A Small State With A Big Problem

Those words, from mother-of-two Mary Hallam, sum up the plight of many people in the town of Cranston, Rhode Island.

This tiny state has the highest unemployment rate in the US after Michigan. One in ten of the workforce here is without a job.

Mary lost her job as a cashier in a seafood restaurant last October. She and the children get by on $465 (£314) a month in food stamps.

She can't afford her own place, so they have to live with her parents, both of whom are also unemployed.

"My Dad worked at the same company for 25 years", she says, "He paid his taxes. Now he can't even get help from the state to pay for medical care. It's very sad."

Major shut downs

Rhode Island, known as the Ocean State, is a mixed bag. Parts of it are very prosperous. The town of Newport is famous for its jazz festival and the mansions built by 19th century barons of industry.

But away from the tourist centres on the coast the story is very different. Rhode Island has been losing manufacturing jobs for years.

Now the financial crisis has caused major shut downs in many other areas of the local economy, from construction to financial services to retailing.

Despite the thick snow on the sidewalks, the labour and training centre in West Warwick, just a few miles from Cranston, is packed with job seekers - at computer screens, in one-on-one interviews, in big groups doing tests.

There used to be pages of job adverts in the local newspaper. Now they're down to a single page, if that. There are four vacancies at a firm which needs jewellery polishers, but not much else.

Claims avalanche

Marissa Stewart-White is a single mother with a nine-year-old daughter. She lost her job working for a government contractor just before Christmas.

"I have a degree in economics and computer science. I've been working since I was fifteen. However, these are really hard times right now."

The Labour Department here can't cope with the avalanche of new claims for unemployment benefit. In a bitter irony, it's bringing back retired workers and advertising for forty new call centre staff to deal with the backlog.

"We absolutely have a backlog of claims" says Labour Department manager Laura Hart. "We have about 10,000 internet claims and they go back to the beginning of January. We hope to make a dent in it this week".

So, on top of the shock of losing their jobs, many of the people here are having to wait more than a month before they receive their first benefit payment. The system is struggling to cope with the human tide of unemployment.

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Facebook Growing Fast In Germany, Italy

Central Europe loves Facebook. Or parts of it do, anyway. Although the social network didn't really start releasing versions in different languages until March of this year, new reports put Facebook's growth in two countries in the triple digits.

Germany stands as the less remarkable example. Sahana Mysore notes that Facebook's user base in this nation is about 18.5 percent of the one Xing's attracted, and only about 9.2 percent of leading social network StudiVZ's audience. Still, Alexa marks Facebook as Germany's 13th most popular site, and Mysore writes, "During 2008, the number of Facebook users in Germany grew 144% from just under 500,000 to nearly 1.2 million." Not bad.

Then, with Italy, the stats get almost jaw-dropping. She continues, "In the past five months alone, Facebook has grown an incredible 763% from 572k users in July to 4.9 million today!"

Mysore says that 8.5% of the Italian population is on Facebook, and according to Alexa, it's the country's third most trafficked site. Since only Google and Windows Live are ahead of Facebook, this pretty much counts as a complete win in the social networking arena.

Onlookers may criticize Mark Zuckerberg's choice to worry about growth instead of revenue, but he at least seems to be succeeding in this respect.

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Blogging To Build Buzz About Your Business

While blogs are now considered mainstream with more businesses using them to get their message out, just how are they building buzz online? The SES session "Blogging For Business" has the answers.

(Coverage of SES Chicago continues at WebProNews Videos. Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

Jennifer Evans Laycock, Editor-in Chief, Search Engine Guide, said everyone is blogging. "The recession we are in make blogs essential." Blogs are cost efficient especially if you have a tight marketing budget.

Reasons for blogs:

Showcase your personality

Create a feedback cycle

Build a loyal community

Create an emotional investment

Increase your credibility


Laycock said," The value of your blog is the conversation that takes place in your comments."

Leave it open-ended and integrate media into your blog. Engage with your readers-comment back.

People don't trust ads but there is trust online with friends and strangers who have credibility.

Blogging is as effective as word-of-mouth.

Easy blog marketing:

Comment early (gets attention of other readers)

Frequent comments

Spread comments

Comment late (to get attention of the blogger)

Pitching a blogger

Use real language

Respect their time
Develop a friendship

"Whatever industry you're in, start building relationships now in the community because you may need to pitch something in the future," Laycock said.

Before pitching a blogger:

Address them by name

Make sure you have the correct personal email address

Spell check

Send individual emails

Be transparent

Familiarize yourself with their readers

Make sure your pitch is relevant to their readers

Proofread

Bill Balderaz, President and Founder of Webbed Marketing, said blogging is good for businesses that are fast, flexible, can be experimental, and are working with limited budgets.

Engage in customer conversations and respond to negative comments.

"Blogging is less expensive per impression and has measurement capability," Balderaz said.

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Obama Looks To Give Digital Economy A Shot In The Arm

Pledging to "renew our information superhighway," President-elect Barack Obama this month offered a broad outline of an economic stimulus plan that will likely include increased spending on broadband access and other IT initiatives.

The stimulus plan, which Obama detailed in bare-bones fashion during his weekly video address on Dec. 6, could lead to wider availability of broadband services, particularly in rural areas. It also may fund new computers for schools and technologies that can help reduce medical costs.

The plan's overall cost is expected to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, so the amount of money that will be made available for IT-related investments could be quite large.

James Gabberty, a professor at Pace University's Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems in New York, said it's hard to measure the impact of tech spending on productivity. There's no way to quantify, for instance, that "the growth of a nation's goods and services will be x if you spend y number of dollars on hardware, software and communications gear," he said.

But Robert Atkinson, who heads the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) in Washington, thinks tech investments will help stimulate the economy. While many traditional economists focus on projects such as building roads and bridges, "we need to expand our vision" to include IT, said Atkinson, who is working with federal agencies as a member of Obama's transition team.

In a paper published in October, the ITIF argued that IT investments produce outsized productivity gains. And in discussing a possible stimulus plan, the nonpartisan think thank said that the U.S. can't afford to focus only on a "consumption-based [effort] that leaves the nation with little to show after consumers spend the money and the economy gets back on track."

One step that the ITIF recommended to spur corporate technology buying is to allow companies to write off all such purchases for tax purposes during 2009.

Broadband expansion is likely to be a priority for Obama's administration. Although the U.S. currently has about 75 million broadband users, the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ranks it only 15th out of 30 industrialized countries on broadband adoption. In his speech, Obama called the level of access in the U.S. "unacceptable."

Even now, only about two-thirds of Americans have a computer at home, according to the ITIF. Atkinson said the federal government could increase PC ownership through a program that subsidizes the cost of computers and Internet access. For less than $1 billion, the U.S. could help about 1.5 million households get online, he claimed.

Obama also said he wants to ensure that every hospital and doctor in the U.S. "is using cutting-edge technology and electronic medical records, so that we can cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes and help save billions of dollars each year."

The Arizona Telemedicine Program is employing technology to do just that. For instance, the program, which is funded by the state government and based at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson, created a teletrauma service that enables trauma specialists to assist medical facilities in remote areas. Using cameras, videoconferencing equipment and remote sensors, the specialists can examine a patient's injuries and view X-rays.

Dr. Ronald Weinstein, the program's director, said the telemedicine initiative has helped save lives and reduce costs -- in some cases by eliminating the need to fly patients to hospitals for specialized treatment.

Weinstein said he hopes Obama will continue to fund a telemonitoring program at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. As part of that program, cell phones are used to prompt patients to take medications or to deliver messages related to their individual medical needs. Cell phones, Weinstein said, are becoming "central to the delivery" of health care services.

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