LinkedIn Gets the Ball Rolling

 

Well all this updating, linking, poking, tweeting, sharing, posting, and friending my pay off for some lucky investors. Social media may be the new upswing in the economy.

 

LinkedIn, a professionals social media, went public on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday as "LNKD" and sold shares starting at $45 apiece selling 4,827,804 shares from the corporation and 3,012,196 shares from selling stock holders. Today that makes LinkedIn worth $4.3 billion. Yes, with a B. And other social networking companies are looking to follow such as Facebook and Groupon.

Lots of people are saying this could be the beginning of another "dot come era" or bubble like back in the '90s and venture capitalists are excited to start backing well-established companies and start making some money.

LivingSocial Instant Deals - instant success

LivingSocial has managed to make the flashdeal even shorter with their new "instant deals." These are mostly food deals that last for a mere few hours and feature discounts like $7 for $10 of food and drink at The Brown Bag or $8 on any drop-in yoga class at Stroga.

On the website you can sort the deals by neighborhood and on the mobile app, it tells you what deals are nearby using your GPS position. Don't know where the restaurant is? No worries, they give you a map :)

Example scenario:  You work in Dupont Circle. Your co-workers want to go to lunch nearby. Using your LivingSocial app, you can find a deal near you, saving everyone at least 30% on their meal. You're the new office hero.




Imagine never having to pay full price for lunch or dinner again....


Every day there are new deals, and different deals for "lunch" (8-11 a.m. use window), "dinner" (11 a.m. - 3 p.m. use window), or "night" (9 a.m. - 7 p.m. use window). 

And the best thing? If you don't use the deal by the expiration time, you get your money back!! BRILLIANT!

There is a limit to one voucher per vendor per day, but buying deals from as many vendors you want is fair game.

PowerPoint is Dead!

The time has come for Microsoft's difficult/boring PowerPoint to relinquish its terrible grasp on presentations.  Prezi, a new program allows for MORE creativity than PowerPoint, yet makes sure no one has a clunky-looking presentation. 

It's not just a cool presentation application, it helps people organize their thoughts and figure out the best way to group parts of the presentation — almost like a word web or mind map.

A little walk-through:

Presenters design Preszis online but can download an offline application, Prezi Desktop, if they upgrade to the Pro version which costs money. The sweet thing about it being online is you can store multiple Prezis in your folders and share these through Prezi Meetings with other online users who can make alterations if necessary. Perfect for group projects or inter-department collaboration.

Concept creator, Adam Somlai-Fischer, has been creating these presentations since 2001, granted he was hand coding the whole thing, but was internationally recognized for his zooming presentations. He then met Peter Arvai who was convinced to become CEO to develop the company. It has officially been around since 2009 (WHERE HAVE I BEEN??) with investments from TED Conferences (which I love).

Thank goodness they give you an entire Learn page complete with video tutorials and sample Prezis. They also have a solid Support page if you get lost of something stops working.

They also work on your Apple iPad for portability!!

Here's an example of a cool Prezi...

Inbound Marketing Kit on Prezi

Where is all this technology taking us?

Watched this for my New Media in Society class. Thought it was relevant to the blog topic. It's a PBS documentary about our digital nation and how our lives are always wired in to several different screens or digital technology. It discusses our future as a nation after the influence of constant internet connectivity. Enjoy! Discussion to follow...

The White Whale: the Verizon iPhone

The Wall Street Journal has stated that Verizon is making a big announcement tomorrow. "Tech Analysts" have deduced that Verizon will be announcing its joining AT&T in having the iPhone.

None of these rumors have been corroborated by Verizon, Apple or AT&T however.

WSJ -News Hub: How Will Verizon Network Handle iPhone?



However, because Verizon is making this announcement, "analysts" have again concluded that there won't be any new updated iPhone, but Verizon will be getting the same iPhone 4.

Though all of us who  have been waiting years for the iPhone to come to Verizon will want to buy it right away, Apple will only release the new iPhone a few months after Verizon gets the iPhone 4.  After being trapped into a new two year agreement or phone update, we won't be able to get the new updated phone that usually comes out in the summer.  It will be outdated within a matter of months.

Another assumption by analysts is that Verizon may get the mythical white version of the iPhone...the white whale! 

Guess we'll see tomorrow...

LivingSocial like the rest of us

Groupon has some competition from LivingSocial.

I wouldn't really say competition because people can sign up for both of them, but Groupon's business model is spreading.

LivingSocial works just like Groupon in that you receive daily e-mails about steep group discount deals in your area and have a limited amount of time to snatch them up. It even has a similar layout.

However, there are some advantages to being second in existence for improving that business model.

Livingsocial includes deals of the day for areas around you in your e-mail and supplies a Googlemap for the deal of the day's location(s).

It also has LivingSocial Family Edition so parents can do fun things for cheap with the whole gang.

Possibly the best perk though, is the possibility of a completely free deal.

I think this is brilliant because then OF COURSE people are going to share their deals with other people doing some advertising for the business AND LivingSocial.

There is also an Escapes LivingSocial that packages a discount weekend getaway in some pretty cool locations.

LivingSocial takes "finding the best places in your city" to the next level. They have a "356 things to do in ___" list for major cities.  Users can comment on that choice supporting or refuting that claim while recommending somewhere else that is better. It's a cool forum for people to share and discover the cool things in their city.  

Now if only LivingSocial and FourSquare could combine, think of that social media network...

Let me know if you sign up and get any great deals!

A Tumblr full

Ok, so you like taking pictures and blogging and tweeting — what you need is a Tumblr.

A tutorial for your learning pleasure. (p.s. this kid will have my job one day because he's so ahead of the game!)



Its a microblog with a RSS feed like Twitter, but is super easy to update from phones and has much more space than 140 characters. You can upload pictures very easily and essentially have a blog on the go.You can even do an audio post from you phone. How cool!

Here are Tumblr's reasons for Why Everyone Loves Tumblr.

A Tumblr account is called a Tumblelog and people post pictures, re-blogged content, original prose, artwork, music and editorial writing. Also, everything is customizable so your Tumblr is uniquely yours. So if you're a web designer you can create your themes for others to use and get credit for it

It also acts as its own social media aggregater by allowing users to update several social media venues at once. It will automatically import to your Tumblr if you update on another site such as Youtube or Wordpress. It also will link a Tumblr update to your Twitter.

And if you're already an avid Tumblr user, here are 5 Tumblr Extras.

Evidently you can Meetup with people via Tumblr (they're taking advantage of the GPS mapping trend too).

Many people us it as a sort of portpholio for displaying their art, photography or videos.

Let me know if you have a Tumblr what you use it for!