A chance Twitter conversation is responsible for the creation of six new jobs at the online business directory Whatswhat.ie.

Paraic Hegarty, a Cork-based investor and managing consultant has been appointed Director of Strategy and Innovation at the company. Hegarty ended up investing in the company as a result of chatting over Twitter with Sian Phillips, Financial Director of Whatswhat.ie and an active Twitter user.
His investment is to result in five new jobs as well as his own hands-on role in the business and the opening of a new office base for the company.
Phillips explains that the conversation started because herself and Hegarty were following each other on Twitter, most likely because they were both involved in Business Camp Limerick last year – though never met at it.
“Whenever I chat to somebody for the first time [on Twitter] really I always look at the bio to see who they are and probably follow them back. I noticed he had in his bio angel investor. We were looking for an investor at the time,” she explains.
Because both were following each other they were able to exchange DMs (private direct messages via Twitter). Phillips sent Hegarty a DM asking what an angel investor is, he replied and within a few weeks this resulted in further email exchanges, a phone call and a meeting between Whatswhat.ie Managing Director Barbara Gordon, Phillips and Hegarty. “We kept it under wraps until we signed,” explains Phillips.
Hegarty’s investment has resulted in the opening of an office in Bray, Co Wicklow. Prior to this the two directors had worked from their respective homes, Phillips on the Cork/Waterford border and Gordon in Bray.
As well as appointing Paraic to the position of Director of Strategy and Innovation, the company has hired two salespeople and an admin person who will be based from the Bray office and is seeking a further two salespeople.
Phillips adds that you can get a good feel for people on Twitter, if they are honest with their tweets. She says that she thinks Twitter is a brilliant place for matching potential employers and jobseekers, but the problem is people don’t know enough of the time that people are seeking work.
“I think it’s just a fluke that I looked at his bio and thought ‘angel investor, we need one of those’,” she concludes.

If StumbleUpon is something you haven’t stumbled upon yet, it may be time to slot some time into your social media diary to find out more about it.

However, it seems many people in Ireland have already been using the site enthusiastically. StumbleUpon was the top social media site in Ireland for driving traffic to other websites between March 2009 and March 2010 according to research findings.
In March 2010, the site generated 40% of social media hits to websites in Ireland according to StatCounter, a Dublin-founded web analytics firm.
The firm’s research arm StatCounter Global Stats reported that globally Facebook is the primary source of traffic to global websites with almost half (48%) of social media hits followed by StumbleUpon with almost a quarter (25%).
Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter commented that the findings suggest that there is merit in having a corporate Facebook page or Twitter account. “The surprise packet is StumbleUpon, which over the past year has been consistently in the top two social media sites in terms of generating global website traffic. Indeed, in the US in March StumbleUpon was number one ahead of Facebook in terms of website traffic generation.”
In March 2010, in Ireland StumbleUpon accounted for almost 41% of social media hits, down from 60% the previous March. It is closely followed by Facebook (33% in March 2010 up from 12% in March 2009). Twitter was in third place in March of this year, accounting for almost 10% of social media hits in Ireland that month, up from 7% in March 2009.
The Irish and US StumbleUpon statistics buck global, UK and European trends. Across Europe, Facebook was most definitely in the lead in March of this year at 59%, followed by StumbleUpon at 13% and YouTube in third place, just a fraction ahead of Twitter. In the UK, again Facebook was clearly ahead of other social media websites as regards driving traffic to other websites, accounting for 49% of hits in March 2010, down from an impressive 88% in December 2009. StumbleUpon accounted for 24% of social media hits to websites in the UK, with Twitter counting for one in 10 hits,
The data for March is based on 13 billion page views across the global StatCounter network of member sites. StatCounter, which provides free website traffic information, has recently added Social Media to its StatCounter Global Stats, a free online research tool for media, analysts, bloggers, researchers and members.

Social media seems to be the buzzword of the season. But what does it really mean for jobseekers? Is it enough to connect with recruiters on social media sites? Or is there more to it?
Prosperity asked communications consultant Damien Mulley about his thoughts on whether building on a social media presence make a jobseeker a more attractive candidate.
Whether you are looking for a job or in a company, says Mulley, there will be people Googling you. Having a social media presence gives a potential employer or recruiter something to learn about a potential candidate.
“The more that somebody can learn about you and the more you can show off by your blog or your Facebook page or your Twitter page, the more you can almost prep people in advance of chatting to you or meeting you that you’re an expert or have more knowledge in certain areas than other people. It’s a good way of saying this is who I am, this is my area of expertise and this is me sharing information with a large network of people.”

Mulley’s personal opinion is that in the future companies will have more of an emphasis of hiring staff with the most connections to knowledgeable people, as opposed to just hiring knowledgeable people.
“So [hiring] employees with a large Twitter following and a large number of people on Facebook are probably the ones that will be able to get you the information you are looking for faster,” he comments.
LinkedIn is another social network of importance, but very underused in Ireland. Great for lead generation and meeting new people in your business area, to their detriment many people see it as a static CV, uploading information and updating it once a year. Mulley says people should be going out on the discussion forums or using LinkedIn Answers to contribute information and show off their expertise. “People will know of you and you’ll gain a reputation.”
Apart from just having social media accounts, Mulley reinforces the fact that people update them – and ideally with an opinion. “I think companies that are looking for employees want people who can think about things, who can analyse things.”
Now that the default for Twitter and Facebook accounts is public, jobseekers with private accounts have to realise they are competing with other people who want to share with the world.
Mulley believes private Twitter accounts are almost a contradiction on what Twitter is all about. “Twitter is all about sharing information with a large number of people and contributing to public conversations… At the end of the day it doesn’t hide anything if you’ve a private account and send a message out, somebody can copy and paste that message and send it out to their network… all it takes is for one person to retweet that and 1,000 people have seen it or 10,000. It’s grasping at privacy straws.”

Ireland may be traditionally known for its agriculture, however, farming abilities of a different type are connected to a US company with plans to  set up an operation here.
However, Zynga, the San Francisco-headquartered gaming company behind the hugely popular FarmVille is remaining tight lipped about its plans for an Irish office.

Zynga, which creates games on social networks and iPhone, is the creator of popular games such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, Café World, and Zynga Poker, to name a few. Company spokesperson Shernaz Daver would not comment on when the Irish operation is scheduled to open, what types of roles would be filled or how many professionals the company plans to employ in Ireland.
“We are expanding operations in Ireland, but can’t comment further at this time. We will have more to talk about later.”
Zynga’s most played game is FarmVille, which has over 80 million people playing worldwide. However, it has more games in the pipeline. “We’re always working on new games. You’ll be seeing some more games from us very soon,” Daver told the Prosperity ezine.
Zynga has over 600 full-time employees that work in a variety of roles, from game development, to customer service, to finance. It recently opened an office in Bangalore, India. Apart from that, it has a handful of US offices: San Francisco (headquarters), Sunnyvale, Los Gatos, Los Angeles and Baltimore.
It currently does not have a European presence and would not comment on whether its planned Irish operation will serve as its European headquarters.

Didn’t make it to WordCamp in Kilkenny last weekend to learn about the business of blogging? Missed out on a nomination for the Irish blog awards in Galway at the end of March? Don’t worry, here’s another way to boost your blogging power.

Bloggertone, a business blogging community, has teamed up with BizSugar, a social media site, to hold the Sugartone Sweet Business Blogging Contest, which is free to enter and has USD$6,921 worth of prizes.

Those interested in getting a bit of free exposure for their business or in the hope of being headhunted will have to get creative though. Blog posts will be evaluated by their titles. However, if you’re not into blogging but nevertheless are full of opinions, there is also a prize category for people who leave comments on blog posts.

The winners of the Top 10 Titles will be decided on by the Sugartone team and will take into account the total number of votes and comments.

The Sugartone team will also decide the winners of the Top 10 Commenters and will take into account the total number of votes and comments as well as an appreciation of the value the commenters bring to the community.

Sugartone is a combined effort from Bloggertone, which began in Ireland and now serves as a blogging outlet to Irish professionals across a variety of industries to an international audience, and BizSugar, a social media site where people can share small business news and tips.

Although they can be written at any stage blogposts must be posted to Bloggertone.com between Monday March 15th at 4pm GMT and Wednesday March 17th 4pm. Bloggertone then submits these to the BizSugar site where they can be voted on within the same timeframe. However, there is no chance to use previously published blog posts – articles must be original content. Articles that have been previously published elsewhere are not eligible to be submitted for this Sugartone contest.

For full details of the contest see: http://bloggertone.com/announcements/2010/03/08/sugartone-sweet-business-blogging-contest/