Serial entrepreneur Reid Hoffman saw a new way of working - and built a company around that vision.

In Silicon Valley, it's all about knowing the right people.

Reid Hoffman knows a little something about that. Hoffman, 41, started LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals. Its 41 million members include people from more than 200 countries and executives from every Fortune 500 company.

Hoffman founded LinkedIn in late 2002. In just six years, the Mountain View, Calif., company has become one of Silicon Valley's stalwarts, with 350 employees and a brand recognized throughout corporate America. Profitable since 2006, LinkedIn's management says, the company raised nearly $80 million from investors last year, valuing it at $1 billion.

From the beginning, Hoffman, a Stanford graduate, understood the importance of building and leveraging his network. Beyond LinkedIn, the entrepreneur is also an active investor, advising and funding more than 60 Silicon Valley startups, including Facebook. In the early 1990s, after a stint studying philosophy at Oxford and planning an academic life, he changed course and returned to Silicon Valley. There, he immediately started tapping into his connections to pursue his dream of starting a software company.

Hoffman recently sat down with CNNMoney.com to discuss his entrepreneurial journey. Below is an edited version of his story.

It was the beginning of the online revolution, in 1993. This was when America Online was starting to drop floppy disks to everybody to try to get people online.

Studying at Oxford, I realized I wanted to have a much broader relevance in people's lives. Because I had been at Stanford, I thought about starting a software company. Software reaches millions of people.

I networked my way to a couple of different venture capitalists. They said, "Have you shipped software before? You're asking us to invest millions of dollars in your company. You've done this before, yes?" I said, "No, not really."And they said, "Go get a job first."

So then I networked my way to a job at Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500). I found a really good opportunity through the roommate of a good friend of mine from Stanford. That's where my career started. I started with a checklist of all the things I needed to learn in order to do startups. The first step was pure software development. After Apple, I went to Fujitsu for product management and the business side.

I watched the whole online market heating up. I really wanted to get out there and start creating new businesses, so I resigned my Fujitsu position in July 1997. In August I started my first company, Socialnet.

The idea of Socialnet was that you have millions of people all publishing online, so what kind of applications can you build to connect them? Socialnet focused on online dating. It also had some activities like finding golf partners and roommates and that kind of stuff.

We raised money from some very good venture capitalists. But the first time you do anything, you learn lots and lots of lessons. The lesson I learned was that, as much as you are building a really great product, you have to understand your product distribution strategy. How do you get to millions of users, and tens of millions? We had a bad model at Socialnet. We thought we were going to partner with newspapers, and that didn't work.

While I was doing Socialnet, a close friend of mine from Stanford, Peter Thiel, had started a small hedge fund and met another guy named Max Levchin. [Thiel and Levchin went on to start PayPal, the online payment service.] When I decided to leave Socialnet to start another business, I went to Peter and he said, "No, don't do that yet. Come join us now. We're sitting on a powder keg. The rocket is about to start taking off."

[Hoffman took up Thiel's offer and joined PayPal as an executive vice president in charge of business development.] While I was at PayPal, I saw how I was operating, how was I solving my problems. People had not solved the PayPal problem before. So I was looking for some people who had expertise in the banking industry, some in the regulatory industry, some in the Internet industry, some in the payment industry. You're piecing together pieces of information. That's what got me to my view of how the world of work was changing.

Taking the plunge

You can't perfect an idea while you're currently in a job, because if you start talking to a lot of people and you start studying the market and you're doing all of that, then you're not doing your current job well. So I had ideas, but I hadn't resolved it to, "This is it."

After we sold PayPal to eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500) and I kicked free, I decided to start LinkedIn because the professional space was really interesting. I already had money from PayPal, so I was financing the early portion of it. When there isn't capital in the bank, there is some anxiety over, "Is this thing going to fly at all? Are we going to get enough money to even to go to the venture capitalists?" I personally bankrolled LinkedIn at the start, so that wasn't as much of a concern.

I have a strong belief that starting businesses during an economic downturn is the exact right time to do it because it gives you runway. It's harder to raise capital, but if you can do it, it gives you an advantage.

The mood in the valley in 2002 was dot-com winter. Consumer Internet ventures were scoffed at, but that just added to the competitive advantage. We could show them we had something interesting.

We started slowly in the first few days because we wanted to make sure the systems worked. I think the 13 people associated with the company invited 112 people.

We had this initial challenge of, "How do you get a million people?" The first challenge was getting enough people so that functions like searching for people or sharing information had enough people in it to be valuable. The year 2003 was all about tuning and viral growth.

I'm a huge believer in getting a million people, getting them engaged, and then building a business model on top of that. I knew I wasn't planning on really trying to work on a business model until later.

We launched three revenue streams in 2005. The first was job listings. The second one we figured would help us get to profitability fast: We launched subscriptions, which was enhanced communications and search capability. People need to talk to people they don't already know in order to get the job done. That's the plural majority of our business today.

We had originally not even thought about doing advertising. But two things persuaded me to launch advertising as well. One of them was that our demographic was so good. The second one was that we began to realize we could build unique business products.

Growing pains

In the summer of 2006, I realized I had two serious problems. One was I needed to scale the company. The other one was I needed to move our product group from being mono-threaded to multi-threaded. Have these guys on search and profile, these guys on platforms, these guys on groups, these guys are on address books -- we couldn't do one at a time. We needed to do them all at the same time.

I said, "Which of these challenges is it going to be harder to get a person who knows what to do?" I decided it was going to be harder on the product side, so I would step over to the product side and I would hire someone for the CEO side. I went through the whole process and hired Dan Nye.

Then by luck and hard work and fortune, we ended up hiring Deep Nishar from Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) to be vice president of products. [Less than two years after Hoffman took over the products job, Nishar's hiring relieved him of that responsibility.]

Part of the way I make my own personal decisions is, "What are the areas I can make the most personal impact on the world?" I decided LinkedIn is that thing, more than investing, more than anything else. What I want to do is lead more with LinkedIn and help drive innovation. When Dan and I were talking about it, he said, "You standing right behind my elbow and going 'Do that and do that...' We should make this more effective, more efficient." It was a joint decision for me to come back and be CEO and chair.

[During Nye's two years at LinkedIn, the site's membership grew from 9 million to 35 million and sales jumped 900%. The company also added hundreds of employees and expanded to Europe. "But along the way, we had a somewhat convoluted structure," Nye said in a separate interview. "When we hired Deep, Reid and I talked and we agreed it would be good time for him to take on the role (of CEO). We had two CEOs in building, and he's the largest shareholder. It was his vision the company was built on." Hoffman returned as the company's CEO in December 2008, one week after Nishar was hired. Nye left the company.]

Even though we had cash in the bank, we decided to have more cash in the bank. One of the things we need to do is find really cool products. We're building some but we'd also like to broaden out our offering and buy a cool product with a good development team and add it into the service. That's why we went through the process of raising money last year.

That plan is still in the books. We're still looking around. But it's also nice to have a big bank balance in troubled times, too. [Late last year, soon after closing on $75.7 million from venture capitalists, LinkedIn laid off 10 % of its staff, cutting around 36 positions. The company said it was a move to rebalance resources.]

I think we already have the financial numbers such that we could have an IPO if we wanted to. But what we're really focused on is how to build our network. I don't see an IPO being useful to that. Operating as a private company and investing and innovating and building a whole number of services is useful to that.

The philosophy behind LinkedIn has not changed. If anything, it's gotten bigger. We're always about individual professionals doing business with their network. We want to get all of the world's professionals on LinkedIn. We should be relevant to professionals everywhere, and I think we are, but there are still people to go get active.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/02/smallbusiness/linkedin_startup_story.smb/

Botnets are big, bad, and widespread -- but if your system is infected, you can take several simple steps to clean it and stay safe.

As fireworks boomed on the Fourth of July, thousands of compromised computers attacked U.S. government Web sites. A botnet of more than 200,000 computers, infected with a strain of 2004's MyDoom virus, attempted to deny legitimate access to sites such as those of the Federal Trade Commission and the White House. The assault was a bold reminder that botnets continue to be a massive problem.

Botnets are rogue networks of compromised "zombie" PCs. Your machine can become infected if you visit a site and download tainted code disguised as a video, if you visit a site that itself has been compromised, or if a traditional virus or other piece of malware enters your system. Once a bot infects your PC, it calls out to its command-and-control (CnC) server for instructions. A bot is similar to a traditional Trojan horse; but rather than merely installing a keylogger or a password stealer (which it might still do anyway), a bot works with other infected PCs, compelling them all to act together, in some ways like a very large computer.

Spammers pay big money to have a bot blast their message to thousands of machines; in particular, Canadian pharmaceutical spam is big right now. Other uses for bots include attacks that shut down commercial Web sites, often paired with a ransom demand. Brisk business also exists in what's called fast flux: To keep phishing Web sites active, operators change domains frequently. Botnets provide a quick and easy means to do so, and, according to security firm Kaspersky, botnet owners charge big money for that service.

In July, the ShadowServer Foundation, a group specializing in sharing information about botnets, reported that the number of identified botnets grew from 1500 to 3500 in the last two years. Each of those 3500 networks could contain several thousands of compromised PCs--and any given PC could be infected by multiple bots.

In raw numbers, the United States and China are the homes of most of the bot-infected machines, says Jose Nazario, manager of security research at Arbor Networks. "I think it's very safe for most PC users to assume they are part of a botnet," he says. "It's a very dangerous Internet for most folks."

Detecting Infections

Botnets live or die depending on communications with their CnC servers. Those communications can tell researchers how large a botnet is. Similarly, the flood of communications in and out of your PC helps antimalware apps detect a known bot. "Sadly, the lack of antivirus alerts isn't an indicator of a clean PC," says Nazario. "Antivirus software simply can't keep up with the number of threats. It's frustrating [that] we don't have significantly better solutions for the average home user, more widely deployed."

Even if your PC antivirus check comes out clean, be vigilant. Microsoft provides a free Malicious Software Removal Tool. One version of the tool, available from both Microsoft Update and Windows Update, is updated monthly; it runs in the background on the second Tuesday of each month and reports to Microsoft whenever it finds and removes an infection. You can use another version of the Malicious Software Removal Tool, downloadable at Microsoft's site, at any time, and you should run the utility if you notice a sudden change in your PC's behavior.

The Malicious Software Removal Tool garners results. In September 2007, Microsoft added to the utility the ability to recognize the Storm bot. Overnight the size of the Storm botnet was reduced by as much as 20 percent. Microsoft has since added other prevalent botnets to the tool's list, such as Conficker and Szribi.

Proactive options are also available. BotHunter, a free program from SRI International, works with Unix, Linux, Mac OS, Windows XP, and Vista. Though designed for networks, it can also run on stand-alone desktops and laptops.

BotHunter listens passively to Internet traffic through your machine and keeps a log of data exchanges that typically occur when a PC is infected with malware. Occasionally, to improve its definitions, BotHunter sends outbound messages to an SRI International database of adware, spyware, viruses, and worms. BotHunter first recognized Conficker data-exchange patterns back in November 2008, well before other security vendors picked up on the threat.

Future Botnets

If only to demonstrate their resiliency, bots have recently invaded cell phones, too. Trend Micro reported that the Sexy View SMS malware on the Symbian mobile OS can contact a CnC server to retrieve new SMS spam templates.

While a botnet on a mobile phone may look different from one on a PC, the idea of renting out a network of "owned" phones may be viable in the near future. Regardless of the form bots might take, we probably won't be able to eradicate the threat; we can only learn to better manage bot infestations. But in the meantime, let's clean up as many PCs as we can.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/170546/is_your_pc_botinfested_heres_how_to_tell.html?tk=nl_hox_h_crawl

There’s a new Internet tool for keeping track of when special interest groups give campaign money to members of Congress. Like, say, one day before a major vote?

The non-partisan, non-profit research group, MAPlight.org, has a new feature called “Money Near Votes.” It shows who gave what to whom in the days leading up to a specific vote in Congress. For example, you can see the money that came in right before an April vote on the credit card legislation. Marketwatch explains:

For instance, Rep. Addison Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, voted no on the Credit Card bill on April 30. He received $2,000 from the American Bankers Association on April 27, three days earlier, and $5,000 from the Credit Union National Association on April 29, the day before the vote. Both groups opposed the Credit Card bill…

Not everyone who took cash from the banking industry sided with it on the credit card bill. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, received $8,750 in eight industry contributions in the two weeks preceding the vote, but opted to approve the measure.

Frank’s relationship with the industry is telling. Like him, dozens of representatives actually took the money but still voted yes. The lack of influence also gets a cynic wondering: if the credit card bill was a layup, why did the industry plow all of this money into Congress at this stage? Favors down the road? Thanks for other votes?

Campaign contribution records don’t offer an obvious answer, but at least we found out where some of the double-digit interest and late charges are going. 

 MAPlight explains why it’s making this information available, in the Central Valley Business Times:

“The correlations we highlight between industry and union giving and legislative outcomes do not show that one caused the other, and we do not make this claim,” it says. “We do make the claim, however, that campaign contributions bias our legislative system. Simply put, candidates who take positions contrary to industry interests are unlikely to receive industry funds and thus have fewer resources for their election campaigns than those whose votes favor industry interests.”

Can you imagine what the timeline will look like for the votes on health care? We’ll delve into that tonight on Marketplace.

You might also want to check out this list from Open Secrets of the major donors of the last 20 years. What stood out to me was that of the top 20 giving organizations, almost all of them heavily favored Democrats.

Unions.

I also noticed that most banks and financial companies were very balanced in their giving, riding the fence between Democrats and Republicans.

Maybe you’ll find other things by looking through this stuff.

http://www.publicradio.org/columns/marketplace/scratchpad/2009/08/well-timed_contributions.html

 

Interesting, have you noticed in the sponsored ads, Facebook only left the "like" option and removed the dislike option where you could tell FB why you did not like the ads (let's face it, a number of them were misleading at best if not outright lies) that flies in the face of the open concept, tell me the good, the bad and the ugly and let's communicate concept at the very center of social networking. It looks like Facebook is really focusing on the monetization of the site at all cost, even at the cost of alienating the very members that built Facebook into a 250 mm and still growing members power house
Are they going to make the same mistake as printed media, putting revenue and profit first and at the same time destroying themselves

Your cell phone number is about to be handed over to telemarketers.

Carjackers are sticking flyers on rear windows so they can grab the car when drivers step out to remove the flyers.

Microsoft will pay you $245 for every person you forward an e-mail to.

False. False. False.

It continues to amaze me how many people will blindly forward these and other wild claims to friends and family members. I've received more than I care to count, and no matter how earnest the latest come-on ("This really happened to a friend of mine!"), I know that 99.9 percent of them are false.

That's because I'm a regular visitor to Snopes.com, which catalogs and debunks the hundreds of Internet hoaxes and urban legends that continue to make the e-mail rounds.

The next time one of these often-amusing, sometimes-frightening messages lands in your inbox, copy the subject line, head to Snopes, then paste the subject into the search field.

When you reach the page that shows the "False" nature of the legend, copy the URL, return to the e-mail, click Reply All, and paste it in. (I like to add something like, "Don't believe everything you read!" just so I can feel extra smug.)

In other words, break the chain, people! Stop forwarding this nonsense to people you supposedly care about.

 Job search scams come to you via email, but you also find scams posted on various assorted Websites as well, from the Big Names to a local employer (or is it?).

If you are unsure of a job opportunity you may find, or that may be sent to you by someone you don’t know, use this Sniff Test to see if the opportunity is real.  Yes, it is a P-I-T-A (as in, a pain-in-the-a…) to do this research, but right now you really don’t have other viable options to protect yourself.

6-Step Sniff Test to Verify Before You Trust:

1.  What Does Google Know About Them?

Google the employer’s or recruiting company’s name and phone number, or other contact information you have, to see what you find. If they have a Website, Google should find it for you. However, do NOT  automatically trust them because they have a Website (see # 2, below)!

NOTE: Be sure that you match the exact spelling and wording in your query!  “Smith’s Restaurants” and “Bill Smith’s Restaurants” may or MAY NOT be the same organization.  In addition, SmithsRestaurants.com and SmithsRestaurantsInc.com may - or may NOT - be owned by the same organization.  One could be real. Both could be real, but unrelated.  Or one could be bogus, pretending to be the real one.

Phone number lookup:
If they’ve given you a phone number, Google the phone number to see what Google can tell you about them and to see where else that phone number appears.  If Google doesn’t know about the phone number, it is on a Website listing sources of annoying phone calls, or it shows up on a completely unrelated list of phone numbers (e.g., dial-in numbers for an Internet service provider), do NOT trust it or the job posting or the job posting source.

Address lookup:
If they’ve given you an address, Google the address to see what Google can tell you about it.  If Google has the address in their database, check Google Maps to see what it shows you.  If you have options for “Satellite” and “Street View” use them.  I have checked addresses from job postings that were in the middle of no where, and I wouldn’t have known without the Google Maps Street View, unless I’d been able to drive to the location.  Even addresses can be bogus.

2.  Who and Where Are They?

Once you are positive you have a name match, look for concrete, verifiable contact information on the Website, on the home page or on Contact or About pages - a street, city, state, and Zip plus a non-800 phone number.

A form for you to complete tells you nothing about them and is NOT sufficient “contact” information. 

A link that opens up a new email message from you tells you nothing about them and is NOT contact information at all.

If you only have an email message from them, look for contact information in the signature space at the bottom of the message.  If there is nothing or only a phone number, do NOT assume that the requestor is legitimate. IF there is information, verify it (more below) before responding.

3.  Does a Legitimate 3rd Party Directory Have Them Listed?

Do a quick look up using the company name on SuperPages.com or Hoovers.com to see if the address and/or phone number for the employer or recruiter are listed.  Compare with the job posting or Website to confirm that the contact information belongs to the employer or recruiter.

4.  Is the Email Address Associated with Who They Say They Are?

If there is an email address for response, check to be sure it is from the employer’s domain name, e.g. HR(or recruiting or a person’s name)@[employer-name].com and not [employer-name]@gmail.com / yahoo.com or whatever. Take Job-Hunt’s “Scam/Phish Proof Quiz” and read the “Understanding Domain Names” article to be sure you understand how domain names and email addresses work.

5.  Do the Domain Name and Contact Info Match?

If there is a Website associated with the job posting or even just an email address for responding, check that the domain name really does belong to the employer you think it does by doing a “WhoIs” lookup at DomainTools.com.

The Registrant and Admin Contacts addresses should agree with the SuperPages listing (exception could be a large employer with many different physical locations which can be verified through Hoovers).

If the domain registration is “Private,” meaning that you can’t see the names and addresses of the people who really own the domain name - don’t trust it.

If the domain name was registered very recently, a few days to a few months ago, don’t trust it. [For more infomation about domain names, read Job-Hunt's "Understanding Domain Names" article.]

6.  Contact the Employer

If you still aren’t sure, contact the employer, using the SuperPages.com or Hoovers.com official contact information, to confirm that the opportunity is real.  If they haven’t posted the job, they will appreciate knowing that someone is abusing their name and identity.  If they have posted the job, you’ll get a chance to talk with them to see if it’s still open and how friendly they sound.

Bottom Line:

Be on the lookout for someone who wants you to share a lot of your personal and confidential information with them, particularly bank account numbers and Social Security Numbers.  And be very wary of something that seems to be too good to be true.

 

Nearly half of US employers research the online profiles of job candidates on social networks such as Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn, according to a new survey.

Forty-five percent of the employers surveyed for CareerBuilder.com, the largest US online job site, said they use social networking sites to check on job candidates, up from just 22 percent in a survey conducted last year.

Another 11 percent said they plan to start using social networking sites for screening.

"As social networking grows increasingly pervasive, more employers are utilizing these sites to screen potential employees," CareerBuilder said in a statement.

It said job seekers should "be mindful of the information they post online."

CareerBuilder said that of those who conduct online searches as background checks on job candidates, 29 percent use Facebook, 26 percent use LinkedIn and 21 percent use MySpace.

Eleven percent search blogs while seven percent follow candidates on micro-blogging service Twitter.

Thirty-five percent of those surveyed said they have found content on a social network that caused them not to hire a candidate, CareerBuilder said.

Examples included "provocative or inappropriate photographs or information" or content about drinking or using drugs.

Other reasons cited were badmouthing a previous employer, co-workers or clients, poor communication skills, making discriminatory comments, lying about qualifications or sharing confidential information from a previous employer.

Information found on social networking profiles was not always a negative factor in finding a job.

Eighteen percent of employers said they have found content on social networking sites that caused them to hire the candidate, CareerBuilder said.

Some profiles "provided a good feel for the candidate's personality" or supported their professional qualifications while others demonstrated creativity or solid communication skills.

Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder, recommended that candidates "clean up digital dirt" before beginning a job search by removing photos, content and links which could hurt their chances.

The survey of 2,667 hiring managers and human resource professionals was conducted by Harris Interactive between May 22 and June 10. It has a sampling error of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=852599

Business guru Jim Collins became famous for his research into how good companies became great. Now, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, he’s out with a new book on how great companies fall. His new book, “How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In,” is now number four on the New York Times Business Book Best Sellers.

http://www.hereandnow.org/stand-alone-player/?fileUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bu.edu%2Fwbur%2Fstorage%2F2009%2F08%2Fhereandnow_0824_2.mp3&fileTitle=How%20the%20Mighty%20Fall

1. Protection from arbitrary rate increases

Credit card companies are now required to provide cardholders with a minimum 45-day notice on any interest rate increase, allowing consumers enough time to consider their options. Additionally, most promotional APRs will be required to last for a minimum of 6 months.

Issuers that meet this requirement:
Charles Schwab Bank,  Simmons 

2. The right to have rates reviewed and reduced

Issuers are required to review APRs of all accounts every 6 months to see if a reduction in APR is warranted.

Issuers that meet this requirement:
Bank of America,  HSBC,  U.S. Bank 

3. Fair allocation of payments

While in the past, most credit card companies applied payments towards balances with lower interest rates first, the new legislation will force them to put that payment towards balances with higher interest rates. This will ensure that cardholders who make their payments on time will be in a position to pay the least amount of interest.

Issuers that meet this requirement:
None yet

4. No universal default

Drawing on credit reports from other issuers, credit card companies used to be able to raise interest rates to the default rate if the cardholder defaulted on another credit card. Now, they can only focus on the cardholder's payment record concerning their particular card.

Issuers that meet this requirement:
American Express,  Charles Schwab Bank,  Citi,  Discover,  First National Bank of Omaha,  HSBC,  Iberia Bank,  Orchard Bank,  Pentagon Federal Credit Union,  Simmons,  Wells Fargo 

5. No double-cycle billing

Double-cycle billing allows for credit card companies to compute finance charges based on more than one billing cycle. Thus cardholders are penalized for carrying a balance in past months even if they paid off their balance in the most recent month. Credit card companies will now be prohibited from using this double-cycle billing practice.

Issuers that meet this requirement:
American Express,  Bank of America,  Charles Schwab Bank,  Chase,  Citi,  Discover,  First National Bank of Omaha,  First Premier Bank,  HSBC,  Iberia Bank,  Pentagon Federal Credit Union,  Simmons,  U.S. Bank,  Wells Fargo 

6. No fees for paying your bill

Many credit card companies currently charge a $5-15 surcharge if a payment is made over the phone instead of online or by mail. This part of the legislation ensures that, when using regular processing service, there will be no such fees. However, issuers will still be able to charge for expedited service via phone or mail.

Issuers that meet this requirement:
Chase,  Discover 

7. Protection from due date gimmicks

Payments made by a cardholder by 5 P.M. EST on the due date would be considered on time, and protect consumers from unnecessary late payment fees and possible interest rate increases.

Issuers that meet this requirement:
Bank of America,  Charles Schwab Bank,  Citi,  Discover,  First National Bank of Omaha,  HSBC,  Orchard Bank,  U.S. Bank,  Wells Fargo 

8. Enough time to pay your bill

Currently, credit card companies give 14 days between statement notification and the payment due date — this time period is often known as the "grace period." Now, issuers will have to give 21 days for cardholders to make on-time payments.

Issuers that meet this requirement:
Charles Schwab Bank,  Discover,  First National Bank of Omaha,  First Premier Bank,  HSBC,  Iberia Bank,  Orchard Bank,  Pentagon Federal Credit Union,  Simmons,  Wells Fargo 

9. Education on dangers of minimum payments

Currently, issuers do not educate cardholders that how they pay off their balances (i.e. minimum balance vs. full balance) affects their financial standing in the long run. The new laws would require quarterly reports that disclose the time and interest costs to pay off credit card balances, if the consumer only pays the required minimum.

Issuers that meet this requirement:
None yet

10. Protection of young cardholders

In the past, young cardholders were drawn into attractive introductory offers only to find that they are unable to pay off their bills. Now those under 21 can only get a credit card in two ways: (1) have a qualified co-signer, or (2) prove they have the ability to repay their credit card. In addition, issuers will no longer be able to offer tangible gifts on college campuses. Finally, issuers offering college-specific cards will have to report their contracts with universities regularly for federal government review.

http://www.billshrink.com/credit-cards/bill-of-rights/

If you do it right and keep it up, social media sites can have an incredible impact on your business or job search

1. Facebook – This site is an excellent way to become engaged with your customers. Start a page and start a conversation.

2. Twitter – Convenient and efficient way to let your fans and customers know what you’re up to.

3. MySpace – This has definitely lost some popularity with the rise of Facebook and Twitter, but still offers a great platform to keep in touch with your customers.

4. LinkedIn – An extremely professional approach to social networking. This is a spectacular way to meet business contacts and to connect with new potential customers.

5. Digg – The most popular news submission site. Submit your blog posts and digg away!

6. Technorati – This is for avid blog readers and blog owners. Favorite great blogs and blog posts and track the reactions to your blog.

7. StumbleUpon – Another news submission and voting platform that can generate traffic to your web site.

8. Reddit – Vote for news pieces and submit your own.

9. YouTube – YouTube is great for video-friendly companies. No one wants to sit around and watch a guy in a suit go on and on about making money at home in monotone, but if you run an entertainment agency or a record label or something fun, there’s always that possibility your videos could go viral!

10. Care2 – For the socially conscious business man or woman. Set up your profile, donate to worthy causes, submit and vote on news pieces, sign petitions and much more.

11. Plaxo – Another very professional approach to social networking. Make new business connections and find new vendors or customers.

12. Mixx – News submission and popularity contest. Recommend what you like.

13. Sphinn – This social news site focuses on search engine marketing and web development. A must if you want to keep on top of SEO strategies.

14. Wikipedia – Create your business’ page and add to other pages. You can also join in the dicussionsin the community portal.

15 Newsvine – Seed links to articles, write your own article and discuss already seeded news items.

16. Yahoo! Answers – a crowd-sourced knowledge web site where users ask questions and answer them while earning points and gaining ranks.

17. Monster – Submit your resume to find a job or find a new employee for your business. Monster is the largest job search engine in the world.

18. FriendFeed – Aggregate the feeds from all of your social networking profiles and show your activity in one place.

19. DeviantART – for artists: showcase your art and connect with others.

20. Flickr – A photo sharing social network.

21. Last.fm – Install the software and it will track all the mp3s you listen to on your computer or mp3 player. The music you listen to will show up on your profile in real time, and Last.fm will suggest new music for you based on what you listen to, as well as introduce you to other people who have similar musical tastes.

22. Wordpress – Wordpress is a site where you can set up your own free blog and install widgets, as well as find blogs that interest you.

23. LiveJournal – Livejournal is another free blogging community.

24. Meetup.com – A social network that helps you plan offline meetings based on any common ground.

25. Nexopia – A Canadian social networking site, like a thinner version of Facebook or MySpace.

26. Ning – Create your own social network with Ning as well as join others.

27. OneClimate – a not-for-profit social networking site revolving around the issue of cimate change.

28. Passportstamp- For travelers: record your current location, your past travels and let your network know where you are headed.

29. Plurk – Plurk is a microblogging platform that operates similar to Twitter but with a more literal timeline approach.

30. Tumblr- Tumblr is a great place to start an easy, no-frills blog or to aggregate your other blogs in one place.

31. Xanga – A social network with photoblogging and free blogs.

32. Blogger – Googles free blogging platform. Less functionality than WordPress, but more search engine friendly.

33. Google Friend Connect – A way for users to connect on many different web sites.

34. Ebay – Not only can you sell anything here, but you can also create your own profile and start your own blog.

35. Hi5 – A mini version of MySpace with less spam.

36. Mediafire – Upload and share huge files and photos. Very few user limitations on this site.

37. Skyrock – Set up your profile, start a blog and showcase your original music.

38. Identi.ca – an open source version of Twitter. Almost identical but with a few more features

39. Propeller – A news submission site. Vote for news and connect with like-mined friends.

40. Friendster – Similar to Facebook, although nowhere near as popular.

41. Konnects – Social networking for newspapers and magazines.

42. Ryze – A social network for new entrepreneurs.

43. Xing – As the site says, “Global networking for professionals.”

44. Tribe – A social network where you can join “tribes” with like-minds.

45. Collegerecruiter.com – A job search networking site that connects recent grads with jobs and internships.

46. De.icio.us – A social bookmarking platform where you can store your bookmarks and make them public or private. You can also connect with other users to view their bookmarks.

47. Squidoo – Create your own “Lens” centered around your subject of choice.

48. Frappr – Socially networked maps.

49. Google Bookmarks – A place to store your bookmarks.

50. MeetTheBoss – Business excutives use this social network for video conferencing, instant messaging, sms, mail and more.

51. Talkbiznow – A social network for business.. Connect with new customers and vendors.

52. Ecademy – Another social network for professionals. Free and paid versions available.

53. Ziggs – A clean and easy-to-use professional networking service where you can find and post jobs.

54. Small Business Brief – Small business forums with extremely valuable info.

55. FreelanceSwitch – Post jobs and projects and find freelancers who will do it for you.

56. Netparty – Social networking that aims to get people out to business networking events.

67. Gather – A network that revolves around groups with like-minded people.

68. Dopplr – Share your travel itineraries so you can find people in your network who will be near you and you can meet up.

69. TravBuddy – Another travel-related social network that allows you to create blogs, upload photos, and review restaurants, bars, hotels and more.

70. Zorpia – Share photos, blogs, videos and music with your network.

71. Crowdstorm – Crowdstorm is a social shopping site where you can decide what to buy based on aggregated product reviews from a myriad of sources.

72. Kaboodle – A shopping social network where you can find new products based on what your network is buying, store shopping lists and discuss your favorite stores and products.

73. Reesycakes – Another shopping network that helps you make decisions on what to buy.

74. Woot! – a Deal a Day network.

75. Plazes – uses your mobile phone to track where you are and share it with your network.

76. Groovr – Find out what is going on in your community and who is going.

77. Mobicue – Share the content on your cell phone with your network.

78. Zwillow – Networking for real estate.

79. Change.org – Another social network for the socially conscious. Donate to your favorite charity and find jobs in the nonprofit sector.

80. Idealist.org – Find jobs in the non-profit sector.

81. Etsy – Buy and sell handmade items and craft supplies.

82. 43Things – List your goals and find people with similar ones.

83. Esnips – Share content on the web and join a niche group of like-minded people.

84. Clipmarks – Instead of bookmarking a whole article, just save clips of text, video and photos.

85. Diigo – Bookmark and tag web pages, and add sticky notes to them

86. OSOYOU – Social networking for the fashion industry.

87. MUxtape – Coming soon, social networking for bands.

88. Shelfari- A network for book lovers. Create your own book shelf and find others who share your reading tastes.

89. iVillage- A web portal for women with a lot of female-oriented content.

90. Cake Financial – Financial services social network. Share your portfolio.

91. Marketwatch Community – A financial community.

92. Wesabe – From their web site: “Real people dealing with real money issues”.

93. CafeMom – A social network for moms.

94. Fark – This is a news commenting community that has a massive amount of traffic coming to it daily.

95. Getsatisfaction – Described as “people-powered customer service”, this site is a tech support network.

96. Mister-Wong.com – Another bookmarking site that allows you to connect with other people using it and save your bookmarks both publicly and privately.

97. Theseotree.com – News submission and voting.

98. Wikihow – A wiki network with a massive database of How-To Instructions.

99. Wetpaint – free web sites and wiki hosting service with social networking.

http://www.hirepatriots.com/blog/index.php/2009/08/16/99-social-networking-sites-info/?goback=.hom

Dilbert Digital Etiquette: Surviving the 2.0 Tsunami

Please, someone tell me (send me the link, even better) to the Emily who’s Post(ing) about 2.0 etiquette for the majority of us 1.0’ers! Over Starbucks and a midday break, I was struck by the number of Bluetooths and iPhones juxtaposed with patrons holding the “old-media” WSJ two-sheets wide while sipping their cup ‘o Joe. For those of us outside the boundaries of Silicon Valley (or Silicon Mountain or Silicon Triangles), the intrusion of social media is poised to add one more confusing layer to an already crowded business day of meetings, emails, conference calls, and power point presentations.

Striking a workable balance while (first) learning (then) gleaning value from Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Digg and Del.ic.ious, et. Al. looms large (and heck, since I’m mostly living/working outside all those “silicon somethings”, I don’t even know what I don’t know…).  Some are just discovering Blackberries and IM; now there’s bosses who want to “friend” us on Facebook… 

Nine Steps to Transition  to Digital Etiquette

1.  Whatever the forum (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), don’t add comments unless you are advancing the conversation.  The old adage applies: if you can’t say something meaningful, listen and stay quiet.

 2.  Do I have to Respond? Of course not, no.  Many times, the ping is just a “virtual smile” passing in the hallway.  You have to learn to recognize the difference and respond when it’s obvious that you’re being asked a question.  Become a frequent user of the “ignore button”.

 3.  It’s ok to follow your boss, and follow your boss’s boss.  “Following” (another way of saying link to, friend…) is a way to stay informed and suck up at the same time.  Just keep in mind if they follow you back, your comments will be seen/read.

 4.  Loose the earpiece.  Bluetooth headsets are so conspicuously self-indulgent, at least when you’re not really talking/on a conversation.  It’s so “look at me”, and so yesterday.

 5.  You can never have too many friends (Facebook) or too many followers (Twitter).  Louis Gray, a silicon valley bleeding edge blogger says it best (paraphrasing):  “…never know who you’ll meet, who has value…” why risk limiting your opportunity for a relationship…”

 6.  It’s ok to email during meetings and/or text during conversations – but only if you’re being inclusive and adding content and/or someone to the session that otherwise couldn’t attend.  Hitting Fandango or StubHub for weekend tickets is not acceptable.

 7.  Run a Twitter client in your desktop background.  Occasionally, you’ll discover a real gem and it’s always more fun than looking at any of Microsoft’s wallpaper choices.

 8.  Once you’re wired, pay attention to your personal space (and that of others).  The combination of ringtones, call alerts, blinking Bluetooth connections and too public cell phone conversations make you a walking annoyance.  Strive to manage your profile small.

 9.  Finally, once you ARE wired and feeling like you’ve adapted to/joined 2.0 in all its glory – step back and evaluate yourself for an Xtreme Digital Makeover.  Seriously,  do you really want prospective employers the photos that your kid tagged to you w/out thinking or asking.   Nothing wrong with a little “brand tuning” at the personal level.

The workplace is always evolving, 2.0 is just the latest intrusion.  What will be most interesting to observe in the next few years will be Gen Y’ers coming of business-hire age.  They’ve known nothing but 24/7 connectivity, and as social scientists know – habits learned are habits difficult to break.  Should be an interesting clash  as today’s mid-managers begin assimilation to the always-on workplace as the norm, not the exception.   

The Borg had it right… resistance will be futile.

http://scoopdog.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/2-0-etiquette-for-1-0-cubicle-dwellers/

 

As social networking sites explode in popularity, they have become the prime avenue for many job hunters

The Internet has changed a lot of things over the past decade or two—including how we search for jobs. Sure, the basics are the same: Find an opening and apply for it. But the Web has permanently altered the employment process. And with more than 1.2 million info tech jobs lost this year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a lot of people are going to be using every tool they can get to find their next job.

While networking is (and has traditionally been) the best way to find a new job, the second-most effective tool is another type of networking: sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, according to a poll released Aug. 17 by placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Old-school employment search tricks like attending job fairs and reading newspaper classifieds got the lowest ratings. Here's how the Web is changing how we look for jobs.

Social networking sites are exploding in popularity, as people look to connect with pretty much everyone they know, from friends to co-workers to potential employers. Facebook claims it has more than 250 million users; Twitter's traffic has grown tenfold in the past year; and LinkedIn—while not as flashy as its social networking brethren—is perhaps the most useful of the bunch for job hunting because of its employment- and recommendation-focused profiles. It's seen its total visitors double since last year.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2009/tc20090818_861625.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_top+stories

A focus on short-term profits to the exclusion of all else led to the current financial crisis. And guess what? Companies with the steadiest moral compasses have sailed through it

With everyone still buzzing about the outrageous bonuses Wall Street continues to pay, it seems like now might be a good time to write a column about ethics. No, I don't want to write another article calling greedy bankers unethical. Plenty of pundits have already done that. Rather, I'd like to speculate on why some executives are so greedy, the role it played in their downfall, and how an inability to change organizational mindsets will probably lead to future banking crises. I'd also like to go beyond Wall Street and examine ethics in the broader context of American business.

I was privileged to hear Harvard Business School professor Michael Beer at a recent meeting hosted by the Yale CEO Institute. Beer lectured CEOs on building companies that can perform at high levels for extended periods. He started with some interesting statistics on the root causes of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression:

• Of the original Forbes 100 in 1917, 61 ceased to exist by 1987. Of the remaining 39, only 18 stayed in the top 100, and their return was 20% less than the overall market during the period from 1917 through 1987.

• Of companies in the original Standard & Poor's 500-stock index in 1957, only 74 remained in 1997; of these, only 12 outperformed the S&P 500 in the period from 1957 through 1998.

• The average CEO tenure in the U.S. is 4.2 years, less than half the 10.5-year average in 1990.

Beer, author of High Commitment, High Performance, a book on business ethics recently published by Josey-Bass, posited three core reasons why Wall Street failed so badly in the fall of 2008: The firms lacked a higher purpose, lacked a clear strategy, and mismanaged their risk.

I would have difficulty arguing that many Wall Street firms had ever had a higher purpose than making money for themselves first and their customers second. But that's clearly not true for all Wall Street companies. Charles Schwab & Co. (SCHW) has largely avoided the huge fallout. So has US Bancorp (USB). A quality both of these companies share is a laser-like focus on customer service and on honesty and transparency. This comes from their cultures.

Neither company touched the subprime mortgage securitization market, because they saw it as risky and simply not the kind of business that served the company's long-term interests. I'd wager, as well, that these companies didn't feel comfortable asking their employees to sell unethical mortgages to customers, a practice undertaken by many subsidiaries of the big Wall Street investment banks and large bank-holding companies.

In other words, these companies did have a sense of higher purpose. That sense filtered down into strategy and risk management. Schwab has always had DNA as a no-frills financial-services house providing straightforward products and stellar customer service. US Bancorp has always been a straight shooter with a particularly strong practice focused on high-net-worth individuals. Both have an extremely strong sense of responsibility to their customers. And it shows. Not surprisingly, both companies have weathered this crisis particularly well and are poised to excel in the post-crisis years.

bullied by a maniacal focus on the fast buck

Another key failing Beer discussed was the inability of actors inside the large, failing banks to speak truth to power. Key players inside the banks felt intimidated by superiors; the internal voice of conscience and purpose of these institutions was silenced by a maniacal focus on short-term profits and whatever scheme would bring them in.

The silencing of employees who sought to challenge strategy and risk-management practices likely also undermined the banks' moral authority and emboldened those who already felt inclined to do the wrong thing. With a muted internal voice, these organizations lacked a moral compass. As a result, they drove off a cliff with astonishing speed. And, for the most part, they still haven't recovered. Bank of America (BAC) and Citigroup (C) are still considered technically insolvent by many hedge fund managers and financial analysts.

Unfortunately, these organizations still appear to lack that internal voice. Handing out massive bonuses based on short-term performance when U.S. unemployment is at nearly 10% and the real unemployment rate is at closer to 16% can only be taken as a sign that greed remains their driving force. With this continued focus on short-term pay and, by extension, paper profits, these firms are destined to repeat their sad history. Short-term focus is very hard to reconcile with any long-term strategy or sense of purpose beyond simply making money. More bluntly, short-term thinking doesn't reconcile with good ethics.

For some better examples, let's look outside banking. A number of companies, according to Beer, either started out with or developed an internal voice and a moral compass. That voice has played a key role in keeping these companies on top. The list of these companies reads like a Who's Who of American business' management rock stars. Some, such as Goldman Sachs (GS), have been discredited. But the majority, including Cisco Systems (CSCO), Southwest Airlines (LUV), and Costco Wholesale (COST), among others, have sailed through this crisis with flying colors.

Costco has the last laugh

Witness Costco. Wall Street analysts have long chastised Costco's management for paying high wages and keeping employees around for a long time, resulting in higher benefits costs. Costco CEO Jim Sinegal has responded by saying that keeping good employees is strategic for the long-term success and growth of Costco. To date, hehas backed up this assertion with per-employee sales that are considerably higher than those found at key rivals such as Target (TGT) and Wal-Mart (WMT).

Sinegal asks his employees refer to him as "Jim, the CEO." And for a power CEO, Sinegal gets a compensation package that would reduce many midlevel investment bankers to tears, with salary and bonus of less than $800,000. (Sinegal gets a much larger amount in options on shares but still ranks low in terms of total pay compared with executives running companies of equivalent size). The culture of the company flows downward from Sinegal and his focus on employees and, by extension, customers. As a result, Costco chalks up considerable improvements in its product mix and sales due to alert employees in the warehouses who are happy to feed the latest information from the field up the chain to headquarters.

And customers love Costco's paradoxical mix of high-end items in bulk (organic canned tomatoes, anyone?) and rock-bottom prices. Customer service at the stores is phenomenal and fast. And Costco continues to expand, both in number of warehouses and in products and services for business and consumer customers.

The moral here is fairly simple: When a company's ethical compass is pointing true north, everything else falls into line. This isn't to say that companies with great ethics don't fail. But it does seem to indicate that companies without good ethics are far more likely to fail due to their inability to sustain or hear an inner voice to guide them through the dark times to the light.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2009/tc20090816_435499_page_2.htm

 

Interviewed about the reason why they demonstrate against healthcare reform, the answer is I read tidbits on the internet and heard talk show hosts talk against it, these people "read" the bill.  It has become symptomatic of a sheep mentality, a failure of our education system to teach critical thinking, a lazyness to do our own homework,our own thinking and reach our own conclusions.
The public only reads what validates their thinking, let me correct that, the thinking others have shaped for them, do not try to read or listen to both side to make up their own mind, will, that would be too much work and resulted to the polarized society we live in today. A society polarized on and by dogmatism.
Interested parties, commercial and political have expertly taken advantage of this pathetic state of mind to shape our institution and promote their own political and commercial agenda while letting the public think they are actually doing their own thinking, that's art... in a certain way.
Talk show hosts now thing they have the power to manipulate public opinion and shape the political landscape, and the public gave them that power.
Wake up, start listening to both side, read the bills you argue about, make your own mind, what we need is not more dogmatism, we need more pragmatism.
What will it take to get power back from special interests manipulating our society...  Unfortunately, an effort to break free from a lazy state of thinking and the willingness to do our own homework, our own thinking. 
Is the public ready?  I am really not sure about that.  letting other do the thinking is easy, convenient and human beings usually take the path of least resistance.

LinkedIn tonight celebrated their 45 millionth user sign up, according to LinkedIn’s Marketing Project Manager Florina Xhabija’s Twitter message .

According to comScore, LinkedIn had 16 million worldwide monthly unique visitors and 331 million page views in June 2009, up from 7.7 million and 114 million a year ago, respectively.

The company was valued at around $1 billion in its last (2008) round of financing, and says they’ve been profitable for 2+ years.

LinkedIn has gone through numerous changes at the CEO role with founder Reid Hoffman changing the guard once again in June of this year after yet another change in December of 2008.

The company is a strong 2010 IPO candidate. Hoffman told us earlier this year “we can go public any time we want to.”

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/12/linkedin-reaches-45-million-users/

 

 

 

We're going to have plenty of media and journalism in coming years and decades. I take this for granted. But will we have enough information and journalism that we can trust?

We can, and I hope we will. But we'll have to rethink our relationship with media. In the supply and demand system that guides all marketplaces, including the marketplace of ideas and information, we need better demand, not just more supply. We'll need to transform ourselves from passive consumers of media into active users. To accomplish that, we'll have to instill throughout our society principles that add up to critical thinking and honorable behavior.

My optimism about supply stems from the growing democratization of media. Anyone can publish, and democratized networks have made this material available to global audiences.
This is wonderful news in so many ways, notably the expansion and diversification of a formerly oligopolistic system of media and journalism. I no longer worry about a sufficient supply of journalism.

Just look around. The number of experiments taking place in new media is stunning and heartening. Entrepreneurs are moving swiftly to become pioneers in tomorrow's news. Philanthropic enterprises are filling gaps they perceive in coverage. Even the traditional-media dinosaurs are, probably too late, moving to adapt to the changes that have put them in such difficulty, namely the transition from monopoly and oligopoly to a truly competitive marketplace.

Most of the experiments in new journalism and business models will fail. That is the nature of the new, and of startup cultures. But even a small percentage of successes will still be a large number because so many people are trying. We'll have ample amounts of information, and journalism — in some ways, too ample.

Media saturation requires us to become more active as consumers, in part to manage the flood of data pouring over us each day but also to make informed judgments about the significance of what we do see. When we create media that serves a public interest or journalistic role, we need to understand what it means to be journalistic, as well as how we can help make it better and more useful.

This adds up to a new kind of media literacy, based on key principles for both users (not mere "consumers") and creators. They require an active, not passive, approach to media:

1. Be skeptical of absolutely everything. We can never take for granted the absolute trustworthiness of what we read, see or hear from media of any kind. This is the case for information from traditional news organizations, blogs, online videos and every other form.

2. Don't be equally skeptical of everything. We all have an internal "trust meter" of sorts, largely based on education and experience. We need to bring to digital media the same kinds of parsing we learned in a less complex time when there were only a few primary sources of information.

3. Go outside your personal comfort zone. The "echo chamber" effect — our tendency to seek information that we're likely to agree with — is well known. We need to seek out and pay attention to sources of information that will offer new perspectives and challenge our own assumptions. Certainly it's easier than ever to join the echo chamber; but it's also easier to avoid it. When you watch Fox News on television, you are rarely exposed to contrary viewpoints. But when a political blogger eviscerates a contrary viewpoint, that blogger usually links to the other person's views — they're just a click away. And it's in your interest to click that link, to seek out material from different cultures and perspectives, as not understanding how other people see the world can lead to bad decisions.

4. Ask more questions. This principle goes by many names: research, reporting, homework, and many others. The more personal or important you consider the topic at hand, the more essential it becomes to follow up on the media that cover the topic.

5. Understand and learn media techniques. In a media-saturated society, we need to know how digital media work. The techniques of media creation are becoming second nature, at least to younger people. But it's equally essential to understand the ways people use media to persuade and manipulate — how media creators push our logical and emotional buttons.

These principles are just the beginning of a larger conversation. In my new project, called "Mediactive" — a book, website and more — I hope to explore ways to help foster a new generation of activist media users, better journalism and, most of all, a society where critical thinking is understood as not just a good idea but an essential part of our lives.

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/now-new-next/2009/08/want-better-journalism-be-a-sm.html