Mediaboss Marketing

2 August 2012 Last updated at 18:00 ET

Business-focused social networking website LinkedIn has said its quarterly profits declined but still beat analyst expectations.

Net profit in the three months to June fell 38% to $2.8m (1.8m) from the same period last year.

But revenue soared 89% to $228m, fuelled by an increase in premium subscriptions.

The results come as the shares of its larger rival Facebook fell another 4% to $20.04.

Facebook - the third-biggest share flotation in history - opened with a price of $38 per share in May and has seen its stock fall ever since.

LinkedIn was one of the first prominent social networking sites to issue shares to the public, ahead of the much-anticipated Facebook share issue.

LinkedIn's shares are 48% higher than at the start of the year and it has a market capitalisation of $9.7bn.

The business has more than 175 million members worldwide.

Meanwhile, Facebook has said it believes there are now more than 83 million illegitimate accounts on the social network - more than 8% of its 955 million active accounts.

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LinkedIn beats analyst forecasts

02-08-2012 04:49 Marathon Runner Guor Marial is going to the Olympics without representing any country. He lives in the US And did not want to represent Sudan. He hoped to represent the newly-formed South Sudan, but that country is not yet part of the Olympics. (Aug. 2)

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First Person: Guor Marial, Olympic Runner - Video

31-07-2012 18:07 It's amazing how much trouble can be stirred up in 140 characters. The 2012 Olympics are being shaped, shaken and indisputably changed by a social media revolution that four years ago in Beijing was in its toddlerhood. (July 31)

Excerpt from:
Olympics Awash in Twitter, for Better or Worse - Video

By Wilson Ng

Wired Desktop

Thursday, August 2, 2012

FACEBOOK is in a lot of trouble. While it may be any day now that it will reach a billion users, its stock has been less than stellar. In fact, its quite disappointing. After setting the initial price at $38 per share, which valued the company at around $100 billion, it is now $20.80 per share, at least as of this writing. This means most investors who bought shares during the initial offering have lost nearly half their money. Close to $50 billion in value wiped out.

This also goes true for Zynga (makers of Farmville, Mafia Wars and many other favorite games in Facebook) as well as Groupon, which tends to suggest that social media suddenly seemed to be out of favor.

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On the other hand, technology continues to affect significantly the way we work and play, with the reports that in the London Olympics, several athletes were barred from the competition due to posts or comments they made in Twitter and other social media sites. It seems every day, there are reports of people losing their jobs, fighting over their marriage, friends or family finding each other after a number of years or suing each other in court because of social media.

Meanwhile, I am quite excited that Hotmail, which can be considered as one of the Internets blazing success in social communications since way back in the 1990s, is getting another facelift.

We here in the Philippines dont feel it, but Hotmail is still the worlds biggest free email system with over 350 million users. Hotmail was launched in 1995, and when it became a hot success, it was bought by Microsoft. Hotmail is very popular in some countries, but very unhip in others, including the Philippines (an informal survey of friends showed that probably over 80 percent of people use Yahoo).

Microsoft tried to reinvent it and a few years back, it became Microsoft Live. Now, there is another rebranding, and it might be renamed into Outlook Mail (www.outlook.com). The email is supposedly going to morph into a hybrid Hotmail and Microsoft Outlook available via the Internet. It is hard to describe, but if you can, check out the new website.

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Ng: Are social networking sites in trouble?

Illinois employers will not be able to ask employees or prospective employees for social networking user names and passwords under a new law signed by Gov. Pat Quinn Tuesday.

"Employers certainly aren't allowed to ask for the keys to an employee's home to nose around there, and I believe that same expectation of personal privacy and personal space should be extended to a social networking account," said Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno (R-Lemont), who sponsored the legislation in the state senate.

House Bill 3782 makes it unlawful for an employer to demand access to an employee or prospective employee's social networking accounts. The law does, however, allow employers to monitor activity on work computers and allows employers to use information shared publicly on social networking sites.

It also specifically excludes email in its definition of social networking websites.

"Members of the workforce should not be punished for information their employers don't legally have the right to have,"Quinn said in a release. "As use of social media continues to expand, this new law will protect workers and their right to personal privacy."

The law is set to take effect Jan. 1.

Original post:
Law Puts Employers on "Limited Profile"