror everyday. What do you think the trends will be for health services?

In this post, we’ll take a look at LinkedIn’ s excellent growth but firstly let’s talk a few about ‘Business Social Networking’ .

Day to day, social networking becomes more important for us. Organizations that want to manage partnerships with their customers, suppliers and other organizations in the same industries start attending ‘Business Social Networks’. These organizations gain more efficient methods of communication, feedback and insight opportunity from their partners.

Succesful businesses recognize the importance of increasing loyalty through active communities for their partners. Smart companies use Web 2.0 technologies to reach their ‘business partners ecosystem’ with a cheaper, faster, more measurable and more efficient way. They use their business social networks as an easy and a powerful tool to reach and listen to their partners.

The value of a business social network is limited by the ability of creating conversations, sharing experiences, answering questions and offering feedback from partners. Briefly, the business professionals have started to see the value of being trasparent to their partners and understand to use social networks as viral marketing tools – called ‘social network marketing’ . ‘Monetizing the value of social networks’ will be a topic of a future post.

LinkedIn is the biggest business social networking site that gives members the ability of creating business contacts, finding potential customers, hiring/seeking jobs. LinkedIn has 30+ million users representing 150+ industries around the world. LinkedIn founded in 2003 and has caught a sustainable growth in years. In 2007, LinkedIn grew more than 300%.  LinkedIn’ s creative platform has changed traditional business card exchange process into spending time on LinkedIn and watching number of connections grow.

Today, LinkedIn CEO Dan NYE is announcing on company blog that LinkedIn has received $22.7 million investments from market leaders in their sectors. SAP Ventures, Goldman Sachs and The McGraw-Hill join the LinkedIn team after this investment. LinkedIn’s D Round of Funding closed at $1 billion valuation. In this volatile economic enviroment, it’s a very precious success to get these important companies as strategic partners. We congratulate LinkedIn …