Social Networking Watch

Bad News For Workers Is Good News For LinkedIn

NEWSFACTOR -- Jan 1 -- Dave McClure, a start-up adviser and angel investor says LinkedIn remains "tops" among social-networks in creating revenue because it is the business network of choice. "I'm pretty confident they'll go public in the next four to eight quarters," he said. About 1m people flock to the network every two weeks now, compared with 1m per month earlier this year. LinkedIn has experienced a 14% surge in recommendations, 11% increase in number of connections and 10% jump in invitations. Many of the gains have come from employees and laid-off workers in financial industries such as investment banking. FULL ARTICLE @ NEWSFACTOR

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Online Networks A Magnet For Job-seekers

REUTERS -- Nov 26 -- U.S. unemployment hit a new 14-year high in October and according to online job advertising firm Monster, recruitment activity on the Web plunged to its lowest level in nearly three years. Jobless rates are also rising in Europe. Membership on LinkedIn has jumped to more than 31m from 18m at the start of the year. Xing, which has 6.5m users, has also seen a jump in registrations and connections to record levels. "The crisis is very beneficial for us. We are debt-free, with over 40m euros ($50.5m) in cash, and the prices for competitors are dropping significantly," said Xing CEO Lars Hinrichs. Martin Olausson, from Strategy Analytics, estimated the size of the online professional social networking market at about $170m this year. FULL ARTICLE @ REUTERS

Mark Brooks: Interviews are 70% accurate at best. The best way to hire people is via referral. Linkedin and Xing are capturing the cream of the referral, non-advertised job market.

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LinkedIn CEO Touts Growth Of Network

SF CHRONICLE -- Nov 23 -- Since February 2007 LinkedIn's membership has swelled from 8m to 30m, and staff from 60 to 370 employees. According to Nielsen Online, LinkedIn was the 4th fastest-growing SN in September, behind Twitter.com, Tagged.com and Ning. Here is the interview with LinkedIn CEO, Dan Nye:

Q: You raised money in June, and then you said you've had another round more recently?
A: We've had four fundraising rounds. The first round was Sequoia Capital, the second was Greylock, the third was Bessemer Venture Partners, and that's right when I joined. The fourth was Bain Capital. We kept the round open in order to take money from strategic investors, and we just took that from Goldman Sachs, SAP and McGraw Hill.

Q: Could you say how much money came in?
A: $22.7m. That was the follow-on. So 53 and 22.7 is $75.7m.

Q: Do you see yourself needing more capital in the near term?
A: We actually never touched the series C money and then we went and raised more money. We also have a very strong revenue stream. Our revenues this year are up well over 100% over last year, and we are forecasting to continue to grow the revenues.

Q: Can you put a dollar figure on revenue?
A: We actually don't talk about the dollar figures. There have been reports in the press about the revenues being between $75m and $100m.

Q: Is that reasonably accurate?
A: I'm not denying it.

Q: What are the proportions of your revenue stream?
A: We have four revenue lines and we just announced a fifth. One is advertising. The second is online subscriptions, then there are the job postings and the fourth one is corporate sales. The fifth business line that we just announced is LinkedIn surveys.

Q: Can you briefly explain the various applications you rolled out recently?
A: We have approved 11 applications from 8 vendors. Google Presentations is where you can create a presentation, another great one is Amazon book reviews or TripIt, where you share trip details. 
FULL ARTICLE @ SF GATE

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LinkedIn Events Bring Conference Networking Online

MASHABLE -- Nov 7 -- LinkedIn has launched a new events feature, letting you know about upcoming conferences. LinkedIn Events pulls information from sites like Eventbrite. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

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LinkedIn Cuts 10% Of Staff

TECH CRUNCH -- Nov 5 -- LinkedIn will be cutting 36 of 370 employees, or around 10% of the company. But LinkedIn isn't about to run out of money: the company just closed a $22.7m infusion, which came on top of a $53m Series D round in June that pegged LinkedIn's valuation at $1 billion. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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LinkedIn Users Have Higher Incomes

ONLINE MEDIA DAILY -- Nov 4 -- Nearly 60% of LinkedIn users have high personal incomes and hold executive-level or consultant positions, according to a new study from market research firm Anderson Analytics. The survey found that executives make up about 28% of users, with an average income of $104k; another 30% were "savvy networkers"--often identifying themselves as consultants, making an average of $93k. More casual or newer users had incomes of $88k or lower. FULL ARTICLE @ MEDIA POST

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LinkedIn Debuts B2B Network

ONLINE MEDIA DAILY -- Oct 23 -- LinkedIn is expected to debut a network catering to business-to-business market researchers. To date, the LinkedIn Research Network has already partnered with six market research firms including Phoenix Marketing International and OTX, to conduct targeted B2B primary research among its network of some 30 million professionals worldwide. FULL ARTICLE @ MEDIA POST

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LinkedIn Blew Plaxo Away

CIO -- Oct 22 --  In August 2007, Plaxo, a company that made its name with an online address book technology, launched a social network Plaxo Pulse. Plaxo's social network has a similar (yet smaller) demographic of business users as LinkedIn. Plaxo was acquired by Comcast in May for a rumored $175m. Even given this injection of capital, however, analysts say it remains unclear if Plaxo can lure users away from LinkedIn's massive user base of 29m members. "They can't compete with Facebook on the consumer side, and they're a distant second to LinkedIn on the professional," says analyst Jonathan Yarmis, a VP with AMR Research. Asked if LinkedIn views Plaxo as a competitor, Krista Canfield, LinkedIn's PR manager, responded via e-mail, "We're not really aware of Plaxo." FULL ARTICLE @ CIO

Mark Brooks: LinkedIn offers more utility, but I'm surprised they're not aware of Plaxo, as small and nat-like as they may be. Xing (formerly OpenBC), meanwhile, is advertising on the London underground and building a massive following in Europe.

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LinkedIn Raises Another $22.7 Million

CNET NEWS -- Oct 22 -- The strategic investment, from Goldman Sachs, SAP, and McGraw-Hill, as well as longtime investor Bessemer Venture Partners, comes on the heels of a $53 million Series D funding round in June that gave LinkedIn a valuation of $1 billion. The latest funding round brings the total funds raised to just more than $100m. FULL ARTICLE @ CNET NEWS

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Social Networks Go To Work To Keep Employees Connected

USA TODAY -- Oct 9 -- Private, internal social networks make sense as companies grapple with a slumping economy that has made travel cost-prohibitive. Practically, corporate social networks also cut down on unnecessary e-mail and instant messages among co-workers, says Dan Nye, CEO of LinkedIn. LinkedIn's new service, Company Groups, digitally gathers into a single, private Web forum all of a company's employees. There, they can talk to one another, share ideas and ask company-related questions. So far, 1,000 companies have signed up for the service. FULL ARTICLE @ INDY STAR

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SocialMinder Helps You Strengthen Your LinkedIn Relationships

MASHABLE -- Sep 22 -- SocialMinder is an online assistant that helps you maintain relationships with your LinkedIn network. It learns from your previous email patterns, reminds you when losing connection, and gives you relevant news items to send to people in your network to make sure that your relationships are not stale. SocialMinder could be described as a social CRM service in a way. Whereas traditional CRM services focus on closing deals, SocialMinder instead concentrates on building those relationships. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

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LinkedIn To Launch Its Own Ad Network

TECH CRUNCH -- Sep 14 -- LinkedIn, the social network for business professionals, has so much demand from advertisers that it will be launching its own ad network on Monday. In conjunction with ad network Collective Media, LinkedIn will let other select sites target its users when they visit those partner sites. Most social networks have a hard time selling ads at more than $1 CPMs (cost per thousand impressions), but LinkedIn's rate card shows display ads starting at $30 CPMs and going up to $76.50. Text ads range from $12 to $20 CPMs. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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LinkedIn Links Up With CNBC

UTALK MARKETING -- Sep 4 -- Business news provider CNBC has partnered with LinkedIn that will see news content and integration CNBC's website available to users such as blogs, articles, financial data and video-content from around the world. CNBC will integrate LinkedIn community and networking functionality into CNBC.com, which will enable users to share and discuss news with their professional networks. FULL ARTICLE @ UTALK MARKETING

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Mobile Social Networking

COMPUTERWORLD -- Sep 2 -- The convergence of social networking and mobility is starting to grow worldwide among teenagers and young adults. ABI Research predicts that mobile social networking will reach 90m new users over the next four years and rake in $3.3 billion. The major players in this space, of course, will be existing carriers and handset makers and social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. FULL ARTICLE @ COMPUTERWORLD

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LinkedIn On iPhone

READ WRITE WEB  -- Aug 21 -- The new LinkedIn app for iPhone launched today in the iPhone store. The app itself is simple, but VentureBeat thinks simple is perfect. We have to agree. Business apps don't need to overly complex or feature-rich necessarily - they just need to provide you with quick and easy access to information and data. One of the app's best features is its ability to copy LinkedIn contacts over to the contact list on your phone itself. FULL ARTICLE @ READ WRITE WEB

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Facebook Narrows The Traffic Gap

MASHABLE -- Aug 18 -- While Facebook recently took the worldwide lead in social networking traffic, MySpace has been quick to point out that they still occupy the top spot, the US market. With 34.3m visitors in July, Facebook still sits well behind MySpace with 59.2m, but MySpace has stopped growing in the US (down 3% y-o-y according to Nielsen). LinkedIn continues to grow quickly, registering more than 10m monthly uniques in July. Music focused social networking application provider Imeem also had a big month, registering 3.9m unique visitors, placing it handily above competitor Last.fm (2.4m). FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

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LinkedIn: Ready To Rumble

FORBES -- Aug 18 -- The business networking site LinkedIn is facing competition from start-ups such as Talkbiznow, launching on Monday, which claim to offer more sophisticated tools that will appeal to professionals. However, LinkedIn, which was valued at $1.0 billion in June and signs up 1 new member every two seconds, says it's prepared for the challenge. Forbes.com spoke with Kevin Eyres, LinkedIn's managing director for Europe.

Q: What is your reaction to companies such as Talkbiznow.com?
A: Competition is always good, but there is a distinct difference between social networking applications and LinkedIn. People come to LinkedIn because they want to exchange information and ideas, and make better business decisions.

Q: LinkedIn is sometimes criticized for the types of tools it offers. What are you doing?
A: We have recently added an application which gives you the ability to poll an audience that you designate. We have added an answer section where you can post a question and get highly qualified answers.

Q: You charge your users for some services. How much is it a threat that some companies will provide these services for free?
A: We have built a highly innovative service that we provide for free. We do have premium membership for those who are conducting business transactions such as recruiters and business developers. It's partly about protecting our users from spam.

Q: What new tools will you be releasing?
A: We don't get into pre-announcing things.

Q: What markets are you focusing on at the moment?
A: We have members in over 170 countries, and half our members are outside the U.S. The U.K. is a particular focus for us right now.

Q: How confident are you that you can deal with new competition?
A: We now have 26 million members. You don't grow to that size overnight: it took us five years. We had a 100.0% growth in membership last year and a 361.0% growth in page views between April 2007 and April 2008, which means a 361.0% growth in usage. Unless you have the network, there is not a lot of value, no matter what tools you offer.
FULL ARTICLE @ FORBES

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A Voice From The Mobile Social Networking Conference

GLOBAL HUMAN CAPITAL JOURNAL -- Aug 2 -- The Mobile Social Networking Conference took place last month in SF. Speakers included Steve Wozniak, Mark Brooks, and reps from GE, GM Twitter, LinkedIn, Mowave and Faceforce. Also speaking was Daniel Brusilovsky, the 15-year founder of Teens in Tech. Important things learned included the importance of cross-boundry innovation and collaboration including customers. Social contracts are being rewritten. Example: Companies can increase the value of affiliation by enabling employees to connect with each other via social networks like LinkedIn. One of the biggest barriers for enterprises is identifying the Web 2.0 elements that are important to their stakeholders, and allocating people and resources appropriately to build their capabilities. This will be critical in the next 2-4 years because there is little resident knowledge in the ranks and executive suites of organizations. FULL ARTICLE @ GLOBAL HUMAN CAPITAL JOURNAL

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Women Outnumber Men On Most Social Networks

READ WRITE WEB -- July 29 -- Online reputation company Rapleaf has released a new study of 49 million people, revealing gender and age data about social network users. On most of the main social networks - including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Hi5 - women outnumber men by a considerable amount. On Facebook, the 18-24 age group is largest, with 1,685,029 women in that age group compared to 977,753 men. In MySpace, the same age group dominates, with 7,091,214 women and 5,226,788 men. The only social networks studied that didn't have more women than men in the 18-24 year old group were LinkedIn and Perfspot. FULL ARTICLE @ READ WRITE WEB

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LinkedIn Now Speaks Spanish

MASHABLE -- July 24 -- LinkedIn now supports two languages: English and Spanish. Users can choose the language from the drop down menu at the upper right hand side on the homepage. This move is on par to what other social networks have been doing for some time; Facebook is also available in Spanish, while MySpace is available in several languages. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

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