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overshares
5 Things We Wish We Could Undo on the Internet
Gmail has a new unsend feature — sort of like the broadcast delay in case Janet Jackson shows her nipple, but niftier because it's online! It made us think of other things people should undo. More » -
exits
LinkedIn loses a CEO, gains a Yahoo
Recessionary times should be glory days for LinkedIn, as people furiously network on the business-contacts website for scraps of work. But instead, it's LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye who finds himself out of a job. -
blogging for dollars
Guy Kawasaki writes his own blog — well, except that one really popular post
This is why people love Apple executive turned venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki, whether or not he knows what he's talking about. At a Commonwealth Club event, Kawasaki was asked about his insanely popular "Ten Ways to use LinkedIn." Watch him squirm for a minute before 'fessing up: LinkedIn flack Kay Luo provided Guy with his talking points for the post. "I really needed a post — it was four days!" Guy, next time feel free to raid our inbox. We get more helpfully-already-written posts than we'd ever imagined possible. -
great moments in pr
LinkedIn chairman avoids layoff talk in BusinessWeek
Reid Hoffman's heft regularly makes reporters turn to their thesauri for polite terms for "fat." BusinessWeek, to keep the tone of a new profile appropriately flattering, writes of his "expansive body." But the article is anything but expansive in its probing of LinkedIn's business. It focuses instead on how Hoffman is trying to figure out survival strategies for his portfolio of startups. Nowhere are LinkedIn's own layoffs mentioned. Instead, Hoffman implies that the employees he put out on the street should use the site to seek new careers: "Every individual is a small business." Not an expansive one. -
confirmed
LinkedIn founder cancels trip for layoffs
LinkedIn, the richly funded business-networking website, is indeed laying employees off today. (No numbers available yet; if you know more details, please send them in.) But we know of at least one person who'sskippingsticking around for the cuts: Reid Hoffman, the company's chairman and cofounder.He's in Japan, speaking at a conference. A convenient absence. Hoffman is described by his underlings as generous and kind, but we hear he didn't oppose the layoffs. We also notice he wasn't kind-hearted enough to cancel his trip and console his employees in person.Update: We're now told Hoffman did cancel his trip to Japan for the conference, at the last minute. -
rumormonger
LinkedIn to start layoffs today?
A tipster reports high drama at LinkedIn, the business-networking site. The company is funded in part by Sequoia Capital, the Valley's new high priests of doom and gloom — and, our source claims, Sequoia has told all of its portfolio companies to cut costs by 10 percent. LinkedIn's big-hearted chairman, Reid Hoffman (shown here), reportedly doesn't want to lay people off, but he and CEO Dan Nye are said to be engaged in a power struggle over this and other issues. Layoffs could come today — possibly an exercise in cleaning house rather than a reaction to the economy, though we hear LinkedIn has been missing financial milestones. Here's the tip: More » -
layoffs
LinkedIn recommendation = you're fired
The old way to tell you're about to be fired: Your boss comes up to you, claps you on the shoulder, and acts all chummy. The new way to tell you're about to be fired: Your boss leaves a glowing recommendation for you. Revision3's Damon Berger got one from CEO Jim Louderback five days before he was laid off from the online-video startup. Damon, you should have gotten a clue when Louderback wrote that you could be "a great front-person for any organization." -
meltdowns
Nasdaq tumble stops LinkedIn stock sale plan
Conventional Valley wisdom: The chaos in the public stock markets won't affect private companies, right? Wrong. In August, LinkedIn had set plans to let employees sell some of their shares to investors. Interest in the company had been keen, given its stated plans to wait to IPO rather than sell out. But the stock-sale plan was conditioned on the Nasdaq index staying above a certain level. It has since fallen through that floor, meaning employees will no longer be able to sell their shares. And we hear Bain Capital, a major LinkedIn investor who's backing the stock-sales plan, has the right to walk away if the Nasdaq doesn't recover by mid-October. -
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your privacy is an illusion
LinkedIn shuttle throws employees' privacy under the bus
A correction on our previous post about LinkedIn's financial woes: Contrary to our tipster's assertions, plenty of LinkedIn employees use the company-provided shuttle bus from San Francisco to Mountain View. The bus even has its own Twitter account. That account is private — but it links to a public, annotated route map on Google Maps. CEO Dan Nye and marketing VP Patrick Crane, among others, have their home addresses listed. Other employees have left notes, in plain view, about their commuting preferences. "Your privacy is our top concern," LinkedIn's privacy policy states. But if the company is so slapdash about guarding its own employees, can it really be trusted to protect users? Here's an embedded version of the map: More » -
rumormonger
LinkedIn: "Where the PR is hot but the business is not"
A LinkedIn tipster tells us that even as the all-business social network raised $53 million from Bain Capital and other investors in June, at a $1 billion valuation, it sought to pull in another $25 million from Goldman Sachs and failed. More damningly, he claims that CEO Dan Nye lied on-air when he told Fox Business earlier this summer that the company is profitable. Inside the company, it's known that LinkedIn has "now missed every financial objective set by Bain Capital after investing in us." The missed targets are not a secret, the tipster tells us, because paranoid managers spend a lot of time blaming each other in front of the minions. "It's a shame, "our tipster writes, "because it was a good company before it became so full of false confidence that it passed on the window of opportunity that was there to sell for good money." The best bit: LinkedIn now has its own commuter bus, like Google and Yahoo, running from San Francisco; it's not widely used by employees, so some joke that the bus exists so managers can throw colleagues under it. The full rant: More » -
iphone
Apple's iPhone chip plans leaked on LinkedIn
A senior chip design manager from PA Semi, Wei-han Lien, let a little light shine on Apple's plans for future generations of the iPhone and iPod by listing "Manage ARM CPU architecture team for iPhone" as his current gig on LinkedIn (Lien's profile has since been scrubbed from the site). CEO Steve Jobs had already let it be known that new Apple subsidiary would be working on chips for the popular mobile devices, and now we know that they will be basing designs on the same ARM architecture that Samsung licensed for the current batch, though with Apple's own proprietary improvements. PA Semi was known for crafting highly efficient, low-power chips. Other features, such as graphics and video processing and multi-touch controls, can also be embedded directly in CPU. Tighter integration with the surrounding electronics in the entire chipset can also be achieved with a custom design. As for PA Semi's role in supplying defense contractors with the company's famously efficient designs, not to worry — a contractor says he'll be able to provision chips popular in military applications for "four to five years." -
rumormonger
Insider alleges massive turnover at LinkedIn
LinkedIn's jobs page gives off the impression that life at the business-networking website is one nonstop Rock Band jam session. But a clearly disgruntled, entertainingly foulmouthed tipster says that backbiting is the real office entertainment of choice. The company's operations department is "like a fucking morgue" after a "housecleaning," he says. Lloyd Taylor, the company's vice president of technical operations, a splashy hire from Google last year, seems to have generated more than his fair share of complaints. In company meetings, CEO Dan Nye and founder Reid Hoffman describe the ruckus as "culture changes." Embarrassingly for a company which says it helps employers vet job candidates and is trying to break into the recruiting business, these problems sound less like culture clashes and more like plain old bad hires. The tip: More » -
online advertising
LinkedIn to follow its users around the Web with ads
LinkedIn Demographic Data Jun08Business networking site LinkedIn launched an online ad network today. The world doesn't need another online-ad network, which offers repackaged ad views from multiple websites, sold as a single buy to advertisers. There are already 300 or so. But LinkedIn may prove a survivor when the ad-network bubble bursts.More » -
politics
Sarah Palin's typo-ridden LinkedIn profile
A tipster discovered Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's LinkedIn profile, typos and all. LinkedIn says it's legitimate — we just wonder which unlucky intern got the chore of typing it in. Surprised anyone bothered to find it? Don't be. According to Google Trends, Sarah Palin gets more search queries than either of the two men at the top of the tickets. Probably doesn't hurt that Google counts what Hitwise says are the very numerous searches for "Sarah Palin Vogue Magazine," "Sarah Palin Photos," "Sarah Palin Bikini Photos," "Sarah Palin Nude," and "Sarah Palin Naked." John McCain was a handsome man in his bomber-pilot youth, but not many of us feel the need to see him naked now. The Internet's obsession for Sarah Palin, according to the Google Trends chart below, knows no bounds. More » -
jackpot
LinkedIn employees also allowed to sell some stock
At a recent company meeting, management told LinkedIn employees they would soon be allowed to sell as much as 20 percent of their vested options at a $500 million valuation. Word leaked yesterday that Facebook plans to allow its employees to do the same. Both LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg want to take their companies public — and thereby get their employees paid — but it won't happen soon. LinkedIn expects to earn about $100 million in 2008, but VentureBeat reports that bankers want to see that number hit $200 million before bothering to file papers. The public markets aren't hungry enough for anything less. In July, only 56 companies went public, raising $5.6 billion in their IPOs. During the same month last year, 190 companies raised $31.7 billion on their initial foray into the public markets. -
silicon valley users guide
LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman needs Ted Dziuba's guide to weight loss
In today's Los Angeles Times, reporter Jessica Guynn calls LinkedIn founder, Facebook investor and PayPal veteran Reid Hoffman "Silicon Valley's biggest social networker." Guynn means that just the way you'd think, reporting that Hoffman gains about 10 pounds per year, refuses to see a trainer and "doesn't step on scales." Some might deem Guynn's language rude, but since Hoffman's unhealthy-seeming weight is exactly the kind of thing everyone in the Valley won't admit they talk about, we're rather glad she called attention to it. Fortunately for Hoffman, Persai cofounder Ted Dziuba is ready with an intervention. Lately, Dziuba's been writing servicey items about coder life on TedDziuba.com instead of eviscerating TechCrunch-covered startups on Uncov. A recent post is perfect for the rotund Hoffman. But at 725 words, "An engineer's guide to weight loss," the busy Hoffman will never take the time to read it. Below, a slimmer, 100-word version Hoffman can squeeze into his schedule. More » -
your privacy is an illusion
IBM employee directory mocks your company's lameness
Tech companies like to babble about openness and transparency. But try finding an engineer's phone number. Standard procedure is to hide company telephone and email directories from external eyeballs, lest a recruiter — or, more annoyingly, a reporter — use the phone list to cold-call staffers. One shining exception: IBM, the world's largest IT employer, with nearly 400,000 people on board in at least 90 countries. Why would the company publish its entire directory and risk attack from headhunters and snoops? Because in 2008 IBM doesn't sell servers, it leases brains. Customers don't want to submit a request to a faceless feedback form and hope the right person at the world's biggest, sprawlingest tech company sees it. I'm sure there was a fight over the decision. But they finally faced the truth: We already hunt their employees down on Blogger and LinkedIn. -
bad ideas
Why LinkedIn's getting into the insider-trading business
You'd think LinkedIn management, which has made no secret of its plans to take its automated schmoozefest public, would be trying to avoid trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Not so. They're aggressively marketing the company's latest moneymaking scheme, LinkedIn Research, to hedge fund managers. The premise: Traders can use LinkedIn to find "experts" with "unique input" on public companies in their portfolio. What LinkedIn marketers delicately phrase as "input," SEC investigators might well call "inside information." And the only thing actionable about the whole affair might be the insider-trading charges that result. More » -
clips
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman explains his IPO jitters
"We think we could go public on our numbers," LInkedIn founder Reid Hoffman tells Tech Ticker's Sarah Lacy in a video interview (excerpted below). But the company, which just raised $53 million, won't IPO because it would rather reinvest its profits and because the U.S. public markets are too turbulent right now. Hoffman says LinkedIn will use the money in part to buy "good, small tech teams." In the clip, Hoffman says the race with Facebook toward an IPO isn't much of a race. It's more like, "No, you go first," he explains. Hoffman and his handpicked CEO, Dan Nye, shouldn't grow too cautious. Hoffman himself helped PayPal go public during the last downturn, so he knows a strong company can thrive in a poor market. But more importantly, for a professional's social network like LinkedIn, we can't imagine much better free marketing than the nonstop coverage CNBC would give consumer tech's first major IPO in years. More » -
linkedin
LinkedIn needs to sex up its pitch if they want a Facebook-sized valuation
LinkedIn's $1 billion valuation certainly seems low only when compared to the stratospheric $15 billion Facebook is worth on paper. One reason why is because, frankly, college kids are sexy — as the VCs in the announcement infomercial prove irrefutably, business professional who use LinkedIn are not. So if you're going to announce a new round of venture capital with a video on YouTube, why not make it a music video? The kids love music videos. Hence, Valleywag presents "The Upside" featuring Jeffrey "Sand Hizzy" Glass, David "D-Cup" Sze, David "Dollar Billz" Cowan and Mark "Make Money" Kvamme over beats from EPMD. Recognize. -
venture capital
LinkedIn spends some of its new $53 million on a VC infomercial
LinkedIn has announced its new $53 million funding round in a bizarre way: by posting a video on YouTube in which its investors try to cast its $1 billion valuation as low, low, low — instead of breathtakingly high, which is what it is. What would have been vastly more entertaining: If LinkedIn marketer Surya Yalamanchili had taken some of his experience from The Apprentice and captured these VCs, reality-TV style, knifing each other in the back as they angle to get more shares in the company. Instead, we have a bunch of glorified bankers talking about what a great opportunity they've gotten — to buy roughly 5 percent of a startup with an eight-figure wad of cash. -
clips
"Daily Show"-style LinkedIn video schools Yahoo on product marketing
In case our "idiot's guide to fixing Yahoo" wasn't clear enough on Yahoo's need for a clearerproduct strategy, here's a clip from LinkedIn that might serve as an example. Sure, it's cheesy, but skip to 2:40 and suddenly you've got customers explaining to viewers what LinkedIn is to them and why its crucial that they use it. When's the last time anyone's said that about Yahoo? Not to mention that LinkedIn's VP of marketing, Patrick Crane, came to the company from Yahoo. -
clips
Fox Business asks: Will Facebook buy LinkedIn?
Want to see LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye flinch? Do what Fox Business correspondent Liz Claman did this morning and ask Nye if rival social network startup Facebook has expressed interest in acquiring the company. "It just seems like it would be a perfect for say, a Facebook, to join up, to link up with you guys," Claman advises Nye. Suddenly a happy little conversation on camera turned awkward. Did he flinch because Facebook had expressed interest? Or because, unlike Claman, he knew Facebook wasn't even sniffing around — an admission that would call into question LinkedIn's value right when Nye's gunning to take the company public? That moment, above, and the full interview — replete with Nye's nonanswers about acquisitions and IPOs — below. More » -
10 worst workspaces
Tech's worst workspace: Mozilla
What's so bad about Mozilla's Toronto workspace? Besides the fluorescent lighting, the colorless white walls and the folding tables, the worst thing about Mozilla's Toronto workspace is how we're sure management would improve it. With corporate graffiti, company logos and too many colors. That was management's trick at Facebook and look where readers ranked it in our poll on tech's ten worst workspaces — as tech's second-worst workspace, just after Mozilla. Check out the full list, below. More » -
10 worst workspaces
Rank tech's 10 worst workspaces
After reviewing our post "The 10 worst workspaces in tech," commenter AdmNaismith described Facebook's office, pictured above, as "foggy, dank, dim, and utterly depressing." Commenter mothra1 hated Yahoo's New York offices more: "They suck! Lifeless and impersonal. Kinda like the douchebags who still actually work there." Meanwhile, Adobe apologist BlairHapjo told us we "clearly didn't get past Adobe's lobby," and the rest of the office features "Aeron chairs, real offices (with doors!), big picture windows." For us, the worst offices we found on Office Snapshots and elsewhere were the the ones that try too hard to seem Internet-hip, like Jajah and Google. Now it's time to settle the disputes. Below, vote for your least favorite and help us rank tech's 10 most dismal places to work: More » -
cubicle culture
The 10 worst workspaces in tech
We've toured the top 10 workspaces in tech. Now, we've gone back to Office Snapshots to find the 10 worst. What makes them so bad? Some offend with exposed fluorescent lights, gray cubicles and a dystopian corporate sheen. But others, with their pseudo-hip graffiti, kindergarten toys and plastic decorations — all in a desperate attempt to seem "Internet-y" — come off even worse. We'll start with Yahoo's New York digs. More » -
sarah lacy
So far inside Silicon Valley, she's forgotten there's an outside
In person, Sarah Lacy's fierce dishiness is charming. On the screen, her insider know-it-all schtick becomes harsh and grating. Take Lacy's latest post on LinkedIn seeking a $1 billion valuation. The 30-word version: "I've I I I am not giving people the news as I write in my book, I hear from insiders. Imagine that! perhaps I can get to that later today." She has learned exactly nothing from an earlier post on Twitter, whose funding news she failed to break, yet also declared non-newsworthy. More » -
rumormonger
Report: LinkedIn seeks funding to set value at $1 billion
LinkedIn has hired investment bank Allen & Co. to help it raise a round of funding that would set the company's value at $1 billion. Last fall, LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye said the company would sell itself outright only for a "a lot more" than $1 billion. In January, he told a reporter "an IPO is by far and away the most likely outcome." But that was January. While the public markets are rough, private equity remains flush, making it a safer bet for raising money. We hear LinkedIn takes a tidy profit, selling advertisers on its 41-year-old, six-figure-making average user and earning $45 CPMs on ads in the process. -
rumormonger
LinkedIn board raising more cash
At careerist social network LinkedIn, a marathon board meeting has sparked speculation about a new financing round. LinkedIn, often mentioned as an IPO candidate, has raised $27.5 million to date. [VentureBeat] -
online advertising
LinkedIn's CPM rates lower than reported $75, but still impressive
Seems comments made by Kevin Eyres, managing director of European operations for LinkedIn, were optimistic in pegging ad rates at a $75 CPM. To a degree. A customer who's bought advertising on LinkedIn wrote in to let us know that last fall they negotiated a campaign to run ads against the social network's "premium content" for a $12 CPM, $3 less than the listed $15 rate. The company is now charging $45 for that same inventory, they report. A quick look at the rate card shows that the $45 price point is for vertical banner ads targetted to IT and small business professionals. Custom targeting goes as high as $76.50 per thousand impressions. Good thing to know that you can bargain down those rates 20 percent. And it's still an order of magnitude more than any other social network has been able to charge. While Facebook charges less than a dollar for slutty come-ons, LinkedIn keeps it strictly SFW. After the jump, what the company refuses to allow in ads on the site. More » -
online advertising
LinkedIn earning $50-$75 CPMs?
Kevin Eyres, LinkedIn's European managing director, reported that LinkedIn commands $50-$75 per thousand impressions on its advertising, in discussing plans for the social network's expansion into the U.K .and the continent. That figure, if Eyres is not being overoptimistic, puts LinkedIn in the same range that high-end business publications like Forbes and the Wall Street Journal command for their websites, and orders of magnitude higher than the rates seen on consumer social networks like Facebook and MySpace. [The Industry Standard] -
perks
LinkedIn a posh haven from the recession economy storm
Nobody seems to have told LinkedIn that we're in a recession, at least according to the kind of perks they're offering to woo new hires who need no actual programming experience, just a "quantitative background." Does fantasy league baseball count? It must be hard to find new talent for the social networking company with even Google's chef leaving for Facebook. Maybe they should put up listings on the Yahoo campus. Full text of the job description and perks after the jump. More » -
surya yalamanchili
The man who could make Julia Allison's reality-TV career
Star editor-at-large, having failed to make a splash in blogging, is now pinning her hopes on reality TV. Julia, if you're going to make it on the small screen, you need better advisors than a handbag designer and a former hedge-fund analyst. How about someone who's been there? LinkedIn marketer Surya Yalamanchili, a veteran of Donald Trump's The Apprentice, is the guy you need to talk to. Sure, he was fired from the show. All the more reason to seek him out, Julia. Let's be honest: If IT Girls is the best you can come up with, you're going to face a lot of rejection on Sand Hill Road. -
online advertising
Bill Gates joins LinkedIn — is a Microsoft ad deal coming?
Bill Gates may have stopped using his Facebook profile. Now he's planning to join LinkedIn, according to Beyond Binary. On Thursday, Gates will use LinkedIn Answers to ask "how technology can be better utilized for charitable causes." Charming. But since LinkedIn is said to be planning a "notable advertising announcement" for the same day, our guess is that the real news will be a Microsoft-LinkedIn ad-serving deal. -
your privacy is an illusion
Your Facebook profile could show up in a tax audit
Dutch technology entrepreneur Evert Bopp had the pleasure of meeting with Irish tax inspectors last Tuesday. Things got really fun when one of them pulled out printed copies of Bopp's Facebook, Xing and LinkedIn profiles. "I was surprised," Bopp said. He shouldn't have been. A flack for the Revenue service told the Irish Independent auditors are free to use "any sources of information." You think the IRS policy is any different? It's one thing to get busted by the boss, quite another to get busted by the feds. (Photo by chadmill) -
the chart
Bebo needs cash to keep its servers running
Now we know why Bebo's so eager for more cash. It needs more servers. According to Pingdom, Bebo has already been down for 12 hours and 28 minutes so far this year. Check out the full chart to see how 13 other social networks have fared so far. -
exits
LinkedIn cans its Superman
Until recently, Nick Welihozkiy lived a double life: Sales manager at LinkedIn by day, athlete training for the hammer throw in the Summer Olympics by night, with the support of the company's management. That has come to an end: His boss abruptly fired him amidst the recent upheaval at the IPO-bound startup. Welihozkiy was seen by many as the heart of LinkedIn's culture, and have taken his departure hard. Even so, LinkedIn's marketers continue to exploit Welihozkiy's image: He appears prominently on the company store's homepage, dressed as Clark Kent turning into Superman, with a link to his LinkedIn profile. He hasn't updated it. -
renzo lazzarato
LinkedIn director fired over comments
Our tipster's account of life at LinkedIn as it nears an IPO drew some skeptics. One commenter, WagCurious, scoffed at the notion that LinkedIn had "an employee told by her manager that she needed to choose between her job and her family." Sources inside and outside the company confirm that this incident happened. The good news: The manager in question, engineering director Renzo Lazzarato, was fired for his behavior. "He's been known to shoot off his mouth," says a person familiar with Lazzarato. One might praise LinkedIn management for this family-friendly step, except that they were likely just seeking to avoid a lawsuit. -
linkedin
Has LinkedIn lost its soul to growth?
A tipster writes in with a first-person account of what's happening inside LinkedIn — and it's not pretty.A manager interrupting a report's search for a job outside of linkedIN by calling his connections with prospective employers and telling them not to hire
More » -
spam
NotchUp gets VC attention by pissing everyone off
Everyone hates NotchUp's spammy invitations. So much so that they can't stop talking about their loathing for the pay-per-interview online job board. Proving that there's no such thing as bad publicity, the obnoxious startup is getting all kinds of attention from Sand Hill Road, founder Jim Ambras told BusinessWeek. More »

























