Have you ever wondered if men and women approach networking differently?

Well, I have. I’m actually in the process of gathering information to write a book about it with my friends Frank DeRaffele and Hazel Walker. A huge part of the book is going to be based on the findings of a survey we’re currently conducting. It’s the most comprehensive survey on gender and networking ever conducted, and we currently have 7,800 responses–which means we’re almost to our target of 8,000-10,000 responses!

The online survey only takes a few minutes, and I’d love to hear your opinions on Networking and the Sexes before the survey closes. You can rest assured that your opinions and comments are greatly appreciated and will be kept completely confidential; however, if you’d like to come back and leave a comment about what you thought of the survey, I’d be really interested to hear what you have to say!

If you live in Africa or South America, we especially need responses from people in those countries, so I’d really appreciate it if you’d take a few moments to participate and encourage your friends, family, and co-workers to participate as well.

CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING LINK TO JOIN THE SURVEY NOW: http://www.SurveyMonkey.Com/s.asp?u=204762616512

Thanks!

Whether the maker of network security solutions can successfully sell shares to investors during one of the most turbulent stock market periods in decades is anyone’s guess, but if the bull market continues, Fortinet has a good chance of raising at least $100 million.

Recently, eBay has become more social. In July, the auction giant had begun to allow employees to collect stories from users and to post them on an internal Web site. Eventually, the site may become open to the public, according to eBay's partner, Tokoni, which powers the stories site and announced the collaboration today.

The idea is for eBay to try to replicate Barak Obama kind of success in using social Web to grow its brand and to increase its users' loyalty. Users can write and submit stories about anything: One entry I've seen talks about what it's been like to move to, and fall in love with California. Perhaps people will start coming back to eBay not only to trade goods, but also to get to know other people. That must be eBay's hope, at least.

To date, Tokoni has created similar stories communities for former eBay CEO Meg Whitman’s gubernatorial campaign and for political organization WomenCount.

For years, Web publishers have had a love-hate relationship with what has become the standard metric for online ad effectiveness: the click. It's certainly an indication that a prospective customer saw the ad. But surely it's not the only indication. The problem is that marketers haven't been able to agree on other metrics for whether an ad was seen, let alone whether it was effective in spurring eventual sales. Publishers clearly think branded display ads can do just that, and they want to get paid for running them even if they don't get a click.

Now they're offering up some evidence. A new research study from the Online Publishers Association, conducted by comScore, sheds some new light on the impact of online branding campaigns. To be released on June 18, the study looked at 80 of the biggest campaigns on 200 of the largest Web sites over a month. Some of the results, from the release:

I just read a great book called Do you matter? How great design will make people love your company.  Co-written by my good friend, bestselling author and corporate consultant Stewart Emery along with former Apple industrial design director Robert Brunner, the book begins by asking if you, in fact, matter to your customers.

Think about it . . . this is a really important question.  Has your product, service or brand established an emotional connection with your customers to the extent that they’re invested in your lasting success?  If you disappeared, would their lives be diminished in some way?

As the book explains, when you know how to use design as a complete strategy, starting with the ideal customer experience and then building an internal supply chain to deliver in a way that exceeds expectations, you’ll create products, services and experiences that truly matter to your customers’ lives–and your business will thrive.  However, the reality is that few companies know how to create great design, and even fewer know how to implement a design strategy that will secure enduring success.

This book offers tremendous value to anyone who reads it because it clearly outlines how to transform any business into a design-driven business that follows in the steps of companies such as Nike, Apple, Ikea and BMW, all of which use design values to make a positve difference in the lives of their customers.  The authors also include some really great stories of successes as well as missed opportunities, all of which make it a really interesting read.

Well done, Stewart: I love the book.

To find out more about the book, click here.

Twitter, the microblogging phenom, has been testing a search function for several weeks with a few selected users, so you can find out what people are talking about right now. This has been especially useful for finding out immediately, before traditional news outlets, about events such as the US Airways plane that went down in the Hudson River in January. As much as anything, Twitter search is what has many people so jazzed about the company's potential to be a commercial success.

Now, Twitter is looking to roll out a more integrated search feature, which cofounder Biz Stone calls a Discovery Engine. It will include not only the ability to save searches and view them on the right side of the page, but to view currently popular topics. Since I'm not one of the chosen few whose account has been blessed with being able to test the feature yet, I'll depend on Stone's blog post to explain it:

Currently, a small subset of Twitter users are trying this new search feature in the sidebar of their Twitter home page. When you do a search, you don't go to another page, the relevant tweets instantly show up where you'd expect them to—right on your home page where tweets love to be.

This way of experiencing search is aligned with Twitter's simple approach. By default, the tweets you see on your home page are from sources of information that you have curated over time—in other words, the accounts you chose to follow. When you search, you're asking for any tweets that contain the word or phrase you're interested in right now.

Saved Searches and Trends

We've added a few other features to this design. If there's a search you want to do on a regular basis, you can "save" the search. That will place the word or term permanently in your sidebar for easy access. So if you want to know what people are saying about the city you live in, the products you use, or just something weird, it becomes a link on your home page.

Twitter Search is an engine for discovering what is happening right now but it doesn't always have to be a box and a button. Trends are words or phrases being referenced with more frequency suggesting that something interesting might be happening. When you click on a trend link, you can read the tweets and find out what's up. Trends is in beta—but it has potential.

I'm not yet convinced that Twitter search is the next coming of Google, as some believe. But clearly it's a great feature for Twitter's users, and it seems likely to have considerable commercial potential as an indication of what people might want to buy right now.

I'm a huge fan of online subscriptions, particularly music services such as Pandora and Rhapsody. I realized just how much I've come to rely on such services this weekend, when I briefly considered giving away boxes of hundreds of CDs I stored in my attic soon after I began paying my $15 monthly fee for unlimited streaming access from Rhapsody a few years back. It was a shock to look at all those CDs, and feel nothing--none of the love I used to feel when buying, playing or admiring them as they took up space in my crowded home-office.

Now, all I care about is having access to music. So long as that's the case, I could care less about owning it--whether on CD or as a digital download.

Evidently, I'm not alone. Today, market watcher NPD released the latest evidence that tomorrow's customers--today's teens--are less interested in owning music.

Consultant In-Stat just released a new forecast: It believes the number of potential mobile app store users could quadruple within five years. Some 100 million handsets that will be shipped in the next half a decade will be tied to application markets like Apple's App Store, according to In-Stat.

What I want to point out is, a user of an app store-enabled phone may not necessarily shop in that store. Not all app stores are created equal. iPhone users are downloading from the App Store like crazy. But users of Windows Mobile-based devices download a lot fewer applications. And whether users will love or hate new stores like BlackBerry App World, Android Market and Microsoft's new, upcoming store remains to be seen. While a device may be capable of accessing an app store, its owner may opt to take a pass.

For an app store to be successful, it has to be able to attract a large community of software developers, to put our cool new applications. The store must be easy to search and to navigate. The apps must be easy to pay for. While all that sounds easy, it's not. My bet is that many of the app stores that open their doors in the coming months won't be able to generate enough developer and consumer traffic and will close up within a few years.

Hi folks. We need your help. You may have read about President-Elect Barack Obama’s love of his BlackBerry. We’re looking for other politicians around the world who are using high-tech toys in interesting ways. Email me with your suggestions at clark.boyd[at]bbc.co.uk.

Hello,

I think SolarWinds sales will love me for this!!

I’m thinking of away to know when a HP Printer has the Toner low alert set. Is there away that SolarWinds can read this and notify me??

We just entered into a Print Management contract and I don’t want a users to tell us they need a toner just to stockpile toner!!

I know this might be a little much…

Thanks,
Dave