WebProNews

Tag: LinkedIn

  • Here’s What LinkedIn’s New Company Pages Look Like

    LinkedIn unveiled a redesign of its Company Pages today.

    The pages “now offers marketers a visually-enhanced presence that makes it easier for them to attract and engage customers and prospects,” a LinkedIn representative tells WebProNews. “This product refresh is part of a company-wide effort to simplify LinkedIn’s pillar products and create streamlined experiences across all devices.”

    “The redesigned Company Pages features a sleek new appearance with enhanced brand imagery, streamlined navigation, and prominent follower button, among other updates,” he adds. “Key client input informed the decisions that LinkedIn made about the newly implemented changes, which ultimately aim to ease and deepen the dialogue between marketers and members.”

    Here, you can have a look for yourself:

    LInkedIn Company Pages

    “For members, this means easier access to the information you want about the companies you care about,” says LinkedIn’s Mike Grishaver in a blog post. “For companies, this means a more powerful way to build relationships with your target audience on LinkedIn.”

    “Company Pages is the core of the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions follower ecosystem,” the representative says. “It’s through these pages that marketers identify and attract the right audience, engage them with relevant content, and spur them into action.”

    “Brands who commit to cultivating a relationship see an increase in awareness, recommendations, leads, and opportunity to drive purchase intent,” he adds. “Recent LinkedIn research indicates that 69% of professionals expect companies to have a presence on LinkedIn, 64% believe it is a suitable environment for business-to-business interaction and 48% say they are more likely to purchase from a company they engage on LinkedIn.”

    The new pages are launching with a handful of partners including Philips, Citi, Dell, and HP. They’ll be rolling out to all companies globally later this year (localized in all 18 LinkedIn-supported languages).

  • LinkedIn Launches New Notifications Feature

    LinkedIn has just announced an all new notifications feature that they say will help users stay connected in real time.

    Here’s what’s new: Users will now see a flag and a new envelope icon at the top of the homepage. When you have something new, a red circle will appear.

    The envelope icons handles new messages as well as connection requests. The flag icon will notify you when someone likes one of your posts, comments on one of your posts, views your profile, accepts a request, and so on.

    “We’ve been working hard to bring you new ways to access the most relevant professional information and insights to help you be even better at your job, everyday,” says Angela Yang on the LinkedIn blog. “Launching today is our new notifications feature, which will keep you notified in real-time when someone likes what you’ve shared on LinkedIn, views your profile, accepts your invitation, and much more.”

    According to LinkedIn, the new notifications are rolling out today, but it could take some member up to a few weeks to see the flag icon at the top of the homepage.

    And although notifications are currently a web-only feature, LinkedIn says that they’re coming to iOS and Android soon. “Now, you’ll never miss a comment or update to an engaging discussion about a news article or trending topic on LinkedIn, right from your fingertips,” says Yang.

    In July, LinkedIn rolled out a significant redesign of their homepage – one that made the experience much more social. They replaced the text-heavy stream of old with a media-rich feed that resembles Google+, if anything.

  • LinkedIn Expands Ads Into 17 New Languages

    LinkedIn announced today that it is launching LinkedIn Ads in 17 new languages.

    “LinkedIn Ads now provides a truly local experience and allows you to create ads in the language of your choice,” says LinkedIn’s Gyanda Sachdev. “From Japanese and Czech to French and Turkish, this update makes it that much easier for members to share information and create messages that resonate with other members they want to reach.”

    “For example, the addition of new languages to LinkedIn Ads allows a finance executive in Brazil to use Spanish to connect with clients in Spain, while a tech company in Hong Kong can frame its message in Dutch to pursue customers in Amsterdam,” adds Sachdev.

    LinkedIn ads will now be available in the following languages:

    English
    Czech
    Dutch
    French
    German
    Indonesian
    Italian
    Japanese
    Korean
    Malay
    Norwegian
    Polish
    Portuguese
    Romanian
    Russian
    Spanish
    Swedish
    Turkish

    LinkedIn has 175 million members worldwide. Earlier this month, the company reported an 89% year-over-year increase in revenue. This language expansion should add to the numbers quite nicely.

  • LinkedIn Updates its Developer Platform

    As Facebook’s stock continues to decline, the world’s largest social network is beginning to be compared to a smaller competitor that has had more success on Wall St. LinkedIn, the social network for professional networking, has seen a slow, careful build of its social network that is reflected in the incremental rise of its stock price since its successful IPO last year.

    Part of the reason LinkedIn is popular with both its investors and its users is the constant smaller changes and redesigns the company is making to its products. Just last month the LinkedIn homepage was redesigned, and was favorably accepted without the large outcry that often comes from changes to social networks.

    Today, LinkedIn announced that it has updated its developer platform with a redesign and new features. Some of the new changes were previewed in a blog post over at the LinkedIn Blog.

    Changes include a redesigned developer website, which the company claims is “cleaner” and easier to navigate. The “Sign in with LinkedIn Experience,” which lets developers use LinkedIn logins for their applications, has also been redesigned. LinkedIn’s Share API has been updated to provide attribution on the LinkedIn update stream to “qualified” developers.

    LinkedIn has also updated its API terms of service. From the blog post:

    This further clarifies the best ways to work with LinkedIn to provide the best experience possible for our developers and our members. In the past year we’ve launched partner programs in several areas where we see opportunities to work more closely with developers, such as the Certified Developer Program. We encourage developers to explore our available APIs or contact us for partnership opportunities.

    Clarifications to LinkedIn’s developer terms of service should prevent issues such as the Pealk incident from happening again. Pealk was the developer of the self-proclaimed “#1 Hunting App for LinkedIn” that was banned from accessing LinkedIn’s API after violating LinkedIn’s terms of service.

  • LinkedIn Stock: Look How Well It’s Doing

    It’s really quite remarkable how well LinkedIn stock is performing, especially considering that Facebook’s (the world’s biggest social network) hit its all time low last week.

    That’s not to say LinkedIn is worth more than Facebook, by any means, but as of the time of this writing, LinkedIn stock is sitting at $108.51. Granted, LinkedIn is slightly down (107.98‎ -0.53) in pre-market trading, but LinkedIn surged, following its Q2 earnings report last week, jumping 7% on Thursday after the report was released. On the same day, Facebook stock hit an all-time low.

    The company announced that revenue had jumped by as much as 89% year-over-year, reaching $228.2 million.

    “LinkedIn had a strong second quarter with all of our key operating and financial metrics showing solid performance,” said CEO Jeff Weiner in the report. “Our ongoing investment in product innovation drove healthy engagement as measured by unique visiting members and member page views, and our three revenue streams all experienced significant growth.”

    LinkedIn has hardly made a dent in its mobile strategy, so far, and that could mean even better things for the company’s value. WebProNews recently spoke with Kiran Prasad, who talked about how it has recently improved that strategy, and how it is confident in efforts that will soon help the company better monetize mobile.

    Not unlike the desktop version of LinkedIn, it involves ads and subscription features.

    The company is expecting more significant revenue growth in the third quarter, projecting between $235 million and $240 million. For the full year, the company is projecting $915 million to $925 million (up from previous guidance of $880 million to $900 million).

  • LinkedIn Earnings: Revenue Up 89% YoY

    LinkedIn Earnings: Revenue Up 89% YoY

    LinkedIn has released its Q2 earnings report. Revenue is up 89% year-over-year at $228.2 million. Net income, on the other hand, was down to $2.8 million for the quarter, from $4.5 million the same period last year. The company beat Wall Street expectations.

    During the quarter, the company launched its iPad app, redesigned LinkedIn Today, released targeted status updates and follower stats to companies with active profiles, and completed the rollout of Talent Pipeline.

    “LinkedIn had a strong second quarter with all of our key operating and financial metrics showing solid performance,” said CEO Jeff Weiner. “Our ongoing investment in product innovation drove healthy engagement as measured by unique visiting members and member page views, and our three revenue streams all experienced significant growth.”

    Here’s the release in its entirety:

    MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Aug. 2, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — LinkedIn Corporation (NYSE:LNKD), the world’s largest professional network on the Internet, currently with more than 175 million members, reported its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2012:

    • Revenue for the second quarter was $228.2 million, an increase of 89% compared to $121.0 million in the second quarter of 2011.
    • Net income for the second quarter was $2.8 million, compared to net income of $4.5 million for the second quarter of 2011. Non-GAAP net income for the second quarter was $18.1 million, compared to $10.8 million for the second quarter of 2011. Non-GAAP measures exclude tax-affected stock-based compensation expense and tax-affected amortization of acquired intangible assets.
    • Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter was $50.4 million, or 22% of revenue, compared to $26.3 million for the second quarter of 2011, or 22% of revenue.
    • GAAP EPS for the second quarter was $0.03; Non-GAAP EPS for the second quarter was $0.16. 

    “LinkedIn had a strong second quarter with all of our key operating and financial metrics showing solid performance,” said Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn. “Our ongoing investment in product innovation drove healthy engagement as measured by unique visiting members and member page views, and our three revenue streams all experienced significant growth.”

    Second Quarter Financial Details and Operating Summary

    • Hiring Solutions: Revenue from Hiring Solutions products totaled $121.6 million, an increase of 107% compared to the second quarter of 2011. Hiring Solutions revenue represented 53% of total revenue in the second quarter of 2012, compared to 48% in the second quarter of 2011.
    • Marketing Solutions: Revenue from Marketing Solutions products totaled $63.1 million, an increase of 64% compared to the second quarter of 2011. Marketing Solutions revenue represented 28% of total revenue in the second quarter of 2012, compared to 32% in the second quarter of 2011.
    • Premium Subscriptions: Revenue from Premium Subscriptions products totaled $43.5 million, an increase of 82% compared to the second quarter of 2011. Premium Subscriptions represented 19% of total revenue in the second quarter of 2012, compared to 20% of revenue in the second quarter of 2011. 

    Revenue from the U.S. totaled $147.3 million, and represented 65% of total revenue in the second quarter of 2012. Revenue from international markets totaled $81.0 million, and represented 35% of total revenue in the second quarter of 2012. 

    Revenue from the field sales channel totaled $129.4 million, and represented 57% of total revenue in the second quarter of 2012. Revenue from the online, direct sales channel totaled $98.8 million, and represented 43% of total revenue in the second quarter of 2012.

    GAAP net income for the second quarter was $2.8 million, compared to net income of $4.5 million for the second quarter of 2011. Non-GAAP net income for the second quarter was $18.1 million, compared to $10.8 million in the second quarter of 2011.

    Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter was $50.4 million, or 22% of revenue, compared to $26.3 million for the second quarter of 2011, or 22% of revenue.

    GAAP EPS was $0.03 based on 112.3 million fully-diluted weighted shares outstanding compared to $0.04 for the second quarter of 2011 based on 103.1 million fully-diluted weighted shares outstanding.  Non-GAAP EPS was $0.16 based on 112.3 million fully-diluted weighted shares outstanding compared to $0.10 for the second quarter of 2011 based on 103.1 million fully-diluted weighted shares outstanding.

    “Strong performance across our three product lines drove record levels of revenue and adjusted EBITDA,” said Steve Sordello, CFO of LinkedIn. “As we continue to invest aggressively in technology, product, and our businesses, we remain focused on achieving our long-term goals.”

    For additional information, please see the “Selected Company Metrics and Financials” page on LinkedIn’s Investor Relations site.

    Second Quarter Highlights and Strategic Announcements

    In the second quarter, LinkedIn:

    • Launched its first app designed for the iPad. The app was received positively, and engagement trends are encouraging as more than half of page views on the app are being generated by content-focused products such as updates, news and groups.  
    • Simplified the design of its flagship social news product LinkedIn Today and added deeper integration into the homepage. Engagement on LinkedIn Today is now up more than 150% since the introduction of these new features. 
    • Released Targeted Status Updates and Follower Statistics to all of the more than two million organizations on LinkedIn with active Company Profiles.
    • Completed the rollout of Talent Pipeline to the entire universe of LinkedIn Recruiter customers. In less than three months, Recruiter customers have already added more than one million prospective candidates into Talent Pipeline, enhancing their ability to quickly identify and hire new talent for their organizations.

    Additionally, in July LinkedIn began rolling out a significant redesign to the homepage, enabling members to discover, share, and discuss the professional information that is most important to them. The redesign has begun to positively impact engagement metrics; for example, shares originating on LinkedIn, including status updates, are now at all-time highs.

    Business Outlook

    LinkedIn is providing guidance for the third quarter of 2012, and revising guidance upward for the full year of 2012 on revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and stock-based compensation, while narrowing the full-year outlook for depreciation and amortization. 

    • Q3 2012 Guidance: Revenue for the third quarter of 2012 is projected to range between $235 million to $240 million. The company expects adjusted EBITDA to range between $42 million and $45 million. The company expects stock-based compensation to range between $27 and $28 million and depreciation and amortization to range between $20 million and $22 million.
    • Full Year 2012 Guidance: The company has revised its expected revenue range upward to $915 million to $925 million from the prior range of $880 million to $900 million. The company has also revised upward its expected adjusted EBITDA range to $185 million to $190 million from the prior range of $170 million to $175 million. The company now expects stock-based compensation to range between $85 million and $95 million, while the range for depreciation and amortization is now $75 million to $80 million.

    Quarterly Conference Call

    LinkedIn will host a webcast/conference call to discuss its second quarter 2012 financial results and business outlook today at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time. Jeff Weiner and Steve Sordello will host the webcast, which can be viewed on the investor relations section of the LinkedIn website at http://investors.linkedin.com/. This call will contain forward-looking statements and other material information regarding the company’s financial and operating results. Following completion of the call, a recorded replay of the webcast will be available on the website. For those without access to the Internet, a replay of the call will be available beginning at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time on August 2, 2012 through August 9, 2012 at 9:00 p.m. Pacific Time. To listen to the telephone replay, call (855) 859-2056, access code 96053756.

    Upcoming Event

    Management will participate in upcoming financial Q&A discussions at an investment industry event on September 6th. LinkedIn will furnish a link to this event on its investor relations website, http://investors.linkedin.com/ for both the live and archived webcasts.

    About LinkedIn 

    Founded in 2003, LinkedIn connects the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. With more than 175 million members worldwide, including executives from every Fortune 500 company, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network on the Internet. The company has a diversified business model with revenue coming from member subscriptions, marketing solutions and hiring solutions. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, LinkedIn also has offices across the Americas, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific. 

    The LinkedIn logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=11096

    Non-GAAP Financial Measures

    To supplement its consolidated financial statements, which are prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP, the company uses the following non-GAAP financial measures: adjusted EBITDA, non-GAAP net income, and non-GAAP EPS (collectively the “non-GAAP financial measures”). The presentation of this financial information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for, or superior to, the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP. The company uses these non-GAAP financial measures for financial and operational decision making and as a means to evaluate period-to-period comparisons. The company believes that they provide useful information about operating results, enhance the overall understanding of past financial performance and future prospects, and allow for greater transparency with respect to key metrics used by management in its financial and operational decision making. 

    The company excludes the following items from one or more of its non-GAAP measures:

    Stock-based compensation. The company excludes stock-based compensation because it is non-cash in nature and because the company believes that the non-GAAP financial measures excluding this item provide meaningful supplemental information regarding operational performance and liquidity. The company further believes this measure is useful to investors in that it allows for greater transparency to certain line items in its financial statements and facilitates comparisons to competitors’ operating results.

    Amortization of acquired intangible assets. The company excludes amortization of acquired intangible assets because it is non-cash in nature and because the company believes that the non-GAAP financial measures excluding this item provide meaningful supplemental information regarding operational performance and liquidity. In addition, excluding this item from various non-GAAP measures facilitates internal comparisons to historical operating results and comparisons to competitors’ operating results. 

    Income tax effect of non-GAAP adjustments. The company adjusts non-GAAP net income by including the income tax effects of excluding stock-based compensation and the amortization of acquired intangible assets.  The company believes that the inclusion of the income tax effects provides additional transparency to the overall or “after tax” effects of excluding these items from non-GAAP net income.

    For more information on the non-GAAP financial measures, please see the “Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP Financial Measures” table in this press release.  This accompanying table has more details on the GAAP financial measures that are most directly comparable to non-GAAP financial measures and the related reconciliations between these financial measures. Additionally, the company has not reconciled adjusted EBITDA guidance to net income guidance because it does not provide guidance for either other income (expense), net, or provision for income taxes, which are reconciling items between net income and adjusted EBITDA. As items that impact net income are out of the company’s control and/or cannot be reasonably predicted, the company is unable to provide such guidance. Accordingly, a reconciliation to net income is not available without unreasonable effort.

     Safe Harbor Statement

    “Safe Harbor” statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This press release and the accompanying conference call contain forward-looking statements about our products, including our planned investments in key strategic areas, certain non-financial metrics, such as member growth and engagement, and our expected financial metrics such as revenue, adjusted EBITDA, depreciation and amortization and stock-based compensation for the third quarter of 2012 and the full fiscal year 2012. The achievement of the matters covered by such forward-looking statements involves risks, uncertainties and assumptions.  If any of these risks or uncertainties materialize or if any of the assumptions prove incorrect, the company’s results could differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements the company makes.

    The risks and uncertainties referred to above include – but are not limited to – risks associated with: the company’s limited operating history in a new and unproven market; engagement of our members; the price volatility of our Class A common stock; general economic conditions; expectations regarding the return on our strategic investments; execution of our plans and strategies, including with respect to acquisitions of other companies; expectations regarding the company’s ability to timely and effectively scale and adapt existing technology and network infrastructure to ensure that its website is accessible at all times with short or no perceptible load times; security measures and the risk that the company’s website may be subject to attacks that degrade or deny the ability of members to access the company’s solutions or that our security measures may not be sufficient to prevent unauthorized access to our member data; our ability to maintain our rate of revenue growth and manage our expenses and investment plans; our ability to accurately track our key metrics internally; members and customers curtailing or ceasing to use the company’s solutions; the company’s core value of putting members first, which may conflict with the short-term interests of the business; privacy, litigation and regulatory issues; increasing competition; our ability to manage our growth and retain our employees; the application of US and international tax laws on our tax structure and any changes to such tax laws; and the dual class structure of the company’s common stock.

    Further information on these and other factors that could affect the company’s financial results is included in filings it makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time, including the section entitled “Risk Factors” in the company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K that was filed for the year ended December 31, 2011, and additional information will also be set forth in our Form 10-Q that will be filed for the quarter ended June 30, 2012, which should read in conjunction with these financial results.  These documents are available on the SEC Filings section of the Investor Information section of the company’s website at http://investors.linkedin.com/.  All information provided in this release and in the attachments is as of August 2, 2012, and LinkedIn undertakes no duty to update this information.

    LINKEDIN CORPORATION
    CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS
    (In thousands)
    (Unaudited)
      June 30,  December 31, 
      2012 2011
    ASSETS    
    CURRENT ASSETS:    
    Cash and cash equivalents  $ 286,376  $ 339,048
    Short-term investments  330,761  238,456
    Accounts receivable (net of allowance for doubtful accounts of $3,516 and $5,460 at June 30, 2012 and December 31, 2011, respectively)  136,536  111,372
    Deferred commissions  15,715  13,594
    Prepaid expenses   20,923  10,799
    Other current assets  21,601  12,658
    Total current assets  811,912  725,927
    Property and equipment, net  152,448  114,850
    Goodwill  113,268  12,249
    Intangible assets, net  33,456  8,095
    Other assets  28,078  12,576
    TOTAL ASSETS  $ 1,139,162  $ 873,697
     
    LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS’ EQUITY
    CURRENT LIABILITIES:
    Accounts payable  $ 44,195  $ 28,217
    Accrued liabilities  63,662  58,644
    Deferred revenue  191,993  139,798
    Total current liabilities  299,850  226,659
    DEFERRED TAX LIABILITIES  40,612  18,551
    OTHER LONG TERM LIABILITIES  15,525  3,508
    Total liabilities  355,987  248,718
    COMMITMENTS AND CONTINGENCIES 
    STOCKHOLDERS’ EQUITY: 
    Class A and Class B common stock  11  10
    Additional paid-in capital  767,995  617,629
    Accumulated other comprehensive income   129  100
    Accumulated earnings   15,040  7,240
    Total stockholders’ equity  783,175  624,979
    TOTAL LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS’ EQUITY  $ 1,139,162  $ 873,697
    LINKEDIN CORPORATION
    CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS
    (In thousands, except per share data)
    (Unaudited)
             
      Three Months Ended Six Months Ended
    June 30,  June 30, 
      2012 2011 2012 2011
             
    Net revenue  $ 228,207   $ 121,040   $ 416,663   $ 214,972 
    Costs and expenses:
    Cost of revenue (exclusive of depreciation and amortization shown separately below)  30,367   18,403   55,500   35,186 
    Sales and marketing  75,740   36,019   141,624   65,380 
    Product development  60,080   30,414   107,173   55,149 
    General and administrative  30,974   16,673   55,828   30,287 
    Depreciation and amortization  17,548   9,602   32,430   17,761 
    Total costs and expenses  214,709   111,111   392,555   203,763 
    Income from operations  13,498   9,929   24,108   11,209 
    Other income (expense), net  (668)  11   (444)  460 
    Income before income taxes  12,830   9,940   23,664   11,669 
    Provision for income taxes  10,019   5,427   15,864   5,078 
    Net income   $ 2,811   $ 4,513   $ 7,800   $ 6,591 
    Net income per share of common stock:
    Basic  $ 0.03   $ 0.07   $ 0.08   $ 0.12 
    Diluted  $ 0.03   $ 0.04   $ 0.07   $ 0.07 
    Weighted-average shares used to compute net  income per share:
    Basic  104,185  69,395  103,198  56,631
    Diluted  112,317  103,129  111,813  100,131
    LINKEDIN CORPORATION
    SUPPLEMENTAL REVENUE INFORMATION
    (In thousands)
    (Unaudited)
             
      Three Months Ended Six Months Ended
    June 30,  June 30, 
      2012 2011 2012 2011
             
    Revenue by product:        
    Hiring Solutions  $ 121,592  $ 58,620  $ 224,152  $ 104,953
    Marketing Solutions  63,105  38,570  111,055  66,253
    Premium Subscriptions  43,510  23,850  81,456  43,766
    Total  $ 228,207  $ 121,040  $ 416,663  $ 214,972
           
    Revenue by geographic region:      
    United States  $ 147,253  $ 82,739  $ 268,102  $ 147,859
    Other Americas (1)  15,047  6,146  27,056  10,745
    Total Americas  162,300  88,885  295,158  158,604
    EMEA (2)  50,057  25,859  92,902  45,590
    APAC (3)  15,850  6,296  28,603  10,778
    Total  $ 228,207  $ 121,040  $ 416,663  $ 214,972
           
    Revenue by channel:        
    Field sales  $ 129,448  $ 66,699  $ 230,919  $ 117,327
    Online sales  98,759  54,341  185,744  97,645
    Total  $ 228,207  $ 121,040  $ 416,663  $ 214,972
    (1) Canada, Latin America and South America
    (2) Europe, the Middle East and Africa (“EMEA”)
    (3) Asia-Pacific (“APAC”)
    LINKEDIN CORPORATION
    RECONCILIATION OF GAAP TO NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES
    (In thousands, except per share data)
    (Unaudited)
      Three Months Ended Six Months Ended
    June 30, June 30,
      2012 2011 2012 2011
         
    Non-GAAP net income and net income per share:  
    GAAP net income   $ 2,811  $ 4,513  $ 7,800  $ 6,591
    Add back: stock-based compensation  19,323  6,815  31,949  10,658
    Add back: amortization of intangible assets  1,851  862  3,159  1,671
    Income tax effect of non-GAAP adjustments  (5,933)  (1,414)  (7,923)  (2,392)
    NON-GAAP NET INCOME  $ 18,052  $ 10,776  $ 34,985  $ 16,528
       
    GAAP DILUTED SHARES  112,317  103,129  111,813  100,131
     
    NON-GAAP DILUTED NET INCOME PER SHARE  $ 0.16  $ 0.10  $ 0.31  $ 0.17
    Adjusted EBITDA:    
    Net income  $ 2,811  $ 4,513  $ 7,800  $ 6,591
    Provision for income taxes  10,019  5,427  15,864  5,078
    Other (income) expense, net  668  (11)  444  (460)
    Depreciation and amortization  17,548  9,602  32,430  17,761
    Stock-based compensation  19,323  6,815  31,949  10,658
    ADJUSTED EBITDA

  • LinkedIn Redesigns Homepage, Makes It Much More Social

    The very first thing that you’ll notice whenever the new LinkedIn homepage rolls out to you is that it finally looks like a social network. Gone is the text-heavy stream of updates, having been replaced by a media-rich feed that if anything, looks a little bit like Google+.

    The whole thing is different, but the big change is the update stream, which is cleaner and a bit heavier on the media – especially photos. Boxes such as “People you may know,” “Who viewed your profile,” and “Jobs you may be interested in” are still there, and they still reside on the right-hand side of the page.

    The stream has also been augmented to throw important updates to the top. “Important updates” constitute things like “trending topics, news, and professional updates based on what your connections and industry are reading, sharing, and discussing.”

    Also, the news feed now has infinite scroll and displays all comments and likes out in the open as well:

    We’ve completely refreshed the way updates look and feel in the stream with richer visuals for easier scanning and viewing. You can also see a continuous stream of updates without clicking “see more” to access all the latest updates from your network. It’s also easier for you to see what your connections are talking about and engage in these professional conversations by liking, commenting or sharing the updates that are most important to you.

    I’ve yet to see the new and improved LinkenIn homepage on my account, but thankfully LinkedIn has given us this screencap of what everyone will be greeted with eventually. They say everyone will have the new homepage within the next few weeks.

  • Digg Parted Out, Sold For Significantly More Than $500,000 [REPORT]

    Late yesterday, we told you that once-popular link aggregation site Digg had been sold to Betaworks, the company behind bit.ly, news.me, and Chartbeat. Considering Digg’s massive decline over the past few years, news of it selling wasn’t too shocking. But the price was – a paltry $500,000.

    To put that in perspective, Facebook just bought Instagram for $1 billion. Seriously, $500,000 is embarrassingly low.

    But there may be more to the Digg story. Sources tell Tech Crunch that Digg’s sale price was actually closer to $16 million – a huge jump from the half a million we were told.

    They say that Betaworks did pick up Digg’s remaining assets for somewhere between $500,000 and $725,000. But that’s only after two other players payed substantially more for other parts of the company.

    Apparently, the Washington Post payed around $12 million for the Digg team. LinkedIn also joined the party, picking up a handful of Digg patents for around $4 million.

    If correct, this is better news for Digg – but it’s still not great news. Once mighty and valued at nearly triple what they were reportedly bought for, it’s kind of sad to see Digg ripped apart and parted off like a beat up car. I guess it just shows the importance of striking while the iron is hot.

  • LinkedIn’s Mobile Head Tells How a Small Team Transformed the Company’s Mobile Strategy

    When Kiran Prasad joined LinkedIn in January of 2011, the company had an iPhone app – but just barely. The mobile design philosophy up until then had been to try and implement all of the features of LinkedIn on the web by throwing a different button for each feature into the mobile app. As a result, the app was covered in icons, many of which were rarely used. When Prasad arrived as director of engineering mobile, he prompted a reevaluation and redesign of just about every aspect of LinkedIn’s mobile technology. Prasad spoke with WebProNews about how he and his team were able to turn LinkedIn’s mobile apps into fast and easy-to-use platforms for professional networking, what the company’s mobile development philosophy is, and what’s next for LinkedIn’s mobile future.

    In the past three months, LinkedIn has released both a redesigned iPad app and an app for Windows Phone. Both of those apps are streamlined and showcase only the most relevant information from LinkedIn, focusing on what users need and want. They demonstrate where LinkedIn’s mobile strategy is headed, that less is sometimes more, and that usability is key.

    Prasad said that when he started at LinkedIn, his mobile engineering team consisted of four or five people. The team has grown to around 25 people in the past year and a half, but it is stil “by far the smallest team in the organization,” said Prasad. He emphasizes, though, that he doesn’t need a large team. He said that they pull from all the other teams at LinkedIn, taking all of the company’s products and placing them in a mobile context. “We’re standing on the shoulders of giants,” said Prasad

    The goal of the mobile team is to try and build simple interfaces. To do that, Prasad said they go by the mantra “fast, easy, reliable” – in that order.

    LinkedIn's iPhone appPrasad said the greatest focus is on speed because of how fast business is now done. It’s known that LinkedIn’s users are, for the most part, professionals who use the platform as a part of their career-building efforts. Also, Prasad said that users consume mobile content at a much faster rate than content on the web. For the site’s mobile applications to be of any use, they have to be able to keep up with the LinkedIn members using them.

    The ease of use part of the mantra is more tricky, involving less technical prowess and more design sensibility. This is where Prasad’s past experience was brought to bear. Before he signed on at LinkedIn, Prasad worked as a software engineer at both Handspring and Palm. At Palm he spent over three years as senor director of core software, designing and implementing apps and services for WebOS and the Palm Pre. One design philosopy Prasad said he has brought with him is the idea of counting the number of taps a user must make to accomplish a specific task. More than three taps means the user is never going to find it.

    Though reliability is the third and last focus of the mobile team’s mantra, Prasad emphasized that it is not ignored. He stated that a certain level of reliability is always necessary and maintained.

    The redesign of mobile at LinkedIn began with the iPhone app. With all of the icons in the old app, it was easy for Prasad’s team to see what users were tapping on and what they were ignoring. These types of metrics, Prasad said, are used throughout LinkedIn, though he states that they are not the final say on how the company proceeds. “I wouldn’t say I’m metrics-driven, I’d say I’m metrics-informed,” said Prasad.

    The team found that the feature most-loved by LinkedIn mobile users was the search function. Prasad surmised that users were using search to look up potential contacts or meeting-attendees on-the-fly. Because of this, the search function is now available on every screen of the iPhone app.

    The team also found several features that were rarely, if ever, used. Color themes were thrown out, as well as business card transfer, a feature that sounds cool but was actually more trouble to use than simply handing over a normal business card.

    In between these two extremes was what Prasad called the middle stuff, the features that were used, but not a huge focus for users. Prasad said he uses the metaphor of a house to help place the design of all those other features. Each room in the “house” represents a useful feature for a LinkedIn mobile user. The hallways connecting those rooms are the ways in which users navigate to their destination within the app. From the 12 rooms in the original iPhone app “house,” Prasad and his team were able to cut down the number of rooms to just four: the “stream”, “you,” “inbox,” and “groups & more.” The design of the new iPad app was even able to cut out “groups & more,” leaving just three “rooms.”

    LinkedIn's iPad app home screen with three

    User interface design wasn’t the only area in which LinkedIn’s mobile apps were improved. In order to stick to their “fast, easy, reliable” mantra, the team had to re-engineer LinkedIn’s mobile tech stack from scratch.

    The old stack was based in Ruby on Rails, meaning that, for each user, a server-side process was spawned and sent requests to the back-end. These requests were serial and limited in number, meaning a backlog of requests could mean delays for the end-user. “The biggest issue on mobile is latency,” said Prasad.

    He and his team re-wrote the stack using javascript and Node.js. Now, one process is used server-side with a queue of requests, and multiple requests can be made. Where the old stack used 30 servers, the new one uses just three for all of LinkedIn’s mobile traffic.

    On the client side, the mobile team used HTML5 to implement most app features. There are some parts of the apps, though, such as the infinite stream list, that are native because, Prasad said, they don’t perform well in HTML5. Performance optimization was the reason his team has recently pulled back a bit from HTML5, taking the new iPad app from around 95% HTML5 to about 90% now.

    Looking toward the future, Prasad said his team is nearly done with its first of three steps, which is making LinkedIn available on all mobile platforms. He stated that they still have a couple of phone platforms to go, and that more will be done for other tablets in the future.

    The second step, enabling use, is the one the LinkedIn mobile team is currently working on. This step sees the team optimizing their apps and creating a better user experience overall.

    While working on these first two steps, LinkedIn has gained enough confidence in mobile to begin experimenting with monetizing its apps. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner last month stated that ads would soon become part of its iPad app, and that premium subcriptions for mobile are a possibility. LinkedIn has, in fact, now begun experimenting with ads in its LinkedIn app, though they are testing the move carefully with only a couple of advertising partners.

    Prasad said much the same during our interview. He and his team “definitely” don’t want the new ads to impact the user experience, and are being cautions while gathering metrics on the few current ads. Prasad said that subscriptions for premium mobile features are a natural progression of LinkedIn’s business model that will eventually make their way to mobile.

    The third step for LinkedIn’s mobile engineering team, as described by Prasad, is more of a leap. He states that he wants to make the mobile team a leader, and contribute back to LinkedIn the way other teams have contributed to mobile. Obviously this third step is more of a long-term goal, but Prasad seemed confident in his team and in LinkedIn as a whole. “This happens to be one of those great, lucky environments.”

  • Twitter’s Greater Rule Enforcement Cuts LinkedIn Off

    When Michael Sippey, group product manager at Twitter, made the announcement today that Twitter would begin a tighter enforcement of its “Developer Rules of the Road,” such as the rule that developers should not use Twitter APIs to “mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience,” it wasn’t clear exactly what he meant. Now, LinkedIn has revealed just how broadly Twitter is now interpreting its rules by stating that LinkedIn members will no longer be able to have tweets displayed on LinkedIn.

    Sippey’s post to the Twitter Developers blog highlighted the fact that Twitter wants users to experience its platform in a consistent way, and that the new tools it is rolling out will make it necessary for the company to strictly enforce its developer rules. From the post:

    …we’ve already begun to more thoroughly enforce our Developer Rules of the Road with partners, for example with branding, and in the coming weeks, we will be introducing stricter guidelines around how the Twitter API is used.

    We’re building tools for publishers and investing more and more in our own apps to ensure that you have a great experience everywhere you experience Twitter, no matter what device you’re using. You need to be able to see expanded Tweets and other features that make Twitter more engaging and easier to use. These are the features that bring people closer to the things they care about. These are the features that make Twitter Twitter. We’re looking forward to working with you to make Twitter even better.

    Unfortunately for LinkedIn users, this means they will have to go without tweets on LinkedIn. For several years, LinkedIn members have been able to sync their LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, allowing them to pull tweets into their LinkedIn stream or push LinkedIn updates to Twitter. LinkedInhas also released an official blog post today, which details the change and states that, as of today, tweets will no loger be displayed on LinkedIn. From the LinkedIn blog post:

    If you had previously synced your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, and selected the option to share Tweets on LinkedIn, those Tweets generated from Twitter will no longer appear on LinkedIn. There will be no other changes to your LinkedIn experience.

    The post went on to emphasize that users will still be able to share LinkedIn content to Twitter. Checking the Twitter box when posting a LinkedIn update will continue to push the content straight to Twitter.

  • Linkedin Tips for Showcasing Your Own Personal Brand

    Linkedin wants to make its users aware of the need to distinguish themselves from the pack. With today’s ever more competitive job market, you need to work on refining your online personality and promoting what they call, your personal brand.

    We are all familiar with branding and what branding can do for a company or its products, but less often do we ask what it can do for us. Just like any ad campaign, your social media profiles can promote you and present you in the best possible light. The challenge is, to get the job done.

    Linkedin has provided an eight item list that will help you develop and refine the brand that is you. While it is a challenge to distinguish yourself from the competition, it can be a lot easier if you take advantage of tools at your disposal.

    Linkedin says to start by asking yourself the following questions:

    * How would your colleagues describe your strengths?

    * On what issues are you the go-to person in your organization?

    * What do you know more about (web design, compensation plans, marketing to baby boomers) than most people?

    Once you’ve defined your personal brand, it’s time to showcase it to recruiters, bosses, customers and others who may be assessing you. Here’s how LinkedIn can help:

    1). Be authentic. The best personal brands are genuine and honest both in person and online. It can be tricky to showcase your personality on the web (you might love puns, but those don’t go over well on a professional profile), but it’s possible with a bit of effort. For instance, if your personal brand includes a balance between your detailed accounting skills and your friendly personality, your LinkedIn profile can include both your technical credentials and the fact that you belong to several networking groups. You can also ask former and current colleagues to write LinkedIn recommendations highlighting this combination.

    2). Create a distinctive LinkedIn profile headline. Your headline is your brand’s tag line. It’s the first — and possibly only — description of you that many people will see, so make it count. Go back to the words and phrases your friends and colleagues used to describe your uniqueness: “IT support manager and trusted Mac expert” or “Experienced admin assistant who never misses a deadline.”

    3). Be consistent. Make sure your LinkedIn profile, resume and all other elements of your personal brand are consistent. While you can go into more extensive detail on LinkedIn and perhaps be a bit more personal on Facebook or Twitter, all of your job titles, dates of employment and specific accomplishments need to match up everywhere they appear. Consistency is important so as not to confuse people or send mixed messages about who you are and what you want in your career.

    4). Increase your visibility. If you have a great personal brand but no one knows about it, then you won’t benefit much. Increase your exposure to people in your network by including your LinkedIn profile URL on your business cards, your resume, other social media sites and anyplace else people are interacting with you online or offline. You can also build exposure by consistently updating your LinkedIn status. Tell people what projects you’re working on, what conferences you’re attending and what books and articles you’re reading. Remember that your brand is not just who you are; it’s what you do.

    5). Build your strategic brand association. We generally think highly of people who keep good company, so building your LinkedIn network simultaneously builds your personal brand. Connect on LinkedIn with trusted friends, former colleagues and classmates, industry leaders, vendors and other professionals. And don’t be shy about asking your contacts for introductions to people in their networks. Strong brands are always growing.

    6). Regularly add to your knowledge. Another way to showcase yourself and your brand is to have an expert level of knowledge about your industry. Be well read on topics you care about (For example, LinkedIn Today can help), answer relevant questions in LinkedIn’s Answers section and follow important companies in your field. For instance, if your personal brand includes your interest and knowledge in special education, follow and share news about developments in this field so people think of you as a valuable resource if they need information on that topic.

    7). Share your expertise in LinkedIn Groups. The Groups you join on LinkedIn contribute to your personal brand by indicating where your interests and skills lie. For example, if you want your brand to include a strong knowledge of manufacturing in China, then people will expect your profile to feature groups related to Chinese manufacturing. Inside these groups, you can also showcase your brand though your activity. Every comment you post and question you answer is an opportunity to market yourself and your skills and to build your brand.

    8). Give generously. Finally, helping others is a crucial — and enjoyable — way to build your personal brand. Give advice, volunteer your skills, share client leads, write recommendations, agree to informational interviews and congratulate people on their successes. When people know they can rely on you, they remember you and recommend you to others.

    Practice makes perfect:

    It’s not easy building a personal brand, but if you have values and interests you legitimately want to promote, it should become second nature once you get the ball rolling. Like everything in life, it gets easier the more you do it.

    Incorporate these habits into your daily life and your social pages will eventually become a true reflection of who you are and what you care about. Others will take notice.

  • “#1 Hunting App” Pealk Indignant at LinkedIn Ban

    Pealk, the company that runs what it calls the “#1 hunting app” for LinkedIn, is in danger of having its app disabled because of LinkedIn’s decision to cut off its API access. The company posted a message to its website stating that as of June 26, the app will no longer be available. Pealk’s messaged said that it was extremely surprised by LinkedIn’s decision, and that it believes the action contradicts LinkedIn’s recent moves toward more open API access for developers.

    LinkedIn has responded with a statement that makes clear it believes Pealk was abusing its API access:

    We have an ecosystem of 60,000 developers who access the LinkedIn platform everyday as part of our open developer program. We regularly monitor the developers of this program to ensure they are following our terms of use. In this case, this developer is in clear violation of LinkedIn’s terms of use and is abusing the guidelines we’ve put in place to protect our members’ data. They were notified in advance of this shut off, but have still not complied with our terms of service.

    It’s unfortunate that LinkedIn can’t be more specific about the nature of Pealk’s infraction. LinkedIn’s API Terms of Use is full of potential violations, such as storing member data without consent and using robots or spider applications to index LinkedIn content.

    The Pealk app is a recruiting app that reorganizes LinkedIn data so that recruiters can easily track potential recruits. It allows the grouping of “targets” into folders for better organization of LinkedIn profiles. Take a look at the company’s introduction video below to get a sense of what Pealk’s software integrates LinkedIn content:

    The most likely violation that Pealk is guilty of is the one that prohibits allowing “any third party, including other users, to see information obtained from another user’s LinkedIn network or through another user’s view of our Website or the Content.” The Pealk website describes a feature it calls Interaction Tracker as one that allows users to export their “interactions” to other customer relationship management (CRM) software. If Pealk uses LinkedIn to communicate with potential recruits, then exporting that communication would seem to violate LinkedIn’s API terms.

    One other interesting violation that LinkedIn might be invoking is the one that bans using “the APIs in an Application that competes with products or services offered by us.” The Smart Messages feature for the Pealk app is one that allows users to customize form messages to send out to recruits. This service might conflict somewhat with LinkedIn’s new Targeted Status Updates, a feature which rolled out this week. Pealk also has a Key Analytics feature that monitors users’ LinkedIn metrics. That feature could conflict with the “follower statistics” page now located on LinkedIn Company Pages.

    Whatever the case is, Pealk is maintaining its innocence. In response to LinkedIn’s official statement, Pealk issued a follow-up statement this afternoon that includes the veiled threat of legal action:

    Pealk considers that [LinkedIn’s] statements are entirely false: we have been entertaining constructive and almost permanent discussions with LinkedIn for more than eight weeks and LinkedIn never reported to us a single violation of their terms of use. It goes without saying that Pealk would have been fully available to cooperate with LinkedIn to adapt the app to LinkedIn’s terms of use to the extent necessary; however, we were once again at no single point informed of such necessity by LinkedIn.

    In this context, statements from LinkedIn such as those quoted above are prejudicial to Pealk, which therefore reserves its rights to initiate any necessary actions to preserve its interests.

    As LinkedIn pointed out in its statement, it has thousands of developers working with its platform, and the company has recently been promoting even more development work using its APIs. It has even been highlighting third-party development that uses its API through its official blog. Just this week HootSuite announced the implementation of LinkedIn’s Company Pages into its software, and today an iPad app called Hookflash launched, which organizes LinkedIn connection information into a digital rolodex to allow calling and messaging.

    The full nature of the dispute between Pealk and LinkedIn will undoubtedly come to light over the next few days. It will be an interesting glimpse into what LinkedIn considers a breach of its API terms. And what LinkedIn does next, if anything, will demonstrate how the company deals with indignant developers.

  • Calling All Ladies: Hack Away At LinkedIn’s DevelopHer Hackday

    One of the major problems facing the technology industry today is a lack of women. Every position from management to the coders are predominantly male and that’s a problem. All the lady geeks I know are fantastic at what they do and bring a vibrancy to their work that I just don’t see often enough in men. That’s why it’s super fantastic that LinkedIn is taking some initiative to encourage women to develop and code.

    LinkedIn announced a while back that they would be hosting a global hackday in Mountain View from June 30 to July 1. The event was aiming to inspire women to put their coding and development skills to the test as they work on new projects during the weekend. The excitement and demand for the event was apparently through the roof, so LinkedIn will be holding a separate hackday in Delhi, India during the same weekend.

    Both events will be the same – teams or solo participants will have one day to build something great. The event is more about meeting other women developers, but LinkedIn has a few more incentives besides having an awesome night on the code with your fellow ladies. They promise that yoga and prizes will be available as well.

    The Mountain View hackday has also announced its four judges. Keeping with the spirit of the event, all of them are major players in the tech industry who happen to also be women. The four judges are Christina Allen (Director of Product Management at LinkedIn), Gina Bianchini (Founder and CEO at Mighty Bell), Megan Quinn (Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), and Rashmi Sinha (CEO of Slideshare).

    All women of all skill levels are invited to both hackdays. They encourage the experienced developers and designers to be tutors to amateurs and those just starting. It should start the foundation for long lasting relationships that may bud into mentorships. It’s all about getting women more interested in technology and computer science. I hope the events go well, especially the hackday in India.

  • Hookflash Turns LinkedIn Connections Into a Video-Calling Rolodex

    Hookflash today announced the official launch of its new iPad app. The app uses LinkedIn’s APIs to cull members’ connections and use contact details to provide a Skype-like experience that allows users to instant message, voice call, or video call their professional contacts on LinkedIn without having to navigate through the LinkedIn website. The app is set up as a digital rolodex, but it also includes a stream of users’ LinkedIn connection updates. The app currently allows users to video call their contacts as long as both have the Hookflash app.

    “We’ve essentially turned the iPad into the world’s best business phone with a directory of over a 160 million professionals on a free global digital network,” said Trent Johnsen, CEO of Hookflash. “‘This changes everything’ has to be my favorite customer reaction to Hookflash so far”

    Johnsen posted a blog entry to the official LinkedIn Blog announcing the app’s launch. From the post:

    Hookflash for LinkedIn means no more searching for contact details, dialing multiple office and mobile numbers, or paying for expensive long-distance and roaming fees. Simply tap the LinkedIn contact you want to reach on Hookflash and instantly chat with them (video, voice and text).

    Johnsen described the experience of working with LinkedIn’s Developer Network as “seamless,” which is a claim that the developers at Pealk would certainly dispute. Hookflash is the second developer to announce LinkedIn integration this week, after HootSuite announced that the new Company Pages feature of LinkedIn has been integrated into its interface.

    Hookflash can now be downloaded for free through Apple’s App Store. The company suggests that users upgrade to at least iOS 5.0 for a better experience with the app.

  • HootSuite LinkedIn Beta Now Open, Company Pages Added

    Today HootSuite, a social media management platform, announced that the beta version of its LinkedIn support has been opened to all of its users. The LinkedIn integration will also now support management of LinkedIn company pages. HootSuite claims that 79 of the Fortune 100 companies use its software to manage their social presence. The new HootSuite LinkedIn support will allow those companies to more easily update their LinkedIn followers with industry information and company news.

    “We’re always looking for new ways to streamline communication across the entire organization and are building a solution to achieve this vision,” said Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite. “By extending the beta integration of LinkedIn company pages to our entire user base, we open up even more ways for brand managers to tell their company story, engage brand followers, and drive word of mouth marketing at a mass scale – all this without having to leave our dashboard.”

    The HootSuite announcement comes on the same day that LinkedIn officially launched its Targeted Status Updates feature, which allows company page managers to send out LinkedIn updates to specified followers. LinkedIn announced that the feature is already implemented through HootSuite, and will eventually roll out to other social media management software.

    “Businesses use LinkedIn company pages to share relevant news and important insights which directly address the interests and curiosities of professionals using LinkedIn,” said Mike Grishaver, senior product manager for company pages at LinkedIn. “With 2 million LinkedIn company pages in place, this new integration will be especially useful for social media and community managers whose responsibility it is to oversee public company social media profiles.”

    HootSuite users who want to use the new LinkedIn integration must still apply for beta access. After they gain access, users will be able to login through their LinkedIn account, and can then add any LinkedIn profiles, groups, or company pages they manage to their HootSuite dashboard stream.

  • LinkedIn Targeted Status Updates Go Live

    LinkedIn today announced that its Targeted Status Updates are now available for every LinkedIn company page. Targeted Status Updates allow companies to make posts to their LinkedIn pages while ensuring that a specific subset of their LinkedIn followers sees the update. Companies can now send out status updates to followers sorted by company size, industry category, job title (function), seniority, and geographic location. Want your company’s next status update to reach your followers who are managers for mid-sized construction companies in the Midwestern U.S.? Now it can.

    The launch announcement came from Mike Grishaver, head of product management and monetization for company pages at LinkedIn, in a post over at the official LinkedIn blog:

    Launched in April with a few of our customers, Targeted Status Updates aims to make it easier for members to receive relevant information from companies they follow. In turn, companies can now communicate with their followers in a very personalized way and provide content tailored to specific audiences.

    Targeted Status Updates have been open to only a small number of companies until today. Still, LinkedIn claims those companies are seeing “positive results.” For example, Philips is claiming a 106% increase in follower engagement from using Targeted Status Updates.

    To help companies track the results of Targeted Status Updates and make better decisions about which of their followers to target, LinkedIn has also released a new “follower statistics” page. The new page shows detailed statistics on follower demographics and engagement over time.

    LinkedIn has also announced that the Targeted Updates are accessible through HootSuite, and will soon be available through other social media management software. Take a look at the launch video LinkedIn has prepared to see how Targeted Status Updates work, and what the new follower statistics page contains:

  • LinkedIn CEO Reveals Future Focus

    LinkedIn CEO Reveals Future Focus

    The last couple of weeks have been tough for LinkedIn. The password leak has been all anyone has been associating the company with, and now a class action lawsuit has been filed because of it. It must be especially frustrating coming so soon after the Facebook IPO, when LinkedIn is no doubt trying to position its brand as the less-hyped, yet more stable, social network to invest in. Today, Fortune published an interview with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner in which he describes how his company has changed in the year since its IPO, and where it will be headed in the future.

    Weiner states that LinkedIn and its culture have not changed significantly. He said the company even went as far as to codify its culture and values in its SEC filings for its IPO. “And more important than writing that kind of stuff down is walking the walk, and making sure that we remain true to who we are,” said Weiner. “And I think that really begins with continuing to pursue the long term vision as opposed to making short term compromises as a result of being public.”

    Later in the interview Weiner addressed the criticism often hurled at LinkedIn that it is a social network that people only use when they need a job. He responded that the saying at LinkedIn is “LinkedIn is not a service that enables you to pass the time, it’s a service that enables you to save time.” However, he goes on to say that the company is trying to engage members on a daily basis. He cites LinkedIn Today (the company’s news feed product), LinkedIn groups, and the new LinkedIn iPad app as ways the company is trying to hook members.

    Weiner mentioned that LinkedIn uses a private LinkedIn group for employees only. This allows them to share private company information, while still using the LinkedIn website. He said LinkedIn is looking at similar ways to build more tools and services such as that, and provide them to companies. As Weiner points out, a large portion of most companies’ employees are already on LinkedIn.

    When speaking of the mobile market, which LinkedIn has been focusing heavily on recently, Weiner stated that premium subscriptions geared specifically for the mobile or iPad environments are a possibility. Also, ads will soon become a part of the iPad app, “sooner rather than later.” As for smaller mobile devices, Weiner mentioned that he feels the idea of a “feed” is crucial, and that LinkedIn will be testing something feed-like.

    (Fortune via CNNMoney)

  • LinkedIn Class Action Complaint Over Password Leak

    As expected for a security breach of this magnitude, a class action lawsuit has begun against LinkedIn regarding its recently leaked passwords. The action, which has been filed with the U.S. District Court in Northern California, claims LinkedIn failed to “properly safeguard its users’ digitally stored personally identifiable information, including e-mail addresses, passwords, and login credentials”

    The plaintiff in the e-filed court document is Katie Szpyrka, a senior associate at a Chicago real estate firm. She has been a LinkedIn member since 2010, and also paid for an upgraded premium account. She claims that LinkedIn failed to adequately protect users with “basic industry standard encryption methods.” By this, the plaintiff means LinkedIn should have been salting its password hashes. These claims are made in light of LinkedIn’s privacy policy, which states that “All information that you provide will be protected with industry standard protocols and technology.”

    While salting and re-hashing passwords certainly is a good security practice, it will be interesting to see if the plaintiff’s lawyers can manage to demonstrate that it is an industry standard. The fact that both eHarmony and Last.fm were also included in the password leak would seem to be evidence that salting passwords before hashing is not “standard,” even if it should be.

    One interesting claim made in the lawsuit is that the password hash was originally stolen from LinkedIn by a hacker using an SQL injection attack. LinkedIn has never officially stated how the passwords were originally leaked. If LinkedIn did leave itself open to SQL injection, it might be a factor more likely way to prove that LinkedIn did not live up to its policy standards, and therefore was in breach of contract. Still, LinkedIn maintains that no unauthorized access resulted from the leak, meaning that an award for damages seems unlikely. The lawsuit, though, also asks for an injunction against LinkedIn, forcing it to better protect its members’ private data.

    The court document can be read as a PDF on the Courthouse News website. The entire debacle started on June 6, when it was discovered that over 6.4 million LinkedIn passwords were leaked to a hash cracking website. LinkedIn responded that same day by deactivating member accounts associated with the leaked passwords and emailing members with information on how to reset their passwords. In the following week it was revealed that some of the leaked passwords also belonged to Last.fm and eHarmony.

    (via Courthouse News)

  • LinkedIn Touts Coursera Tech Talk

    LinkedIn Touts Coursera Tech Talk

    In addition to the Hackdays LinkedIn hosts on a monthly basis, the company also invites innovative technology entrepreneurs to come and speak at the LinkedIn campus in Mountain View, California. These public “tech talks” provide a glimpse at the future of how data will be used in the workplace.

    The last tech talk was held one month ago, when Stanford computer science professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng gave a presentation on their new project, Coursera. Coursera is a website that allows any person online to sign up for classes led by some of the most renowned professors in the world. The website is currently partnering with Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley, the University of Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania to provide classes to thousands of curious students.

    Monica Rogati, senior research scientist for analytics at LinkedIn, took to the official LinkedIn Blog to give a rundown on the tech talk and how Coursera is accomplishing its goal of top universities educating millions of students. Rogati states that education is one area that has been resisting the efficiency brought on by the internet. She points out that tuition rates are skyrocketing and makes a point that LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner made a month ago to the Bay Area Council: U.S. workers don’t have the skills to fill the few jobs that are open.

    Coursera is working to fix these problems by implementing higher education on a massive scale. Rogati states that the site has had over one million students sign up for classes. The classes often involve interactive quizzes that tailor themselves to each student. The streaming classes are the easy part. The hard part is grading thousands of tests. From the blog post:

    Coursera’s approach to feedback and assessment is a very interesting application of data science. Tests are either computer-graded or peer-graded — the latter following industry tested crowdsourcing best practices (clear instructions, gold standards, training, qualification tasks assessor agreement monitoring etc.). Peer grading isn’t just treated as a means for scaling — it is part of the learning process. One of Daphne’s charts showed that students significantly improved on subsequent tests after peer- and self-grading. Interestingly, the better students learned even more from self-grading than from grading others.

    Evidently, communities are being built up around popular courses. Could this be the beginning of crowd-sourced learning or a social network college? Students are able to ask for help and receive it quickly due to the high volume of classmates. Rogati states the large numbers of students also provide learning opportunities for the professors, who can easily see where they are not getting through to the class.

    LinkedIn’s tech talks are normally posted to the LinkedIn Tech Talks YouTube channel. The Coursera presentation will, presumably, be uploaded soon.

  • LinkedIn All-Women Hackday Invite Requests End Soon

    LinkedIn’s Hackdays are a fun monthly tradition that gives employees a break from the normal work routine, and where company engineers can team up to simply build something interesting. Sometimes the creative ideas that come from a Hackday are implemented into the LinkedIn website. The idea behind the Hackday, giving creative people the space and freedom to innovate, is the same as the idea behind Facebook’s Hackathons. The Hackdays sometimes have a theme, such as a Hackday on Veteran’s Day last year that created tools allowing veterans to better search LinkedIn’s job postings using the skills gained from their military service. At the end of this month, LinkedIn will host a Hackday devoted entirely to women.

    The DevelopHer Hackday (get it?) will begin on June 30, and will have the goal of encouraging more women to participate in Hackdays, enter the engineering field, and take on entrepreneurial roles. The event is open to the public, and women of all ages are encouraged to attend. All that is required is a laptop and valid ID. The LinkedIn Engineering Twitter account yesterday Tweeted out that requests for an invite will be ending soon:

    The DeveloopHer Hackday will take place at the LinkedIn Headquarters in Mountain View, California. Check-in begins at 10 am, and hacking starts at 11 am. Completed hacks are due at 11 am the next day, July 1. As an overnight session of coding can be grueling, a yoga break is scheduled for 8 pm that evening. The hacks will be judged by Christina Allen, Director of Product Management at LinkedIn; Rashmi Sinha, CEO of Slideshare (which LinkedIn recently acquired); Megan Quinn, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; and one surprise judge. Prizes include Amazon gift cards, dinner with the judges, and Apple devices.

  • LinkedIn Summarizes Its Password Leak Response

    It has been almost a week since over 6.4 million LinkedIn passwords were leaked to a hash-cracking website, and though it turned out that both eHarmony and Last.fm were also a part of the leak, the discussion has remained centered around LinkedIn. Vicente Silveira, director at LinkedIn, has been the company’s spokesperson throughout the week, posting situation updates to the official LinkedIn Blog, but the company hadn’t released an official statement until today. The statement provides a summary of LinkedIn’s actions following the leak, and emphasizes the company’s commitment to its member’s privacy and security.

    LinkedIn states that the company has been working “around the clock” since learning of the leak one week ago. It first began to investigate whether the reported passwords were, in fact, from their members. After confirming the situation, LinkedIn disabled the accounts of members whose passwords had already been decoded and published. By the end of June 7, all member accounts associated with the leak, decoded or not, had been disabled. An email was sent to these members relating how to reactivate their accounts. The company emphasizes that the login emails for member accounts were not leaked along with the passwords.

    Though it is not clear how the hashed passwords were obtained in the first place, LinkedIn does use the word “stolen” to refer to them. Ganesh Krishnan, Yahoo’s former chief information security officer (CISC), has for over one year served as LinkedIn’s security czar, a position that serves the same function as a CISC. His team has completed a planned security upgrade that increases password security by salting LinkedIn’s hashed passwords. The company stated that it is implementing further security upgrades, but for security purposes did not disclose what those are.

    From the LinkedIn statement:

    We are profoundly sorry for this incident. Member security is vitally important to us, and transparency is a priority as well. We will provide further updates as warranted by any new developments.

    This appears to be LinkedIn’s definitive statement on the password leak. The company will, most likely, begin to move into a business-as-usual routine in the following days, while continuing to investigate the password leak. Already, the company’s blogs are functioning as normal: yesterday it posted tips for navigating office gossip to the official LinkedIn Blog.