Facebook

It was 2004 when Mark Zuckerberg started asking his fellowHarvardUniversitystudents to try out his new idea known as “the facebook.” The online community allowed his peers to create personal profiles, search for profiles and invite others from the university to join. It was a smashing success almost immediately. In 2006, Facebook opened its virtual doors to anyone with a registered e-mail address.

Not content to rest upon his accomplishments, Zuckerberg continued to push for new features. One of the most revolutionary was creating an application programming interface (API) for third-party developers. Suddenly, programmers could design applications that could tap into Facebook’s massive population. Applications range from simple games and diversions to clever marketing campaigns.

In short: Facebook has become the most visited social networking site in the world, receiving more than 10 million unique visitors than MySpace in January 2009, making it the No. 1 social networking site on our list.

Twitter

Part Web site, part Web service – Twitter is an online environment where users can create profiles, fill them with information and then build a network of people they “follow” (and a band of others who follow them).

Twitter sends messages between users via the Short Message Service (SMS), better known as text messaging. Members send their texts through Twitter to those they allow to follow them. The messages, called Tweets, are super short: only 140 charters or shorter (there are technically 160 characters for use, but the first 20 are there to make room for user names in messages.). The new phenomenon is called microblogging and it’s incredibly popular.

All sorts of famous people are on Twitter. If you sign up for an account, you can follow astronauts, scientists, athletes, musicians, actors and writers. Or you can ignore the celebrities and focus on your friends.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social networking site designed for professionals. It boasts a membership of more than 35 million people and claims that executives from every Fortune 500 company has member profiles on the site. The profiles focus on members’ professional experience and skills.

The site also supports activities beyond networking with potential employers, employees or clients. For example, LinkedIn provides a platform that allows members to collaborate on projects — a virtual meeting room of sorts.

Hi5

As the fastest-growing social networking site in the world for the first half of 2008, Hi5 is the largest site of its kind that you may have never heard of. The site grew 78 percent in the first half of 2008 alone.

Based inSan Francisco, Hi5 launched in 2003 and was turning a profit by 2004. By 2005, the site had 10 million members. While sites like Facebook and MySpace began to dominate theU.S.social networking scene, Hi5 began to look at other opportunities internationally.

In 2006, it launched a Spanish version of the site to great success. Versions of the site in other languages soon followed. This new focus paid off. Hi5 became the most popular social networking site inMexicoand many Latin American countries. Like many other social networking sites, members create profiles, share photos, play games and post messages.

Orkut

Orkut is an online social network owned by Google. Originally based inCalifornia, the site now callsBrazilhome. While 17 percent of its traffic is from theUnited States, it never really took off in theU.S.

But Brazilians adopted the site as their preferred online social network — more than 50 percent of all traffic to Orkut comes fromBrazil. According to the analytics firm comScore, more than 20 million Brazilians visited Orkut in September 2008, making it the most popular Web site inBrazil. In that same month, only 893,000 Brazilians visited MySpace.

Orkut is also popular inIndia, which supplies another 17 percent of the site’s traffic. While it may never gain a firm standing in theUnited States, it’s still a success story.

Most businesses say there’s no real secret to getting your clients to come back. It only depends on how you’re able to provide the best customer service that will exceed your clients’ expectations. Good customer service will ensure ultimate survival in this tough industry. Surveys say that not all companies make it in this industry because they don’t know how to provide the best customer service unlike their competitors.

1. To be able to do this, you need to find out what makes your own product stand out. In order to determine what makes your product special, you need to study the competition. Know what kind of customer service they provide. Do they make special promotions every week? When do they offer sales for their products? And what people come back to their company? These questions may eventually help you establish your own customer service.
2.  In making sure that you provide the best customer service, make a list of what your competitors don’t have. Say for example, you’re in the food business. If your competitor doesn’t offer free delivery, then that should be your cue to offer one. It will save your customers from the hassle of ordering and picking up their food. In addition, it will also make your customers appreciative of the service that you’ve provided for them.
3.  One more thing is that you should just choose one or two customer service ideas to implement at a time. The reason for this is that it will make you focus more on how to develop them fully. Implementing more than two ideas will eventually mess up your customer service. Remember that big companies such as McDonald’s survive in the food business because the company knows how to implement its customer service one at a time. You see, it’s not about lowering the prices, but it’s about providing the best care for your customers.
4. Always remember that outshining your competitor can be tricky. One way or another they will also make up ideas on how to     outshine your company. The trick is to always be alert when that time comes because in this industry only the strong will survive. One last thing: always maintain a friendly relationship with your customers. It’s important to make them feel that they are the top priority because no matter what ideas you do to improve your customer service, if you don’t treat your customers well, then all of your wonderful ideas will go to waste.

When you’re trying to lose weight, avoiding breakfast may be tempting. You figure that you’re saving yourself some calories and you get a couple extra minutes to snooze. But research has consistently shown that the people who successfully lose weight are the ones who wake up and eat! Furthermore, people who eat breakfast regularly have better vitamin and mineral status and eat fewer calories from fat. So it seems that breakfast really is the most important meal of the day.

Studies show that in both adults and children, breakfast eaters tend to weigh less than breakfast skippers. One theory suggests that eating a nutritious breakfast can reduce hunger throughout the day. While it might seem as though you could save calories by skipping breakfast, this is not an effective strategy. Naturally, hunger gets the best of people who skip breakfast, and they eat more at lunch and throughout the day.

It should be kept in mind that most studies linking breakfast to weight control looked at a healthy breakfast containing protein and/or whole grains—not meals loaded with fat and calories. Eating breakfast also gives you energy to do more physical activity and more productivity in everything you do, which is also vital to weight control. So make the effort to get up in the morning and fix yourself a healthy meal.

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