"50 Social Sites That Every Business Needs a Presence on"

"50 Social Sites That Every Business Needs a Presence on"

This list from "Inside CRM" is divided into 5 categories:

Social-Media/Social-Bookmarking Sites (e.g., Reddit, Digg, Del.icio.us);
Professional-Networking Sites (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook);
Niche Social-Media Sites (e.g., Mixx, Tweako);
General Social-Media Sites (e.g., Wikipedia, Newsvine, Yahoo!Answers); and
Job Sites (e.g., Monster, CareerBuilder.com, CollegeRecruiter.com)

Participating in all of these social sites would keep any business very busy...

Incentive for saving $ ?

This article posted on the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge newsletter caught my eye. The authors conducted a small survey in Clarksville, Indiana to estimate the demand for prize-linked savings accounts -- a product available in over 20 countries but not in the U.S. Perhaps not surprisingly, the product appeals to non-savers and heavy lottery users..... (scary?)

Working paper: Consumer Demand for Prize-Linked Savings—A Preliminary Analysis

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5867.html
Download the PDF. Prize-linked savings (PLS) products are savings vehicles that may appeal to people with little savings and little interest in traditional savings products. PLS products offer savers a return in the form of the chance to earn large prizes, rather than in more traditional forms of interest or dividend income or capital appreciation. Prize-linked assets are offered in over twenty countries around the world—including the U.K., Sweden, South Africa, and many Latin American and Middle Eastern countries—but are not available in the United States, where state laws and federal regulations make the offering of prize-linked programs problematic. In this working paper, HBS professor Peter Tufano, Nick Maynard, and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve provide a first look into demand for a PLS product in the United States.

Environmentally responsible business

The State of Green Business 2008:

"In this landmark report, Joel Makower and the editors of GreenBiz.com answer the question: How are U.S. businesses doing in their quest to be greener and more environmentally responsible? It introduces the GreenBiz Index, a set of 20 indicators of progress, tracking the resource use, emissions, and business practices of U.S. companies: carbon, materials, energy, and toxics intensity, clean-tech investments, e-waste recovery, paper use, employee commuting, and more."

Free registration is required to download a copy of this 64-page report.

Survey of Business Leaders - Corporate responsibility

Grant Thornton annually surveys U.S. business leaders on issues of the today. The 2007, 15th edition is focused on the issue of corporate responsibility. From this page, you can access the most current report, as well as reports from five previous years.
Access: http://www.grantthornton.com/portal/site/gtcom/menuitem.91c078ed5c0ef4ca80cd8710033841ca/?vgnextoid=f8bec66106236010VgnVCM100000308314acRCRD

BRIC - Brazil, Russia, India, China

BRIC - Brazil, Russia, India, China
"Over the next 50 years, Brazil, Russia, India and China—the BRICs economies—could become a much larger force in the world economy." The Goldman Sachs book "BRICs and Beyond" (272 pages) is available in PDF format in its entirety here. Also on the site is a video interview, web tour, and an older 2003 report.

"Accounting and auditing resources..."

A recent article from C&RL News (College & Research Libraries) entitled "Accounting and auditing resources: Sites for the investor, academic, and practitioner" provides a very nice overview of accounting standard setting bodies, regulatory agencies, professional associations, licensing boards, blogs, information portals and other key web-based resources available at no cost.

Near the end of the article is and entry for the following subject guide:

• Ten Steps to Accounting Research. Written by Peter Z. McKay, business librarian at the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida, this site explains how to organize the research process to find information on a particular accounting topic. References to print and electronic resources and links to relevant literature and bodies are included throughout the text. Access: http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/cm/business/tutors/acctutor.htm.

[Note: This subject guide links to some licensed resources available to students at the University of Florida - here at USFSP we have access to some but not all of the same resources. The key accounting databases available to USFSP students and faculty are Accounting Research Manager (CCH), the CCH Tax Research Network, and RIA Checkpoint, available from the main library page by clicking through databases by title/subject.]

Want to leave Facebook?

...leaving Facebook isn't as easy as you may have thought. An article in today's New York Times discusses the many frustrations some have had in trying to delete their Facebook accounts. Facebook offers an option to deactivate an account but user information may be kept on the company's servers indefinitely. A user can then contact Facebook directly to have the information deleted but even then the results have not been immediate or definitive.

Why might you want to leave Facebook? One example provided was a businessman who joined and then found himself in a small office where all his co-workers were also on Facebook -- and he did not want those he supervised to be witness to his personal life.

This is more than just a technology hassle but another example of privacy issues confronting social networking and other new online technologies.