Brightfuse, CareerBuilder’s experimental project, has been quietly gaining ground in the business networking community. A business-oriented social networking site launched back in February 2008 has accumulated a following of around 75,000 members.Working around the premise that referral recruitment grows in popularity in credit-crunched times, it seems that Careerbuilder is investing in the networking premise to support their further work in resourcing. Compared to LinkedIn’s 27 million members, CareerBuilder’s got a way to go, but argues that it’s going for a very different demographic - senior employees with six-figure salaries. We at BB (and our clients) always like to be in on these things whilst they’re still in they’re beta/alpha/never heard of it phases and, so far, Brightfuse hasn’t really promoted itself heavily, relying on steady evolution. So, whilst it’s still very very transatlantic, it’s well worth becoming an early adopter, if only because it’s so quick and easy.

Who’d have though that it would take a full two weeks for Ning to be yesterdays news. Hey ho. The latest 100% free social networking site tool is SocialGo. I know, i know, we’ve only just finished building the Blackbridge Ning network groups to aid company-wide DVD lending but things have moved on. Still, the interface with SocialGo is, on the face of it, immediately more intuitive and presentable than Ming, sorry Ning. But the developers have also stumbled upon a way of monetizing it too, with a paid-for upgrade package. Smart.

Explore it for yourself. Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

We’ve been yabbing on a lot recently about micro-blogging and the impact it’s having on various industries. It seems its popularity in the UK is growing and that’s not just down to personal users either.

But the biggest proof of all is the stamp that is left after a global event. Enter the Olympics. 8 is a lucky number in China, and they’re celebrating these games on twitter by applying the tag #080808. How many tags you ask?

According to Read Write Web:

Currently if you search for #080808, you can see a new #080808 tweet coming up every 0.5 seconds!

Well we’ve probably all experienced the delight of lightboxes and their smooth transitions that not only provide functionality but also an enhanced user experience, but have you noticed ‘snap shots‘? Fun and interactive, these little beauties are a new and unique way of delivering content. Install and add to your web browser and you’re googling becomes all the merrier. Give it a ’shot’!

Has anyone else started to really warm to Alltop? It’s a ‘digital magazine rack’ that allows users to explore all the top stories on the web. I’ve been following Guy Kawasaki on Twitter for a while now and his firm Nononina is behind Alltop’s delightfully different architecture and design. What’s new? Well, the site just looks so unique. It’s clean and modern. The rollovers give you bite sized summaries of content. Even the simple reversal of banner to footer offers centre stage to content. The navigation is intuitive and the feeds are updated every ten minutes. Try it and I promise you’ll be instantly hooked. What’s more, there’s a brilliant new HR section. Admittedly it’s very US-centric in terms of content but it does shed some light on some universal issues. Chiefly, it’s a really useful tool for following issues of HR technology which has always been led by our friends across the pond.

Welcome to August friends, and like me I’m sure you’re also overheating whilst frantically typing away to communicate through emails, sms, blogs, twitter, intranet, all other social networks….need I go on……but there’s one more hot little site to add to the list for our world of work.

Cast your eye over the handsome new www.my-ijob.com  For how long have we been producing videos to enable employers to express their people brand through engaging video and audio? Yes, a while. Well this new video job site could just be the ticket. It’s early days, but awaiting their partnership with AOL’s 32million monthly users in Sept could be the i-cing (sorry!) on the cake for all the hours of filming and editing that ended up on the cutting room floor.