linkedin

Employees unloading stock options? It's the hot new thing

On Monday we heard that Facebook was allowing current employees to sell a delineated portion of their common stock, something that the company confirmed on Tuesday.

Now, VentureBeat's Eric Eldon, who also originally reported the Facebook tidbit, says that LinkedIn employees are going to have the option of doing the same. The business social network, Eldon wrote, is allowing current employees to sell 20 percent of their equity in the company at a $500 million valuation. That's quite a bit lower than the billion-dollar valuation reportedly bestowed upon the company after its recent $53 million Series D funding … Read more

Yahoo lights up LinkedIn, Yelp in search results

Yahoo has begun using its SearchMonkey technology by default to give more prominence and potentially usefulness to search results involving LinkedIn contacts, Yelp reviews of businesses, and local companies.

Most of Yahoo's search results are a plain, textual list of Web sites. SearchMonkey, though, lets Yahoo's servers present some results with richer accompanying information, such as product prices at Amazon.com or movie critic ratings. If it works out as promised, that could make search results more useful, keep searchers coming back for more, drive more traffic to those sites that take advantage of SearchMonkey technology, and help … Read more

Targeted 'Times' articles coming to LinkedIn

The New York Times has inked a deal with LinkedIn to deliver targeted headlines to members of the networking site.

A LinkedIn user who works in the energy industry would, for example, be shown articles relevant to that area.

Times readers will also be able to share and comment on stories with LinkedIn members in their networks through a tool on article pages of the newspaper's Web site.

The deal, announced Monday night, will also enable advertisers to target "more Times readers than currently available through the NYTimes.com registration process," the companies said, though they did … Read more

Form follows function with LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace

One of the problems with social networking sites is that they tend to be ugly. Not just a little bit ugly. Seriously ugly.

MySpace has upgraded its UI, but it's still noisy, long (you have to scroll way down on some pages to get where you want to go), and cluttered. Facebook? It looks like a dingy and, like MySpace, is overly noisy (It's also shockingly slow. I've been trying to change my account settings and it keeps hanging on me). Not only that, but my home page on Facebook doesn't seem to want to let … Read more

LinkedIn gets its billion-dollar valuation

Business-networking site LinkedIn announced on Tuesday evening that it had netted $53 million in a Series D funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures and with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and Bessemer Ventures. CEO Dan Nye wrote in a blog post that this values the company at a smidgen more than $1 billion.

Rumors floated this spring that the company was aiming for a billion-dollar valuation on a new funding round, rather than seeking a buyer. Previously, the company had raised $27 million. Chairman and co-founder Reid Hoffman has said that it'll likely go public … Read more

A billion-dollar valuation for LinkedIn?

On Monday, reports surfaced that business social network LinkedIn is likely looking to raise a round of venture capital (rather than find a corporate parent).

TechCrunch reports that investment bank Allen & Co. is hoping to help LinkedIn pull in that funding at a $1 billion valuation.

Spearheading the campaign is Dave Wehner, managing director of the Bay Area bank, who was reportedly a big part of Bebo's $850 million sale to AOL.

Why $1 billion? Well, LinkedIn says its target demographic has meant that it can pull in some pretty lucrative ad revenue, avoiding the "ad trap&… Read more

'Something's up' at LinkedIn, per blog reports

Oh, Valley gossip: VentureBeat speculates we might soon hear about some big company buying business social network LinkedIn. The evidence? A board meeting that "went way over the scheduled time," and sources who say "good news" is on the way. Even VentureBeat admits it's a stretch, but asserts that "something's up."

LinkedIn isn't commenting. VentureBeat later added a note suggesting that the "good news" might be additional funding, not an acquisition.

Along with Digg and Plaxo, LinkedIn is one of those social-media companies that people just like to talk about… Read more

Secrets LinkedIn can tell you about your customers

One of the frustrating things about an open-source business is you don't generally know who is using your software. The paid customers you know, of course, but generally this represents a small fraction of the total user base.

In Alfresco's case, roughly 30,000 people download our software each month. Of those, maybe 4,000 to 6,000 register for documentation or give us their contact information in some other way.

Larry Augustin gave an excellent presentation [PDF] on this recently at OSBC. He talked about how to engineer a product to maximize conversions from downloads to dollars.

Today I found a new way. LinkedIn. What do I mean? And is this only something for open-source vendors?… Read more

CNET Live - Episode 47

Brian Cooley usually rails against social networks, but hasn't dumped LinkedIn yet. Brian sits down with LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman to discuss why.

Watch the show on CNET TV.

Things we Crave

Heated touch screen from Glacier

Ford's concept Taxi

First Look

Guitar Rig 3

Download of the Week

XChat.

Insider Secrets Run Ubuntu Linux on a USB drive Your calls

Turn any number into Hex.

Share pictures from iPhoto with Picasa.

DVD drive won't play CDs but will play DVDs. Forum threads.