Friday, December 7, 2012

Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn

Summary of the interview:

Today LinkedIn is the professional identity of record, with  BI/Insight tools built around it. The business has three core areas:
  • Hire (the bulk of the business today)
  • Market
  • Sell
Mobile is now 25% of weekly uniques, higher if you count m.LinkedIn


Initial Vision:
Mapping professional connections across the globe with 3 degrees of separation

Revised Vision:
Moving to leveraging people to mapping an economic graph so there will essentially three graphs; a Digital profile for people, companies and opportunities. With an objective to remove the inefficiencies preventing the flow of capital to opportunity




Monday, December 3, 2012

The cloud is getting cloudy for me today

This morning, I downloaded a relatively large file from YouSendIt  The company does a nice job in solving the 'attachment problem' where mail systems restrict the size of files which you can send to others. Besides offering transport, they also wll sync and store your files in the cloud.

This highlights an issue for me, and I suppose others. I just looked at my applications and it seems as if I am swimming in cloud storage and syncing. I am now using Box, DropBox, iCloud, Live, Evernote, Amazon, Google Drive, and now have a YouSendIt account. Of course, I am using the system for my personal mail, my investing activies and for some entrepreneurial things too. As such I am Charlie@xxx in many different places.

Each of the applications have a bit of a different personality with differentiation more around the workflow than the efficacy of the storage and access which are at the core of what I am now looking for. While I am thinking it's about time to consolidate into one or two vendors, the one's which appear to be at the head of the line are the largest cloud players. Apple makes it compelling to use iCloud within its platform(s), Google Drive does the same with its integration with the formerly named Docs.