January is the peak season for visits to employment websites and with unemployment numbers climbing ever higher, this year was no exception. Each year, visits to employment websites peak the second week of January. This year visits to websites in the Employment and Training category were 17% higher than in January 2008. Growth is due to continued natural growth for the category (see chart below illustrating that visits have been growing for the past three years), as well as rising unemployment rates and job uncertainty.

San Francisco - Reid Hoffman, the founder of business-focused online social network LinkedIn, will reassume the position of chief executive, replacing Dan Nye, the former executive at Intuit who was appointed to the position in early 2007, TechCrunch reported. Meanwhile, former Yahoo executive Jeff Weiner was appointed interim president of LinkedIn, which claims 11.2 monthly unique users. Hoffman will take over in January for Nye, who will remain an adviser to the company.

San Francisco - Business-focused online social network LinkedIn on Wednesday announced that it is laying off 10% of its staff, or about 36 employees, in a move that will see the company refocus on the most profitable areas of its business.

Mountain View, Calif. - LinkedIn, an online social network for business professionals, announced on Thursday that it has landed a new $22.7 million financing round, from investors including Goldman Sachs, The McGraw-Hill Companies, SAP Ventures and previous backer Bessemer Venture Partners.

San Francisco - LinkedIn, a social network targeting business professionals that counts 27 million users, on Monday launched its own online ad network, which will allow other sites to run ads placed on LinkedIn, TechCrunch reported. LinkedIn claims its average user is 41 years old, with an average household income of $110,000; 49% are "decision makers" where they work. The company partnered with Collective Media on the LinkedIn Audience Network, which will let partners target LinkedIn users when they visit partner sites.

Mountain View, Calif. - LinkedIn, the creator of an online professional network with more than 23 million members, said on Wednesday that it has secured $53 million in its fourth round of funding, which values the company at just over $1 billion. Bain Capital Ventures led the round, which also included previous investors Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners.

These two videos might not be the most exciting things you’ve ever seen, but the announcements they convey are certainly worth noting. The first one is from YouTube, announcing the YouTube Partner Program, the way that the YouTube community (finally) can start earning money from their videos through advertising. It is a milestone in YouTube’s history and it will be very interesting to see how much money really trickles down to the people who’ve made the site into the most popular place for video on the Internet. The second one is from LinkedIn, in which Lucian Beebe from LinkedIn talks about LinkedIn's Intelligent Application Platform. Nothing too fancy here, but the video gives you a better understanding of the power of viral marketing that social networks are just starting to explore (as well as the new "open" approach that is spreading rapidly). Both videos are embedded below.

Mountain View, Calif. - LinkedIn, a social network targeted at business professionals, said on Thursday that it has changed its policy and will now allow users to post a photo of themselves to their profiles. The new feature will allow users to control both who sees their pictures, and whose pictures they see. The company said that it plans to only allow members to post a single profile picture, and recommended it be a head shot.

While the sharp increase of Facebook in the Australian market is of extreme interest - the social networking utility moved into the top 20 websites visited in All Categories w/ending 28 July 2007 - the referral traffic between Facebook and LinkedIn, a tool for managing professional relationships, gives further insight into the scope of networking activity on Facebook.

Have you been getting a flurry in LinkedIn invitations in the past few months? I have been receiving a few requests a week, so I wasn't surprised to find that the market share of US visits to LinkedIn was up 323% in the past year (week ending 7/7/07 vs week ending 7/8/06), and up 17% in the past four weeks alone (week ending 7/7/07 vs week ending 6/8/07). As of last week, LinkedIn ranked at #23 in the Hitwise Employment and Training category.

Steve Sordello, who last week resigned as the CFO of Alviso-based TiVo, on Tuesday was named the new CFO of Mountain View-based LinkedIn, operator of an online business network that includes more than 11 million professionals.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070626/20070626005508.html?.v=1
http://www.linkedin.com/