LinkedIn is definitely on a roll. The company, which is public, has a strong stock with over 600 times earnings and a great support around $100, even on tough days in the market. They’ve also been recording record quarters and have started to aggressively expand internationally. A recent infographic from digitlab looks at one of those expansions, and reveals how LinkedIn breaks down in South Africa. The stats are pretty illuminating.
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Well, Facebook has gone public, and it’s underwhelming most observers by hovering around $40, around 5% above its IPO price of $38. That’s all well and good for Zuckerberg, who now can say the company is definitely a $100B market cap business for now. But for shareholders, is it a good time to get in? Or should people go for another, more clever way to get into social networking: LinkedIn?
If you’re marketing to other businesses, it’s becoming evident that LinkedIn is the place to do it. Business decision makers are on the network and more and more deals are getting first leads at the professional social network. The folks at unbounce and bop design have put together a pretty killer list and infographic relating to whether Facebook also offers an opportunity for great B2B marketing.
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Study: Google Ads Work Better Than Facebook’s (Boston Herald)
Facebook may be this week’s stock market darling, but when it comes to online display advertising, search engine Google provides advertisers with “significantly more value” than the social media giant in terms of growth rates, performance, targeting options and formats, according to a study released Tuesday. The study compares the value of Facebook advertising to Google’s Display Network. PC Magazine Facebook moved quickly — again — to address concerns that it wasn’t doing enough to satisfy mobile users, buying the developers of the Lightbox Android photo app. However, the company also made it clear that Facebook was not acquiring the company or the photos that users had stored on the Lightbox website, just the developer team. AdAge General Motors said Tuesday that it is “reassessing” its spending on Facebook advertising — about $10 million — but “remains committed” to the social network as part of “an aggressive content strategy with all our products and brands.” Meanwhile, Scott Monty, Ford’s head of social media, said that the automaker is bullish about Facebook ads — particularly “sponsored stories” that contain a social layer — and intends to “accelerate” spending on them. AllFacebook Facebook followed up last week’s introduction of its app center with two new metrics to its insights for applications: app ratings and negative feedback. The new app ratings dashboard will bring developers information on how users rated their apps with the five-star ratings system Facebook recently implemented. The negative feedback feature shows developers how many times stories from their apps have been hidden or reported as spam, as well as how many times the app itself has been blocked. Mashable Two Colombian criminals almost got away with robbing an Internet cafe, but one of them checked Facebook first — and ended up being identified and arrested because he forgot to log out. The two men whipped out guns at the cash register to demand money and made a clean getaway on a motorcycle. After the men escaped, an employee at the cafe called the police turning in information from the Facebook page that led to his arrest. Read more
There was once a time when you’d type up your resume on your old fashioned word processor, add a little flair and a unique (but not irresponsible) font and print it out to deliver by hand to a prospective employer. Those days are long gone, and today’s job hunt is new territory for people on all sides of the fence. A new infographic looks at the history of social recruiting and provides some startling statistics about how many people are using it — for instance, 49% of employed Americans are looking for new jobs on social networks.
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In Facebook IPO, Frenzy, Skepticism (The Wall Street Journal)
Facebook’s coming initial public offering has set off a frenzy of anticipation among Main Street and Wall Street investors desperate to get their hands on the stock. Late Monday, the social network raised the price range for its IPO to $34 to $38 a share, from $28 to $35 a share, said a person familiar with the matter, in a sign of investor appetite for the offering. Inside Facebook Facebook has announced a new design for its mobile newsfeed that displays posts in individual boxes similar to how they appear on timeline. As part of the redesign, photos now appear three times larger than before, which could make browsing more efficient since there is less need to tap to see an image full-screen. Yahoo! News/The Lookout Is Facebook a flash in the pan? Nearly half of Americans think so, according to a new AP/CNBC poll. Forty-six percent of those polled said the social networking giant is likely to “fade away as new things come along,” while 43 percent predict it will be “successful over the long term.” CNBC The poll also shows that 57 percent of Facebook users say they never click ads or other sponsored content when they use the site, with another 26 percent saying they hardly ever engage in such activity AllFacebook Recent college graduate Suleika Jaouad found out that when she opened up about having leukemia on Facebook, there was a community ready to embrace her as she faced this new challenge in life. Caretakers and fellow cancer patients, friends and family all were there waiting to offer support and share advice. Read more
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Bing Reinvents Social Search and Discovery (Mashable)
Bing has been reinvented, offering enhanced search results that tap into the power of social media. Microsoft has done this by pulling people out of search results and putting them in their place: A right-hand social column that will eventually include Facebook, Twitter, Google+ Quora and LinkedIn integration, as well as people who may know something about your most recent Bing query. AllFacebook The new Bing will gradually be rolled out to users, and those interested in getting it earlier can sign up. The search engine makes its suggestions based on information in friends’ Facebook profiles, their likes and photos they have shared. The New York Times Strengthening the ties between Bing and Facebook is a sign of how Microsoft and Facebook are working together to provide a counterbalance to their common adversary, Google. While Google is by far the dominant player in the Internet search business, it also competes with Microsoft in productivity applications and with Facebook through its Google+ social network. The Wall Street Journal Microsoft’s share of U.S. Web search was 15.3 percent in March, according to comScore, while Google had a 66.4 percent share. Combined with Yahoo!, for which Bing also powers search, Microsoft had a combined 29 percent market share. Forbes In 2007, Microsoft spent $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook, which goes public next week. And the two nabbed headlines in October 2010 by announcing their plan to team up on social search. Read more
Investors have long had a simple response when it comes to the gargantuan buzz of social networks: where’s the profit? While some investors have been bullish on the potential growth of social businesses, others have questioned whether we’re looking at something similar to the dotcom crash of 1999, where hundreds of small Internet companies went public without profits, rocketed to absurd prices based on speculation alone, then crashed hard.
So when in May of 2011, LinkedIn was the first major American social network to go public, the world was very curious to see what kind of numbers they’d generate, and whether social networks really had the legs to stand in the market. After a great run, LinkedIn announced the results of its fourth fiscal quarter as a public company and beat all expectations.
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LinkedIn Spends $119 Million on SlideShare — the YouTube of Slide Shows (Mashable) Professional social network LinkedIn on Thursday snagged presentation-sharing platform SlideShare for $118.75 million. SlideShare now attracts 29 million monthly visitors, while LinkedIn sees 107 million unique monthly visitors. GigaOM The acquisition, which involves 45 percent cash and 55 percent stock, gives LinkedIn another way to connect its users, who are often communicating and promoting themselves through PowerPoint presentations, slide shows and other content. TechCrunch The move makes a lot of sense from a product point of view. SlideShare recently deepened its integration with LinkedIn, and the two companies have compared their relationship to chocolate and peanut butter for professionals. The San Francisco Chronicle The Mountain View-Calif. based company, whose shares have more than doubled since its initial public offering last May, said membership increased to 161 million from 150 million in the fourth quarter. The company is signing up more professionals for its subscription services and attracting advertisers who want to reach the growing user base. CNBC LinkedIn reported quarterly earnings and revenue that beat Wall Street’s expectations. The company posted first-quarter earnings excluding items of 15 cents per share on revenue of $189 million. Net income rose to $5 million, from $2.1 million in the same quarter a year ago. Read more
India has become the second largest market for LinkedIn, having grown 300% in the last three years. There’s a total of 14 million users using the service in India, and in a country with over 300 million young people, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
