LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, has decided to ban prostitution, the world’s oldest profession. In an update to its privacy policy and user agreement, spotted by ReadWriteWeb, LinkedIn specifically calls out sex workers and asks them to please stop advertising their wares on the site. Read More
Looks like LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman is just using any excuse to get shitfaced. In honor of the company’s tenth birthday, he created “Cinco de LinkedIn,” a real company event celebrated by its 3,700 employees.
Not only does it sound moderately offensive, like drunk-sorority-girl-loudly-practicing-her-Spanish-at-Blockheads obnoxious, but it is also numerically nonsensical. At last check, cinco is roughly translated to “five” and not “terrible fucking idea.” Read More
As predicted, LinkedIn has shelled out $90 million for the mobile news aggregation startup Pulse. [AllThingsD]
Facebook is still the biggest social network for teens but they’re getting, like, so totally bored with it. Ditto YouTube. [Business Insider]
People who believe they’re “electrosensitive” are moving to a small town in West Virginia to escape Wi-Fi and cell phone service and other such rays. [Slate]
“Because people broadcast their lives on Facebook and Twitter and Vine, there’s a notion that everything that happens is going to be shared.” Social media is helping convince people they need to film their wedding proposals. [Forward]
Bitcoin has dropped 77 percent in two days. Hope everyone’s learned their lesson. [Business Insider]
Twitter is reportedly launching its music service sometime either today or this weekend, to coincide with–sigh, of course–Coachella. [AllThingsD]
Are you inordinately proud of your thousands of LinkedIn followers? Well, you might want to sit down because here comes a bracing assault on your sense of achievement.
The Daily Dot reports that the sad tale of Linda Eagle, who was discharged from her position as CEO then locked out of her LinkedIn account and Read More
Pinterest completed a $200 million funding round that values the company at $2.5 billion. Valiant Capital Management is said to have led the round, with previous investors Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners and FirstMark Capital also participating. [AllThingsD]
IBM is making a push into mobile, and plans to provide customers with software, data and security services on mobile devices. [NYT]
Calling all youth correspondents: the social network Pheed is said to be gaining in popularity, especially with teens. [Forbes]
Facebook isn’t the only tech company to catch heat for using stock option deductions to avoid paying corporate taxes. The Center for Tax Justice says LinkedIn has used the deduction to avoid paying federal taxes for the last three years. [New York Post]
Eduardo Saverin talked about life after the Facebook, the challenges faces the social media company he helped found, and his decision to move to Singapore. “No, I did not rescind my citizenship for tax purposes,” is what he says. [WSJ]
We’ve never paid particularly close attention to LinkedIn’s “Influencer” feature, which lets average Joe Job Hunter follow the public profiles of so-called Thought Leaders, mostly politicians and executives who use LinkedIn as a platform to share business insights.
Sure, we can understand why a business leader might choose the professionalized audience at LinkedIn over, Read More
It's Zuck's World We're Just Living In It
Mark Zuckerberg is on an absolute roll this week. First, he was forced to withstand abuse from scores of outraged Instagram users. Then, word escaped that Facebook is plotting the introduction of video ads (with autoplay!) into your newsfeed, inspiring at least one outraged user to threaten to flee into the waiting arms of Myspace.
And today, the company announced a new feature, currently being tested on a small group of users, that would make it easier for randos to reach you–and for you to reach randos. For a price, of course: Read More
Sure, being a James Bond-level spy is a glamorous job, one that most people would love to humblebrag about online. But if you’re a secret agent working in international espionage, you might not want to let people know about that on LinkedIn.
Flemish daily newspaper De Standaard reports that a simple search for “State Security” on LinkedIn pulls up a crop of spies who have copped to their “secret” jobs on the social network. This is essentially the Belgian equivalent of listing your position as “Top Secret Spy at the CIA” on LinkedIn. Read More
When Spotify landed in the competitive U.S. digital music marketplace last summer, it was boosted by a cresting wave of good publicity, strong track record in Europe and a $100 million investment funding round that valued the company at $1 billion.
That wasn’t all: Given the strong demand for Pandora and LinkedIn IPOs (and even stronger anticipation for the eventual Facebook offering), Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s timing for a U.S. launch seemed spot on.
Well, things have changed: Share prices for high profile tech IPOs such as Facebook, Zynga and Groupon have tanked, and as Spotify readies to close its latest round of fund-raising, the company looks likely to fall short of its goal. Instead of the $4 billion valuation that Spotify initially sought, the company will likely settle for something “slightly more than $3 billion,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Read More
There is a spectre stalking Silicon Valley, reports the Wall Street Journal. Specifically, it’s the ghost of once-bright hopes for wealth-creating IPOs. Zynga, Groupon, Facebook–none of them turned out quite like everyone hoped, and it is bumming out the rank-and-file in a big way.
The worker bees have lost a lot of the paper wealth Read More
