Zynga has opened its stock-market debut at $11 a share, a small increase over its initial pricing from last night.

Late last night, the San Francisco social games company officially priced its shares at $10 apiece. It was hoping to sell up to 100 million shares at $8.50 to $10 apiece. At $10, Zynga was able to raise $1 billion in capital.

But investors aren’t going nuts for the stock. At one point this morning ZNGA shares were trading below their initial price at $9.50 a share.

That’s certainly not the kind of pop companies look for. On the bright side, perhaps the small (or non-existent) bump will make the company less likely to suffer the double-digit declines that recent Web IPOS like LinkedIn, Pandora, and Demand Media have all experienced this year.

At this price, the company is valued at $7.6 billion. That makes CEO Mark Pincus’s stake worth $1.2 billion.

Hearsay is a social media management tool for corporate brands that have local stores and representatives (in the mold of, say, Starbucks). It powers 16,000 such pages on Facebook, Google, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Twenty-nine-year-old Shih is the author of the business book “The Facebook Era,” and was previously at Salesforce.

Other prominent tech execs on the Starbucks board include Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson, though Sandberg has indicated she will not run for re-election next year.

And yet we use them all the time — in our LinkedIn profiles, at least.

The social-networking-for-job-searching company analyzed 135 million professional profiles on its Web site and came up with a list of the Top 10 buzzwords used in LinkedIn profiles across the U.S.

The No. 1 word used: “creative” (which sort of reminds me of this smartphone video ad).

Other words on the LinkedIn list, which can be found here, include “effective,” “motivated” and “dynamic.”

Outside of the U.S., those located north of the equator were likely to use (or overuse) “creative”; people in the Southern Hemisphere were “multinational” and focused on “problem-solving” and their “track record.”

Many of the same buzzwords appeared on last year’s list, which LinkedIn says was one of its most popular analyses of the year. 2010 was the year we were all touting our “extensive experience,” which came in at No. 1.

Oh, and we’ve all gotten a little slower, too, or maybe our work environments have: “Fast-paced,” which ranked No. 8 in last year’s most-overused list, doesn’t appear on the 2011 list.

Let’s dial it back a little bit on buzzwords, though, as they’re not all fun and semantics: Some recruiters and consultants say buzzwords in resumes are too vague, or worse yet, just plain annoying, while others suggest they could actually lose companies money.

But if you’re still looking to facilitate or ramp up your buzzword usage in the new year, you may want to try this buzzword generator, courtesy of Robie the Robot.

Image via of Roman Schvets/Flickr

The San Mateo, Calif.-based Edmodo has one of those growth curves that grab investors’ attention. It’s now at five million users, up from 500,000 a year ago.

Edmodo supports a range of classroom-specific activity, from internal message boards to online quizzes and grading, both on the Web and mobile devices. The Edmodo interface looks a lot like Facebook — or especially an enterprise collaboration tool like Yammer.

At the moment the service is completely free. Edmodo Chairman Rob Hutter told AllThingsD the company doesn’t have any immediate plans to bring in revenue. The VC funding is meant to fuel continued growth and hiring.

This is the first joint investment for Hoffman and Cohler, who are both newly minted hotshot venture capital partners, and who previously worked together at LinkedIn and in some capacity at Facebook (where Hoffman was an early investor and Cohler was an early employee). Other Edmodo investors include Union Square Ventures and Learn Capital.

“Let’s go. Yes, let’s go.” [They do not move.]

– Samuel Beckett, “Waiting for Godot”

In Internet terms, the removal of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz happened a dog’s age ago.

In fact, it was September 6.

Since then, it has felt like a slow slog, especially contrasting the situation with that of another troubled Silicon Valley giant, Hewlett-Packard, which fired its CEO Léo Apotheker and appointed a new one, Meg Whitman on September 22.

Since then, in comparison, the former eBay CEO has been like the Energizer Bunny, making a series of major and often difficult decisions, including: Holding onto its PC unit; reaffirming its controversial deal to buy Autonomy; promising a decision on the fate of its webOS unit within the next two weeks; appointing new execs; and even buying a company.

To be fair, Yahoo did acquire advertising start-up Interclick.

Otherwise, still no sale or investment deal. No new CEO. No Asia resolution. And, perhaps most importantly, no clearly articulated strategy going forward.

It’s not that Yahoo’s leadership isn’t working at it.

Some fervently insist to me that there is a “plan,” as if there is some clever game of Internet Stratego going on that I cannot possibly grok.

Mebbe — but of this I have no doubt: The Yahoo board has indeed been huffing and puffing away, weighing and measuring, considering and debating.

A lot.

Maybe I’m just too impatient. I am (ask my kids).

Or maybe Yahoo’s beleaguered employees are, one of whom just wrote me plaintively, “unreal how they can drag this out,” in what has become a common refrain up and down the ranks.

Or maybe it’s the Asian partners, Alibaba Group and SoftBank, who are antsy and have considered a variety of nuclear options in order to get back stakes Yahoo holds in them. Said one: “The strategy seems to be to frustrate and exhaust us into submission.”

Or, finally, maybe it’s the newly frustrated recent bidders for a partial stake in Yahoo, Silver Lake and TPG Capital. Declared one to me after I warned that Yahoo might, in fact, drag the proceedings out longer than you might expect: “I thought you were kidding.”

Nope, welcome to the Yahoo waiting game, PE guys!

So, to help us all get through it, here’s a quick update primer on what’s what on the various fronts:

Who’s in Charge Here?

Technically, it is the Yahoo board, which is aided by interim CEO Tim Morse.

First, a word about Morse: By all accounts, he is doing a very good job as temporary head honcho — calming the troubled company, making swift decisions about daily operating issues and being a generally nice dude to deal with.

“He’s Yahoo’s no-drama Obama, in comparison to what was happening before,” said one exec, in reference to the more volatile regime under Bartz.

Still, despite his very pleasant all-hands meetings, such as one earlier this week, Morse had previously been Yahoo’s CFO and not an Internet-savvy visionary to give the company inspiration. No insult intended, but he’s the accountant guy.

To be fair, he is not meant to be the visionary, but many at the company are yearning for exactly that.

A role that is now being taken up again by co-founder, former CEO and director Jerry Yang, who dozens of employees tell me is unusually involved in operational details these days for a board member.

I get reports of sightings of him all the livelong day: Jerry in demand-side advertising confab! Jerry chitchatting with entrepreneurs from a possible start-up acquisition! Jerry weighing in on a variety of products. Look, over in the cubicle, it’s Jerry!

This is seen by Yahoo employees as a good thing and also a bad thing, since it’s hard to be running your little divisional show at Yahoo with the dude who invented it all looking over your shoulder, even if he means well. People naturally defer to Yang, the 800-pound Web icon in the room.

But, given the overwhelming state of stasis at Yahoo now — “No one can do anything until we find out how the story ends,” said one staffer — and employees eying the exits, no power at Yahoo really matters but the board.

You know, the board that has gotten the company to this moment of crisis and profound ennui, which is its own particularly ironic irony.

To better understand the power dynamics on the board, above is a little chart for you to peruse to give you an idea of which independent board member is running what key committee.

The only truly important one is the Transactions and Strategic Planning committee, which is headed by Intuit President and CEO Brad Smith and includes former Akamai President (and former Yahoo CEO candidate) David Kenny, top HP exec Vyomesh Joshi and other guy Gary Wilson.

And, in completely visible shadow form, Yang. Multiple sources close to the situation said he has been a key force in the strategery around a possible sale or investment.

This has caused not more than a little tension among board members, but everyone seems to like the much described nicest-man-in-the-room, Smith, and hopes his cool head will prevail.

Another important part of the board is the Nominating and Corporate Governance committee run by Patti Hart, who is energetically and simultaneously — if pointlessly — in search of a capable new Yahoo CEO.

Or, as I like to call this mythical person: The Unicorn.

The Deal

As I and many others have previously reported, there are bids on the table for partial investments in Yahoo by two very powerful private equity firms, Silver Lake and TPG Capital.

It’s a PE rumble, with a side of Microsoft financial backing! (I think Silver Lake’s Egon Durban makes a very nice Riff, while Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer is the perfect Officer Krupke.)

My fervent wishes for some figurative and dance-accompanied knife-play aside, the bids are essentially the same in general and different in particular. Silver Lake is offering about $16.50 a share, while TPG is dangling a tiny bit more. Silver Lake has power entrepreneur and VC Marc Andreessen on its side, while TPG is trying to get Silicon Valley fave investor and start-up whisperer Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners and LinkedIn on its team. Both have ideas on CEOs, strategy and what to do about the Asian assets.

This type of deal could happen suddenly and you’ll hear about it quick, since the losing side will immediately trash it to the media.

As you might expect, each director has their favorite PE firm, with some not liking Andreessen, some thinking the TPG bid is a little light, some for a whole-company deal and some wanting Yahoo to hire its own CEO and run the place itself.

Of course, the last one shows a disturbing level of denial and should be a nonstarter, given the board’s abysmal record on CEO choice and its riding of Yahoo to this sad point in its storied history.

Here’s what to expect on the PE front: A lot of wrangling behind the scenes with frequent leaks to the media about what each side wants and will not yield on.

CEO choice or no CEO choice, that is the question!

Also a big factor are Yahoo’s major shareholders, few of whom like the partial investment deal, which is known as a PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity), because of the insiderness of it all and because they prefer a whole-company sale at a higher price.

There is also pressure from activist shareholders like Daniel Loeb of Third Point, who has attacked Yang and others on the board and is ready to pounce with a proxy fight if Yahoo tries to override shareholders too egregiously. And, of course, the inevitable lawsuits over any arrangement that seems to block a whole-company bid.

That said, such a mega-deal seems unlikely, since it is too pricey and despite a lot of noise that Yahoo’s Asian partners were ready to strike with a takeover in order to get back Yahoo’s big stakes in their companies.

That’s kind of like buying a store to get back the cool pair of shoes you sold, but bankers love to scheme up this stuff. While it certainly could happen, it would be a bear of a deal.

Perhaps more like Yogi Bear, hopelessly angling for a tasty pic-a-nik basket — but grrrr anyway.

But perhaps the biggest factor in all of this mishegas is time. There is none on a lot of levels, most especially the increasing level of brain drain and drift at Yahoo. After the New Year dawns, this is going to spin right out of control and amount to the biggest internal challenge Yahoo faces.

An Asian Solution

As I and others have reported, Yahoo is entertaining yet another proposal to sell all or part of its Asian assets back to the companies, which make up a bulk of its market valuation.

The relationship between Yahoo and its Asian partners has long been fraught, and today the difficulty of reaching an agreement remains a vexing issue. That’s because it is hard and complex and because no one wants to do what the other side wants.

I am no tax attorney, but it seems as if Yahoo will ultimately come to some deal with China’s Alibaba and Japan’s SoftBank, which could include big investors like Russia’s DST Global.

And, as I reported last week, the Asian partners want to strike a deal with the current board rather than lose leverage with a much cannier new owner.

It’s a tough decision in all aspects to strike, but would remove the focus on the fact that Yahoo’s most valuable asset is something it is not running and simply holds due to a good stock trade in years past.

Years past should be the operative thought here, since the Asian assets have nothing to do with what Yahoo needs to do with its core U.S. and global brand.

You know, the thing that allowed them to buy those lucrative Asian assets in the first place?

Strategery

And that’s the crux of all this, isn’t it? Yahoo needs a new strategy and fast.

Or it needs to clarify and hone its current strategies around advertising and media and define itself once and for all. While it often touts itself as a premier digital media company, it’s still not clear exactly what Yahoo is saying by that.

In fact, incredibly, sources told me that the board was still wrangling over the tired issue of what Yahoo is at its most recent meeting — essentially, is it a products company or a media company?

If I had to listen to that who-am-I-anyway debate again, I think I would scream, given how many important Web trends that Yahoo has whiffed in recent years, many of which were right in its own wheelhouse.

How much damage this has caused to Yahoo’s core business is a critical one to determine, with many feeling the situation is too far gone to revive it and others confident that this is simply an issue of poor execution.

I am in the middle on this one, but all the indicators of Yahoo’s business have long been heading in the wrong direction, and results in the next quarter are expected to underline this even more.

Thus, the board’s navel-gazing at this point is untoward, considering that it is presiding over the possibility of a sale that should not have had to happen in the first place. While it is not quite a fire sale, it’s no cause for celebration at all the attention, either.

In fact, it’s also pointless, since — if this all resolves as it should — the current Yahoo board will not be the one determining the company’s future any longer. Remember that: This group should and will be gone for the most part.

Yahoo shareholders and employees can hope, at least.

Then, it will be up to the next group of leaders to make the very hard choices — including what are likely to be massive layoffs and radical surgery on its offerings — for what’s to come next.

In the end, that is all that will matter. Until then, as usual, you’ll have to sit tight.

The company filed documents with the Securities & Exchange Commission this morning, indicating that it intends to raise between $850 million and $1.15 billion in its public offering.

At the high end of the range, that would translate to roughly $150 million more than it had previously estimated it could raise.

The company is seeking to sell 100 million shares at $8.50 to $10 a share and will reserve 15 million additional shares for extra demand. It expects to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker ZNGA.

Under the best circumstances, the company will be valued at nearly $7 billion based on 699.3 million shares outstanding. That falls below some of the rumored expectations that have been floating around over the past few weeks.

Still, at that value, it will come close to the public valuation of Electronic Arts, which hovers around $7.8 billion, but falls short of other game publishers, like Activision, which has a value of  $14 billion.

Zynga has made its riches off selling virtual goods in social games on Facebook. Some of its most recognizable titles include FarmVille, CityVille, Poker and Words With Friends.

Virtual goods often allow players to continue to play the game and level-up faster, such as an energy boost. They also can be decorative in nature, like an outfit for an avatar or seeds to plant on a farm. Of the roughly 230 million monthly active users, very few players ever bother making a purchase.

Since the beginning, the company has a very close relationship with Facebook, which has been contentious at times, especially since the platform started collecting a 30 percent tax on all virtual goods sold. More recently, the company has tried to expand to other platforms, including the launch of several games on mobile and Google+. It also has its own online game network in production.

The company’s IPO will be one of the largest tech offerings in recent memory.

In early November, Groupon raised $700 million including overallotments. It had originally sought to raise $750 million. Other recent tech IPOs include Angie’s List, Pandora and LinkedIn.

But some critics think Zynga is rushing its offering before a broad financial collapse. If it waited until reporting fourth-quarter results, it could paint a stronger growth story as it completes the busy holiday period.

The San Francisco company, which was founded in 2007, was named after Founder and CEO Mark Pincus’s dog named Zinga.

In 2010, Zynga recorded a profit of $27.9 million on revenues of $597.5 million. In the first nine months of 2011, it broke even on revenues of $828.9 million.

While its revenues continue to grow, the number of daily active users that play its games has fallen two quarters in a row and some critics question whether the company can keep up its aggressive growth.

In recent weeks, Pincus has come under harsh criticism for his heavy-handed leadership approach. But to his credit, he has overseen rapid growth, including the acquisition of dozens of smaller game studios. Today, his company has 2,500 employees.

At the mid-range of its expectations, Zynga will bring home proceeds of $889.4 million after selling shareholders take their winnings.

The primary purpose of the sale is to increase its visibility in the marketplace and create a market for its stock. Proceeds will go towards working capital, but also $83.6 million will be spent to satisfy tax withholding obligations related to stock of current and former employees. Additionally, it plans to use a portion of the proceeds for charitable causes through its Zynga.org initiative.

As part of the sale, the company will have three classes of shares. Class A stock will have one vote per share; Class B stock will have seven votes; and Class C will have 70 votes.

Pincus owns some Class B shares, and all of the company’s Class C shares. Following the offering, he will control 36.2 percent of the company’s voting power.

As Kara Swisher previously reported Pincus will not sell any shares in the offering.

No other executives have plans to sell stock, either. But a number of the company’s early investors will sell stock, including Institutional Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Venture Capital and Avalon Ventures. Other interesting names that made the list include Google, which will sell 1.7 million shares.

The company’s largest institutional holder, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which owns 11 percent of the shares, will not sell any of its stock in the offering either.

Last night, the New York Times dropped a juicy little tidbit into its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink daily update of the board mishegas at Yahoo around the deliberations yesterday over two competing private equity bids to buy a partial stake in the company.

No, not the one about Jeff Jordan — former eBay exec, OpenTable CEO and now VC at Andreessen Horowitz — possibly taking a big role at Yahoo if the firm’s bid with Silver Lake prevailed — which was mysteriously removed very soon after it posted (’cuz he will not, so good move, NYT!)

I mean the one about the venture firm’s big-kahuna partner, Marc Andreessen — who will indeed take a board seat and play a strong role in Yahoo’s future if his bid wins — getting a possible competitor in the Silicon Valley savior section of the ongoing show.

That would be in the form of Reid Hoffman, the well-known entrepreneur, VC and angel investor, who the Times said had talked with TPG Capital, Silver Lake’s rival in the Yahoo bidding, about becoming a possible partner.

Wrote the Times:

“TPG has held discussions with Greylock Partners, another venture capital firm, about a possible alignment, two people said. TPG is hoping to draw on the expertise of Reid Hoffman, one of Greylock’s partners and the founder of the professional social network LinkedIn, these people said.”

Translation: If Silver Lake has a tech icon of substance on its team to give uber-geek appeal to its offer — dagnabbit — then TPG was going to raise with another one, whom the very same Times reporter who wrote last night’s article recently nicknamed “The Start-Up Whisperer” in a recent glowing profile of Hoffman.

While I am still trying to grok what a start-up whisperer exactly means (and how someone as self-effacing as Hoffman would react to such a twee moniker without snickering), it’s a move that has likely already irritated Silver Lake.

After all, TPG aiming at nabbing Hoffman is akin to two crazy neighbors trying to one-up each other in holiday-lighting lawn decor. (You have a singing Santa, so I’ll have a singing Santa — and I might even add a Lady Gaga-themed crèche for good measure!)

But it’s not a bad instinct, either, to get your own live-action Silicon Valley legend, even if it is only half true in Hoffman’s case.

Because, according to sources who know such things, while Hoffman and TPG have had conversations, there have been no commitments, and nothing is close to being agreed on to link the pair.

That could certainly change, and quickly, but Hoffman or Greylock aren’t currently in TPG’s proposal to Yahoo.

That’s in contrast to Andreessen, who is all in (I am not even going to bother with “sources said” here, since everyone and my mother has seen the proposal) with Silver Lake on the deal to purchase 19.9 percent of Yahoo for about $16.50 a share.

As I reported earlier this week, for Silver Lake’s money and expertise in fixing broken things, the bid includes: Silver Lake getting three board seats; cash going to a buyback of stock or granting of a dividend to shareholders; the ability to select a CEO; approval of its strategic plan for Yahoo, and its solution to come to terms with Yahoo’s unhappy Asian partners; and all the purple wearables you could ever hope for (perhaps Yahoo’s best asset, IMHO, especially worn by such obviously cool dudes, as seen here).

Also, controversial Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang gets to stay around on the board (but only if he becomes very, very quiet, so as not to rile the activist shareholders).

TPG’s bid is less formed, although its price is slightly higher. And the PE firm has yet to check the “Big Geek Included” box.

Hence, the floating of Hoffman as a contender to take on Andreessen, who was once dubbed the “Golden Geek” by Time magazine.

I hope TPG does, soon, since what a matchup it would be!

But, for now at least, the pair — who share big investments in a range of Web companies, most especially Facebook (Andreessen is on the board of the social networking giant, and Hoffman was an early investor and adviser) — are at peace.

Dagnabbit.

Well, that’s what both About.me and Flavors.me do. The latter has a new set of features, which you can see demoed in a slick video at the bottom of this post.

So, what about a place where you could tie all of your friends’ different networks together, too? You can see this at several places, most notably on Facebook. But now Flavors is offering its own take, via something it calls “Social Streams.”

The key hook here is that you can customize the inputs, so you could see some of your friends’ YouTube favorites, other friends’ Instagrams, everyone’s Twitter feed, etc. (You can see all of that in that same slick video.)

All of this sounds cool, though perhaps I’m not the target demo, because I like to keep my networks segregated. Twitter is for work, Facebook is for photos of my kids. I’m still not sure what I’m supposed to do on LinkedIn, but my friends and also people I’ve only met once keep asking me to pal up with them, so occasionally I do. Etc.

But there does seem to be an audience for this one-stream stuff. AOL-owned About.me says it has a million users, and Jonathan Marcus, whose HiiDef holding company owns both Flavors and e-commerce start-up Goodsie, says Flavors has 750,000 users. Here he explains what he’s up to, and why it makes sense to mash up your networks:

Flavors 2: Social Streams from Hiidef on Vimeo.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111129/one-stream-to-rule-them-all-flavors-me-rolls-out-a-new-take-on-social-network-mashups/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111117/linkedin-stock-sale-sees-strong-demand-despite-price-concerns/ http://allthingsd.com/20111117/linkedin-stock-sale-sees-strong-demand-despite-price-concerns/#comments Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:02:52 +0000 Matt Jarzemsky http://allthingsd.com/?p=145375 LinkedIn Corp.’s share price jumped as much as 7.2 percent Thursday, even after the company added more equity to the market, as investors still appear interested in purchasing the social-networking company despite concerns about the stock’s valuation.

About eight million LinkedIn shares came to market Thursday, with 1.3 million coming from the company and 6.7 million from insiders and early holders. The secondary offering, which followed the company’s successful debut in May, roughly doubled the company’s float, or the number of its shares available for trading.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111117/linkedin-stock-sale-sees-strong-demand-despite-price-concerns/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111111/ex-yahoos-getting-downloaded-by-pe-firms-and-others-on-possible-deals/ http://allthingsd.com/20111111/ex-yahoos-getting-downloaded-by-pe-firms-and-others-on-possible-deals/#comments Fri, 11 Nov 2011 22:53:54 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=143361

One of Yahoo’s biggest problems — brain drain — has turned out to be an asset for private equity firms and other players interested in figuring out their best moves related to the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

A plethora of ex-Yahoos, including many former top execs, are getting buttonholed by those who want to know more about the inner workings of the company that might not be obvious from its copious financial data available publicly.

That includes former Americas head Hilary Schneider, who has a longer-term consulting gig with TPG Capital, one of the several PE firms that has recently signed a non-disclosure agreement with Yahoo; former COO and President Sue Decker, who has had a longtime informal relationship with Blackstone, which has not signed the NDA and has been in talks with Yahoo’s Asian partners, China’s Alibaba Group and Japan’s SoftBank; and even former CEO Carol Bartz, who sources say has also been contacted to get her insights.

She is one of many in that regard, in a large pool of former Yahoos, such as: LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, who had run Yahoo’s media efforts; Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig, former Yahoo COO; SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg, who ran swathes of Yahoo’s entertainment properties; Criteo CEO Greg Coleman, former Yahoo sales head; former CEO Terry Semel, who is now an investor; former communications exec Brad Garlinghouse, who is now at AOL; and Demand Media Chief Revenue Officer Joanne Bradford, who also was a top Yahoo advertising exec.

Not all are cooperating with the requests for a chitchat about Yahoo, but there is much incoming interest in ex-Yahoos and what they might know.

There’s lots more where that came from, from all parts and all levels of Yahoo, given the breadth of the exes now doing very well — thank you very much — throughout the tech and media industries.

Thus, calls from PE firms, from Silver Lake to Bain Capital to Providence Equity Partners, as well as interest from major and majorly irritated shareholders, such as activist hedge fund investor Dan Loeb.

It’s a smart idea to tap this rich vein of information, as all contemplate possible multi-billion-dollar investments.

While some of these execs have not worked at Yahoo in many years, all have significant knowledge about the challenges and also the culture that cannot be gleaned from spreadsheets.

They also know a lot about the internal politics and personalities of the existing inside players, too. More importantly, several were involved in similar previous major business decisions at Yahoo.

Decker, for example, was a key exec in the Yahoo takeover attempt by Microsoft several years ago; Schneider and Bartz were deeply involved in striking the advertising and search partnership with Microsoft.

“Between everyone, it’s a good way to figure out where all the bodies are buried,” said one person close to the situation. “And there are a lot of bodies.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111111/ex-yahoos-getting-downloaded-by-pe-firms-and-others-on-possible-deals/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111103/linkedin-beats-expectations-in-second-quarter-after-ipo/ http://allthingsd.com/20111103/linkedin-beats-expectations-in-second-quarter-after-ipo/#comments Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:34:06 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=140252 LinkedIn exceeded Wall Street expectations in its second quarter as a public company, though it still had a narrow net loss.

But investors didn’t seem satisfied, with the stock trading down 3 to 10 percent in after-hours trading. It’s a particularly important quarter because employees and other insiders can begin selling their shares starting later this month.

The professional network had $139.5 million in revenue in the third quarter of 2011, with a net loss of $1.6 million on a GAAP basis.

Analysts had projected a loss of $0.04 per share, but LinkedIn instead earned $0.02 per share.

A year ago, LinkedIn had revenue of $61.8 million and net income of $915,000.

It now has 131.2 million members, which is in line with previous growth, and the site gets 87.6 million visitors per month, according to comScore.

Hiring products, which account for more than half of LinkedIn’s revenue, brought in $71 million in the quarter, growth of 160 percent from the third quarter last year. Marketing and subscriptions grew too, but not as much.

LinkedIn shares have seen high levels of short selling recently.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111103/linkedin-beats-expectations-in-second-quarter-after-ipo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111101/second-life-founder-tries-bringing-aspects-of-the-virtual-world-to-real-life/ http://allthingsd.com/20111101/second-life-founder-tries-bringing-aspects-of-the-virtual-world-to-real-life/#comments Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:02:47 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=138760

Coffee & Power, which was started by the founder of Second Life, is launching an online marketplace that allows people to buy and sell small tasks with one another — or even to meet up in person at a company-owned cafe in San Francisco.

The site is a little like Craigslist, but focuses on giving people a venue to sell things such as tutoring lessons, software development services, commissioned art or something as random as Hula Hoop lessons.

The concept draws from the latest trend in making small amounts of money from things you may already possess, through a designated community.

Others examples include Airbnb, which assists with renting out a room in your house; RelayRides, which lets you make money by leasing your car; and Zaarly, another online marketplace for people to sell used items or hire someone for their skills.

Coffee & Power was started by Philip Rosedale, the founder and former CEO of Second Life, a virtual world that flourished into a small economy, where players buy and sell items made within the game.

Rosedale explained to me how Second Life overlaps with what he’s doing at Coffee & Power:

“Second Life became more inspiring for me than anything else — not because it was an unbelievable Lego set, but because of what people did economically with the Legos. People were able to use it to create new jobs and inspire themselves to do new things with their skills they weren’t doing previously.”

For instance, Rosedale said, a person might be a software engineer in real life, but on Second Life, they might design women’s shoes and make $2,000 a month selling them to other players.

“We saw that in Second Life, and if we are right about Coffee & Power, we can affect even more people,” he said.

The site first went live in April, but is relaunching today. In that time, Rosedale said that 2,000 people have used it, completing 700 so-called “missions” — which are transactions — for a total of $10,000. The average value has been $15.

Some of the missions include offering to shop at Trader Joe’s for $25, or asking if someone could turn a suit into a zombie costume. Rosedale’s son will bake you brownies or teach you card tricks.

With all of these sites, there’s potential for fraud or deceptive practices. Airbnb had the most public example, when an apartment was ransacked by a renter and the owner’s identity was stolen.

Coffee & Power is employing some of the usual tools to help verify a person’s identity, such as allowing users to link their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles. But the most original part of the company’s concept is funding a coffee shop in downtown San Francisco, where members can meet up to exchange items and drink coffee for free. The cafe at 1825 Market Street is the first site, and Coffee & Power plans to open up additional spaces in other locations as it expands.

Another twist is that Coffee & Power does not let people transact in U.S. dollars. As with Second Life, all missions are conducted in a virtual currency.

Coffee & Power will charge people 15 percent to cash out whatever they earn, which in turn will encourage people to keep the money on the network and spend it on other items in the community.

The company raised $1 million in funding early this year from angel investors, including LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who also invested in Second Life. It has three founders and one full-time employee, and has gotten most of the development work accomplished through hiring software developers online.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111101/second-life-founder-tries-bringing-aspects-of-the-virtual-world-to-real-life/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111024/millionaire-watch-in-silicon-valley-a-countdown-is-under-way/ http://allthingsd.com/20111024/millionaire-watch-in-silicon-valley-a-countdown-is-under-way/#comments Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:00:36 +0000 Pui-Wing Tam and Shayndi Raice http://allthingsd.com/?p=135987 Eric Trailer is counting down to Nov. 21 like a merchant waiting for Black Friday.

“We have anticipated this for quite some time,” he says of that Monday date, adding that he’s tripled staffing at his business in hopes of a sales bonanza.

That Monday is when social-networking site LinkedIn Corp.’s employees can begin selling their stock, and Silicon Valley businesses like Mr. Trailer’s mortgage firm are gearing up to steer the wealth their way.

Car dealers are readying Lexuses and Lamborghinis, jewelers are stocking up on Rolexes and financial advisers are studying how to woo newly moneyed clients.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111024/millionaire-watch-in-silicon-valley-a-countdown-is-under-way/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20111005/exclusive-linkedin-has-bought-contact-management-start-up-connected/ http://allthingsd.com/20111005/exclusive-linkedin-has-bought-contact-management-start-up-connected/#comments Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:16:47 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=129073 LinkedIn has acquired Connected, a small contact management start-up that unifies and dynamically updates users’ connections on email, social networks, calendars and phones, according to sources close to the company.

Connected is similar to Xobni/Smartr, but it’s more of a dashboard than a plug-in, and it costs $9.99 per month. The company had raised a seed round of $500,000 led by Trinity Ventures in June. The service has been called “bloody awesome” by Tim O’Reilly.

Connected, which should announce the acquisition later today, consists of the husband-and-wife team of Sachin and Ada Chen Rekhi, who will both be joining LinkedIn. Sachin was previously co-founder of Anywhere.FM, which was acquired by IMEEM, while Ada was director of product at Mochi Media, which was acquired by Shanda Games.

In an email thread last month, I’d asked Sachin to suggest some Connected features that I should check out. Here was his reply:

-Try the search drop-down to find specific people in your network by name, company, title, or location. Curious if anyone in your network works at a new startup? Just do a search by Company which will find all relevant contacts across email, social networks, and address books.

-Click on a given contact to drill into their contact profile. From there you can take notes on the contact, annotate who introduced you, and set contact reminders that will automatically notify you when a certain amount of time has passed since you last contacted them.

-Search for a contact that is not already in your network. Say a new startup founder. If the person is not already in your network, Connected will search across LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter for that person. If one of the resulting search results is the person you are looking for, just press “Create” next to their profile and Connected will automatically create a profile with all their public profile data (without having to connect with them). Once you are in the profile, you can also press “Bookmark” next to their other appropriate social profiles and that data will also be pulled in. This is how I was able to create a comprehensive profile for you.

-In addition to the above functionality, there are a set of relationship management apps that try to make this data useful to you on a day-to-day basis. You can explore those apps here: http://connectedhq.com/apps/overview/

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111005/exclusive-linkedin-has-bought-contact-management-start-up-connected/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110928/jon-stewart-has-too-many-linkedin-invites-too/ http://allthingsd.com/20110928/jon-stewart-has-too-many-linkedin-invites-too/#comments Wed, 28 Sep 2011 20:57:51 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=126101 Good news, LinkedIn! You led “The Daily Show” last night.

Oh.

Bad news, LinkedIn. You led “The Daily Show” last night.

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