linkedin

LinkedIn has long insisted that it's exempt from the common wisdom that social-network ads will never make much money: its affluent user base of networking-happy business professionals can rake in more high-end advertisers and charge more for impressions.

To that end, the company announced on Monday the debut of an ad network, the "LinkedIn Audience Network," that enables other sites to run LinkedIn's ads.

TechCrunch wrote that this will be in partnership with a third-party company, Collective Media, which powers advertising networks for clients.

Like most social-network advertising plans, the LinkedIn Audience Network focuses on targeting. … Read more

After several months of beta testing its new design, Facebook on Wednesday began rolling out its new site to all of its 100 million users.

Under the new design, the social-networking giant initiated changes designed to simplify the site's look and feel, provide greater user control over profiles, and dish up recent and relevant information, according to the company's blog posting.

To date, approximately 40 million, or 40 percent, of Facebook users have tried the beta version of the new site, which debuted in July. Of that group, 75 percent remained with the new version, according to the … Read more

Business news channel CNBC and professional networking site LinkedIn have formed a strategic alliance.

Under the deal announced late Wednesday, the CNBC will provide articles, blogs, financial data, and video across the LinkedIn network. The news channel also will integrate LinkedIn functionality into CNBC.com. That functionality will allow LinkedIn's members to share comments about the news within their network of friends and business contacts. In addition, the two companies will jointly create content, including community-generated content such as surveys, from LinkedIn members for broadcast.

The changes on the sites are set to launch in the fourth quarter.

"… Read more

LinkedIn on Thursday night folded several changes into its Groups platform that are designed to enhance the social-networking site's group and user management features.

Among the changes are a centralized hub page designed to allow members of a group to gather and converse, as well as a searchable roster, according to a post in TechCrunch, which notes some of the changes may go a long way in addressing concerns about buggy management features on the Groups site.

Make more room for the virtual Rolodex...

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 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

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

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

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