yichi, from vikiworks, has released a duo of incredibly well-done social media icon packs.

the first icon pack covers flickr, wordpress, digg, technorati, twitter, del.icio.us, stumbleupon, and more.

the second icon pack includes newsvine, furl, blinklist, blogger, and others.

all icons are available in 64 by 64 png format.

Technorati Tags: social media, social bookmarking, icon pack

jaiku, the micro-blogging platform that competes with twitter (click here for comparison) and countless others, now supports jabber-based instant messaging.

Here’s what you get in a nutshell:

• Notifications of new Jaikus from your contacts
• Web feeds items from the feeds you follow
• Commenting using @screenname
• Post your own Jaikus (even to channels!) right from your desktop

what this means is that in addition to using jaiku’s web and mobile interfaces, you can now use jabber-based instant messaging clients (i.e. google talk) to create and post new messages and comments to jaiku, and receive notifications directly from the service.

Technorati Tags: jaiku, micro-blogging, twitter, jabber, instant messaging, gtalk

israeli blogger yehuda berlinger is on a mission to go through a list of about 5,000 web 2.0 companies and bring to you a list of all open positions. so far he has gone through 586 companies out of the 5,000 and has come up with over 1900 jobs.

Of course, I’m recording a lot of other information about each company, including short summaries, web 2.0 category, top managers, contact information, a personal rating, and so on. I may be willing to give this out to anyone who is $really nice$ to me.

if you’re on the market, check out round one of the list. round two is expected in a week or two.

Technorati Tags: web 2.0, jobs, yehuda berlinger

unlike other professional networking sites (like linkedin), yahoo has prepared a concept of a business networking site that will be truly social.

the business networking space has plenty of options for you to choose from but where yahoo’s network will be different is that it doesn’t necessarily help you directly get in touch with the upper management at potential employers or people in your industry that you would want to collaborate with. instead, yahoo! kickstart is focused towards a much younger market and helps connect college students with alumni at companies that interest them.

the concept already exists at many colleges and universities but is done manually, on paper and by phone, rather than through an online social network. for example, when i was going through recruiting and was thinking about applying to jp morgan, my career advising and planning services office flew in two recent graduates from our college who were working at the company, to come and talk to all potential applicants about the application and selection process, their work environment, how they manage their social lives with work, and lifestyle in the city. yahoo! kickstart takes this entire process online.

from what i’ve seen of the network so far, it seems that yahoo has created a great cross between linkedin and facebook. the site takes the individual and resume-based profiling feature from linkedin while looking more like facebook in terms of networking, group creation, company profiling and so on. just like facebook took the traditional paper-based college facebook online, yahoo! kickstart could be a stepping-stone from facebook to monster or career builder and finally linkedin.

Technorati Tags: business networking, social networking, facebook, yahoo, kickstart, linkedin, moster, career builder

when the news first broke that the iphone had been unlocked, everyone’s first reaction was that at&t is screwed. while it’s definitely true that at&t is screwed (since the iphone was clearly the best thing they had going for them), here’s a reason why this unlocking screws over apple just the same.

according to gene munster, a lead analyst with piper jaffray,

While we do not know the exact details of the agreement, we conservatively estimate that AT&T gives Apple $3 per month (over the life of the 24 month contract) for every iPhone customer already with AT&T and $11 per month for every new subscriber.

furthermore, according to a note from american technology research, another financial firm,

About one quarter of consumers adopting Apple’s heavily-hyped iPhone handset are ‘switchers’ to AT&T from other carriers

so if apple is to recieve $3 per month for every current at&t customer purchasing an iphone, and $11 per month for every new at&t subscriber, if the iphone is locked, this is money apple could’ve gotten but won’t. using these statistics, and the projection of 10 million iphones expected to be sold by the end of 2008, here’s the amount of money apple stands to lose from the iphone’s unlocking (due to people abandoning or not signing up with at&t):

the calculations are done as follows:

1. percentage of unlocked users multiplied by 10 million (total users projected by end of 2008) = total unlocked users.
   
2. 25% of total unlocked users multiplied by $11 plus 75% of unlocked users multiplied by $3 = total shared revenue lost per month.
3. total shared revenue lost per month multiplied by 24 (total duration of iphone contract) = total shared revenue lost.

now let’s take a look at the amount of shared revenue apple could lose:

1. if 10% unlock: $120,000,000 lost
2. if 25% unlock: $300,000,000 lost
3. if 50% unlock: $600,000,000 lost
4. if 100% unlock: $1,200,000,000 lost

it is clearly not logical to expect many people already in a contract to jump ship (because of the fine they would have to pay), but if 100% all potentially new at&t subscribers (which means 25% of all iphone buyers) go the unlock route instead, in that case, apple stands to lose $660,000,000 in shared revenue from at&t.

it seems reasonable to expect that a substantial amount of new iphone buyers would have heard about the unlock and will opt to not activate with at&t. even if 50% of only the new users go the unlock route, apple loses $330,000,000.

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, att, unlock