if you need anything else that i am capable of, just let me know! :D

LinkedIn Founder Has Golden Touch Monday January 21, 3:29 am ET By Michael Liedtke, AP Business Writer LinkedIn Founder’s Road to Riches Paved With Golden Connections in Silicon Valley

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP)—Few Internet entrepreneurs practice what they preach as devoutly as LinkedIn Corp. co-founder Reid Hoffman, whose business revolves around his belief that good fortune flows from good relationships. Hoffman, 40, has put that principle to work by mining his own vast network of Silicon Valley connections to rake in one Internet jackpot after another.

A college friendship led Hoffman to PayPal and his first windfall when eBay Inc. bought the online payment service for $1.5 billion in 2002. Since then, he has become even wealthier by investing in other Internet startups he discovered through friends and former colleagues.

Along the way, Hoffman also used some of his PayPal proceeds to help start LinkedIn, an online business-networking service that helps professionals like him realize the value of their contacts from the past and present.

With more than 1 million people joining each month and projected 2008 revenue of $75 million to $100 million, LinkedIn Corp. seems likely to deliver another big payoff for Hoffman.

“LinkedIn is a great expression of who Reid is,” said John Lilly, chief executive of the Firefox Web browser maker, Mozilla Corp., where Hoffman sits on the board of directors. “It’s really his brain on the Web.”

LinkedIn tries to help people who know each other elsewhere more easily meet others who might help their careers. For example, if Mary and Bob are both part of Fred’s online network, Mary could ask Fred for a referral to Bob, who could then decide whether he wanted to embrace a new relationship with Mary.

LinkedIn’s focus on professional networking distinguishes it from social playgrounds like Facebook and News Corp.’s MySpace, where users are encouraged to share their personal lives by posting party photos and adding favorite bands.

Although it may not sound as much fun, LinkedIn appears to be thriving. About 18 million people now have profiles on the site, roughly twice as many as a year ago.

Hoffman, who remains LinkedIn’s chairman and largest shareholder five years after starting the company, said the Mountain View-based company will probably file for an initial public offering of stock before 2010 if he isn’t first tempted to sell to one of the suitors that have inquired about buying LinkedIn. Hoffman wouldn’t identify the suitors.

“I know we are going to be much more valuable in a year or two,” Hoffman said. “We have had (buyout) conversations with all the usual suspects, but I think an IPO is by far and away the most likely outcome.”

Nonetheless, LinkedIn has its share of detractors, who see it as little more than a tool for job hunters and employment recruiters, a slightly different twist on online help-wanted services like Monster.com or Yahoo Inc.’s HotJobs. Besides selling ads, the site lets employment recruiters and others pay for expanded access to LinkedIn members.

Although former LinkedIn executive Keith Rabois isn’t as harsh, he believes Hoffman needs to pursue an IPO as soon as possible to create a bigger buzz about the service.

“Right now, LinkedIn just doesn’t seem to be at the center of the Internet universe and an IPO would be an amazing marketing opportunity,” said Rabois, who left LinkedIn last year to join another rapidly growing startup, Slide Inc.

LinkedIn so far hasn’t generated the same kind buzz as Facebook Inc., which has been attracting many of the same users as LinkedIn. With 60 million users, privately held Facebook already boasts a $15 billion market value and has indicated it will pursue its own IPO in 2009 or 2010.

Hoffman happens to have a stake in Facebook, underscoring his knack for identifying promising Internet opportunities in their early stages.

“It’s like he is able to look at the Internet and figure out where all the pieces fit together,” said Mark Kvamme, a partner at Sequoia Capital and a member of LinkedIn’s board of directors.

While Facebook could produce Hoffman’s biggest investment return, it threatens to become a thorn in his side if it diminishes the amount of time people spend at LinkedIn.

As a countermeasure, LinkedIn in recent months has been adopting more Facebook-like features. The changes have allowed LinkedIn users to display pictures next to their personal profiles and opened up the site for outsiders to post mini-applications, known as widgets, designed to help people with common connections to share information.

Despite those copycat moves, Hoffman insists he isn’t worried about Facebook, which he views as being far too casual and goofy for the ambitious professionals drawn to LinkedIn.

Hoffman credits his own connections for his successful investment streak.

“Any time there were some really good people involved with a potentially good product, I thought I should probably throw in at least a little bit of money if I had the option,” he said.

That doesn’t mean he invests in every venture started by people he knows, sometimes to his regret.

For instance, Hoffman hadn’t felt compelled to invest in YouTube when he had the chance, depriving him of a huge payday when Google Inc. bought the popular video-sharing site for $1.76 billion in 2006. Instead, LinkedIn provided some initial office space to YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who worked with Hoffman at PayPal.

Hoffman hasn’t been wrong too often.

Three of his startup investments have been sold since 2005 for more than $1.1 billion combined, although Hoffman got only a sliver of that. They are the photo-sharing site Flickr, bought by Yahoo Inc.; music network Last.fm, bought by CBS Corp.; and computer security specialist IronPort Systems Inc., bought by Cisco Systems Inc.

Besides Facebook, the list of other promising prospects in Hoffman’s portfolio include blogging software maker Six Apart Ltd., blogging search engine Technorati Inc., online content-ranking site Digg Inc. and another online social networking service, Ning Inc. He also holds stakes in a variety of lesser-known startups, too.

Hoffman’s connections and investments frequently have ties to PayPal, where he accumulated stock as a director and then as a top executive. He first met PayPal’s co-founder and chief executive, Peter Thiel, while both were attending Stanford University in the 1980s.

Thiel, an early LinkedIn investor who is now a venture capitalist and Facebook director, is one of the more than 1,500 connections that Hoffman lists on LinkedIn’s Web site.

“I pay a lot of attention to building relationships,” he said. “Part of how to create a lot of value and goodwill in the system is by doing something that is a little bit of work for me and massively valuable for you.”

Thiel marvels at how well the philosophy seems to work for Hoffman. “Everybody in Silicon Valley is no more than two degrees away from being connected to Reid.”

lolo built me a crab out of legos. it’s abstract.

I modified metatron’s profile page, I’m not sure if I was supposed to… Sorry if I wasn’t. I’m quite new to this stuff which is in development as it is.

Thanks for adding to my movie page!

O.K. I’m not doing this well! I started writing, clicked something and it disappear with a sign of “saving…”. I’ll try again! I’m trying to see if this type of website can serve for educational purposes. I have a group of students that I’ll be taking to a Latin American Country. I would like for them to use this site, or another that I find, to post their thoughts, videos, pictures, etc., so that when they come back they make a presentation to their teachers and parents and the comittee that selected them about their experiences. 1. Can I set this metanotes – My page – so that Only the people that need to participate in this project can see it and input anything? 2. Where does it store the information that one writes on our site, once a page is created? 3. Where do we find better instructions on how to use it, so that erasing doesn’t take place or saving doesn’t take place when we aren’t ready to do either one? Thanks for the help.

I’m a professor at KFBS that wants to use your site and testing the possibilities. I hear you all started this project out of taking classes at KFBS. So, I hope you can help me! Thanks Rodrigum

rob’s an old stanford friend in silicon valley.

he nabs me on facebook chat every so often

Rob:

when will you have a metanote app for facebook?

Srini:

excellent question

so we actually have a DUAL product, similar to the way you could say “News Feed” is a “different product” from Facebook in toto

metanotes is in alpha. we are working on a beta. it’ll take a few weeks; maybe as many as ten; to get to beta.

Rob:

cool

Srini

but the SMALLER app – our “news feed” – is called The Time Log.

i’m working on this (it isn’t finished yet): http://the-time-log.com

basically the time log is pure embeddable widget, and this will be our first facebook app.

Rob

i was just think that Dr. Who might call it “the log of time”

Srini

it’s going to be ready for beta by next weekend.

remember Choose Your Own Adventure Books?

the first one was “the cave of time”

Rob

and I see you are doing plumbing ads on the site ;);)

Srini

hahaha that was my experiment with adbrite

i know their founder so i wanted to give it a shot, sort of tacky tho :):)

we want google ads relating to smartphones as the time log is in my opinion the most useful smartphone thing ever

Rob

yup.. but was kind of funny.. I’m quite sick of ads these days.. they need to present me with a great deal of value for me to give them attention

Srini

like, it replaces whatever onboard “notebook” or “memopad” handily – it’s got: 1) it’s online 2) tagging 3) direct msging 4) twitterlike fun

Rob

cool

you can also get silly and have a utility that will export the content in Microsoft office (any app) format ;);)

that would be easy and funny at least to me

Srini

at least google we can tune to show smartphone-related ads; we think millions are going to buy palms & blackberries and there really is no good way to take notes on them outside the onboard note apps (which must be synced etc)

Rob

of course.. here I am banging away on my Mac with not a MS app in sight ;);)

Srini

oh definitely – the Google Docs API is in the spec already and it turns out MSoffice has an API now too.

Rob

I agree.. I can take notes on my Iphone.. but it is awkward and time consuming.. its autoword corrector is ok. but many times chooses the wrong words

Srini

this is part of a “whole product” strategy to unseat Word as the best way to go all the way from quick jotting to raw idea through brainstorm, composition, collaboration, sequencing, and editing and then export it into a doc good to go for your professor.

Rob

and it does not allow useful meta-data manipulation.

have you considered getting the Iphone SDK and porting the app to the Iphone too?

Srini

right. taking notes on the smartphone = gorgeous concept. no proper software. and tagging = DUH.

that is a great idea Rob ! (iphone sdk)

Rob

of course you will have to code in objective C ;);)

Srini

the idea is that METANOTES is a big wide sprawling space. use a whole computer for that. but TIME LOG is optimized for the quick entry thing that is going on at conferences with twitter (google the word “backchannel” to see discussion).

objective C ! sounds like a rapper

Rob

the great thing about apps that take advantage of “cloud computing” (aka SAAS) is that apps can be super light.. storage at Amazon.. etc…

Srini

to continue: twitter is fundamentally a PUBLISHING tool; it was created by the same guy that did Blogger. that’s great and all! but for every one thing i might “publish” – even to my friends – there are like 100 things i just want to WRITE DOWN.

Rob

exactly.. like taking a note in the supermarket

Srini

yeah we only serve text ! all images and video & widgets are embeds of various flavors

Rob

or often I get book suggestions from friends while at the coffee ship

Srini

right – not even like it’s dirty private thoughts, they are just NOT RELEVANT to anyone else.

Rob

or reminders

Srini

sometimes it’s halfbaked schemes, or notes on a book, or whatever. why would you ever tweet those ?

the STEREOTYPE of the twitter user is one who is on it all the time going “i’m at starbucks getting cappucino”. this is incredibly rare in real life.

Rob

today I’ve got a zillion apps that don’t talk well together.. its driving me nuts.. I want one apps that does it all.. one app to rule them all and with the ontology bind them!

Srini

however – if that note is PRIVATE, then i can even see the use of that – especially if it’s datestamped, and (scope creep but someday) it let the user actually enter in how much they pay and see that deduct from a running balance for instance.

our dream for time log is ONE PROMPT TO RULE THEM ALL.

Rob

I like that

Srini

you’ll be able to do a google search, a tweet, an amazon search…. all from one freaking PROMPT, with a tag prompt afterwards

and don’t even get me started on how we are going to decimate email

time log is so much more efficient for small teams it isn’t even funny

Rob

this is how the borg got started ;);)

Srini

it works like those old nextel walkie-talkie ads (especially when we eventually get the whole text-msg-notifications thing going)

our coder is also working on a project for recording audio into an embeddable player; so you can also leave AUDIO notes directly through the system (you can speak into your PC or call a number)

Srini

so anyway: our brand mission is to get ppl to take more notes. i am amazed to report that this brand mission is somewhat unique in the world of business today.

Rob

that is cool.. also transcription would be cool too.. voice to writing.. and maybe the writing to voice.. if one is driving and needs a note

Srini

platforms for notetaking exist, but i really doubt anyone is quite as OBSESSED as we are

have you played with Jott ? they do that, you can call a number and they transcribe it on the fly

Rob

yes.. like in startrek where everyone keeps a log

Srini

and they are ALL about the API too

you can already call Jott from your cell phone and have what you verbalize translated and posted to Twitter and several other services too

we will do a deal :):)

startrek logs: ABSOLUTELY.

Rob

cool.. Anne has a thing where when you leave voice mail on her phone it turns it to text and emails her

Srini

also like in Twin Peaks when the lead guy calls “diane” all the time.

anne = classic innovator/earlyadopter

Rob

maybe you can do a co-marketing deal with Paramount for startrek ;);).. do a product placement in the next trek movie

Srini

if it works for anne, you can productize it and cross the chasm!

did you know i live right across the street from paramount ?

their parking garage is right across the street

Rob

or applications for ship and airplane logs for crew.. or even military logs (the military does lots of reporiting.. it would help offices write their after action reports if they could take live notes

Srini

yes. like Google, an infinity of uses.

the company that rules this value proposition could become fabulously wealthy. :):) bridges to enterprise usage build themselves if students start using it en masse as well.

Rob

yes. you may also want to do a program with soldiers in iraq and other places.. cause when their tours are up they will go work for someone

Srini

and we have a hook in with IBM out in raleigh as well – a VP has taken interest in us and our lawyer thinks we might be able to hammer out a partnership with Lotus Notes (who also have an API).

Rob

excellent.. you had mentioned the potential deal with lotus

Srini

great idea on iraq. in fact: one of my good friends is just back from iraq and i am going to get him on board as a community person as soon as i am able (he def needs a job)

we’ve been invited to join the IBM partner program. i have procrastinated; thanks for reminding me

Rob

also if you need inroads with CIA and NSA.. I can get you a hookup

Srini

word word

Srini

everyone knows there is a futuristic interface out there somewhere. multitouch panels are going to be all over the walls of tomorrow’s home. if you have read fahrenheit 451, that is the bradbury future – interactive walls all over the house (although hope we don’t go and burn books)

• simply put, we put the user and the value john’s effort can create for the user at the center of our product design.
• it isn’t ready until the user likes it.
• that’s our user-centric product philosophy.

that you’re working on the script loading error! it was making me sad.

• This guy is a smart marketing person.
• He probably would be interested in MetaNotes with all the publishing he does.
• He has a book out called “Join The Conversation”.

i like the highlighting new notes thing! it sounds great :)

1) What’s the most valuable aspect of MetaNotes to you thus far?
I love the freedom of MetaNotes. With MetaNotes you can make a page for anything, about anything, and best of all—its completely personal and creative. There are no bounds. You can share your opinions with people from any walk of life in exciting discussions, and feel safe because its an open, free environment.

• create a personal profile
• a research page
• and I have created and participated in several photowalls:
  • Favorite Movies
  • music please
  • Pictures That Make Me Laugh

3) What uses can you envision for MetaNotes beyond what you’ve been using it for thus far?
I envision more users, more active discussion circles, private notes, private pages, private circles, and personal favorite page menus; but nothing more exciting than the upcoming features I have read about!

4) What features do you really like about it?
I love the fact that I can create my own preset colors for notes, make as many pages as I want, and I love that I am a hero! :D

5) What features would you like to see implemented?
New note notification, private messages/notes, ability to change link color, and deletable spaces! :P

musicians have all they need to make METANOTES their new home (well we are going to have to build the social networking thing still but it is the ULTIMATE MIXTAPE MACHINE NOW)

i emailed its coder this morning to ask if he could make an iPhone version for a future panel !!!