VC's opt-in for LinkedIn

Professional social network LinkedIn will announce a previously rumored $12.8 million round of financing on Monday, led by Bessemer and the European Founders Fund. The company, which has been profitable since March 2006, has raised $13.4 million in two previous rounds of financing, bringing the total to more than $26 million.

The company had something north of $10 million in revenue in 2006, and says they’ll do substantially more than that in 2007. LinkedIn Answers, which launched earlier this month, has been a huge success, they say. LinkedIn has 70 employees, up from 45 a year ago. They claim 9 million worldwide users, and are adding 100,000 or so new users per week.

The valuation of the financing round is not being disclosed by the company, but it is rumored to be around $250 million.

LinkedIn’s European competitor, Xing, is currently generating about €2.8 million in revenue per fiscal quarter, or $3.6 million. The company was valued at about $200 million when it went public in December 2006.

source: TechCrunch

Top 10 Stupid Ways to Hinder Market Adoption

Here's the top 3...you'll have to read Guy's post to get the rest. But it's worth the read:

1. Enforced immediate registration. Requiring a new user to register and provide a modicum of information is a reasonable request—I just think you should do it after you’ve sucked the person in. Most sites require that registration is the first step, and this puts a barrier in front of adoption. At the very least, companies could ask for name and email address but not require it until a later time.

   A good example of a site that does the right thing is Netvibes. It allows you to do a high level of customization without registering. (Thanks to Glenn Kelman)

2. The long URL. When you want to send people an URL the site generates an URL that’s seventy characters long—or more! When you copy, paste, and email this URL, a line break is added, so people cannot click on it to go to the intended location.

   Here’s an URL for a billiard table copied and pasted from the CostCo site. Just how many billiard-table models could CostCo be selling?

   http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11197553&search=billiard%20table&Sp=S&Mo=8&cm_re=1-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_search&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&N=0&whse=BC&Dx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntk=All&Dr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ne=4000000&D=billiard%20table&Ntt=billiard%20table&No=0&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Nty=1&topnav=&s=1

   The justification often goes like this: “We create a long URL because people with Crays might break our code and see private pages. Seventy characters that can be twenty-six lower case letters, twenty-six upper case letters, or ten numbers ensures that no one can break our code since the possible combinations outnumber the quantity of atoms in the universe.” This is what keeps sites like TinyUrl and SnipURL in business.

   Also, speaking of URLs, it’s good to have an easy naming convention for URLs. MySpace, for example, creates easy-to-remember URLs like http://www.myspace.com/guykawasaki.

   ---

   Test: Can people communicate your site’s URLs to others over the phone?

   Extra credit: People using Verizon and can do this despite its coverage.

   ---

3. Windows that don’t generate URLs. Have you ever wanted to point people to a page, but the page has no URL? You’ve got a window open that you want to tell someone about, but you’d have to write an essay to explain how to get that window open again. Did someone at the company decide that it didn’t want referrals, links, and additional traffic? This is the best argument I can think of for not using frames.

source: How to Change the World (GK)

MyBlogLog integrates Flickr

It hasn’t always been clear how Yahoo planned to tie together its many small social media properties.

But it seems that MyBlogLog, acquired by Yahoo earlier this month (see Yahoo-MyBlogLog), is already seeing some integration with another slightly geeky Yahoo property: Flickr.


excerpt: Mashable!

Google mashes up books and maps

Google Inc. has started integrating its popular mapping service with its controversial books search engine to let people plot on maps references to places they find in books.

Now, book entries in Google's Book Search may include a section called "Places mentioned in this book." The section includes a map from Google Maps with pins indicating places included in the text. Below the map is a list with the name of the places, linked to the pages in which they are mentioned, and an excerpt from the text.

Some books whose entries include this new feature are Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace and Charles Sanford Terry's Bach: A Biography.

excerpt: ComputerWorld

Japan's Health Minister: Women are "birth-giving machines"

Japan's 71-year-old health minister Hakuo Yanagisawa gave a speech in which he called Japanese women "birth-giving machines" and called on them to "do their best per head."

The number of women aged between 15 and 50 is fixed. Because the number of birth-giving machines and devices is fixed, all we can ask for is for them to do their best per head, although it may not be so appropriate to call them machines.

source: BoingBoing

Wireless Carriers Say Cell Phones are No Danger

Well, I suppose this is nice to know...but did "not knowing" actually slow cell phone usage (MOU's)?

A four-year long study of cellular telephone base stations has found their transmissions pose no risk to human health, the carriers funding the study said Wednesday.

Mitsubishi Chemical Safety Institute carried out the study for Japan's three largest cellular carriers: NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, and Softbank Mobile. The study began in November 2002.

source: Yahoo!News
excerpt: Well, I suppose this is nice to know...but did "not knowing" actually slow cell phone usage (MOU's)?

A four-year long study of cellular telephone base stations has found their transmissions pose no risk to human health, the carriers funding the study said Wednesday.

Mitsubishi Chemical Safety Institute carried out the study for Japan's three largest cellular carriers: NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, and Softbank Mobile. The study began in November 2002.

source: Yahoo!News
excerpt: WirelessJobs.com

Bebo Minicards Launched

While over on Bebo checking out the new Slide.com guestbooks, I spotted an announcement for Bebo Minicards, from the printing startup Moo. Moo first attracted blogger love back in September 2006 with the launch of their Flickr Minicards - Flickr users can convert their shots into a box of 100 printed photo cards for $19.99. Moo has also produced Skype Minicards in the past, although that promotion is coming to an end.

The Bebo Minicards, which went live on Wednesday according to the Moo crew, allow users to print 100 cards of their Bebo photos, plus text and other add-ons, for $14.99. Taking into account Bebo’s popularity in the UK, the price in UK pounds seems to take center stage. Moo has its own Bebo profile, of course, and utilizes Bebo’s photo feature to show off the product. What’s more, they’re giving away a set of 10 free Minicards to every Beboer to promote the service.

excerpt: Mashable.com