LinkedIn, Algoed Up

Happy Tuesday.

Yesterday was a bad tooth day. I had my first root canal since I don’t want to remember when. 

The headphones with classic rock with Pandora, some deep bone antisthetic shots to fully numb my tooth, and a steady stream of nitrous oxide made a root canal a nearly fun experience. 

Endondontists everywhere, more nitrous for all root canals.

While I was down in the endo’s chair, I learned this AM how a small ISP in Pennsylvania “tanked a big chunk of the Web” yesterday.

According to a story from Slate’s “Future Tense,” a Web outage in the Northeast affected “Verizon users and thousands of Website serviced by Cloudflare.”

Cloudflare provides security and performance services to 16 million websites and demonstrates how “one little error…can cause swaths of the Web to break with little warning.”

The outage started around 7 a.m. and affected Verizon before spreading to Amazon Web Services, web-hosting provider WP Engine, live-streaming platform Twitch, Reddit, and several others.

While we wait for the 404s to fade away, know that Axios is reporting some big time algo changes over at LinkedIn.

Axios reports the company has made the algorithm changes over the past 12-18 months to favor conversations in the LI feed that cater to “niche professional interests,” as opposed to elevating viral content. 

Specifically, Axios reports LinkedIn is focused on:

• Elevating content that users are most likely to join in conversation, which typically means people that users interact with directly in the feed through comments and reactions, or people who have shared interests with you based on your profile.
• Elevating a post from someone closer to a users’ interests or network if it needs more engagement, not if it’s already going viral.
• Elevating conversations with things that encourage a response (like opinions commentary alongside content), as well as posts that use mentions and hashtags to bring other people and interests into the conversation and elevating posts from users that respond to commenters.
• Elevating niche topics of conversation will perform better than broad ones. (When it comes to length, LinkedIn says its algorithm doesn’t favor any particular format, despite rumors that it does.)

This matters because…advertisers want higher-quality engagement, which in turn leads to happier advertisers, which in turn leads to more ad revenue for LI.

Have *you* noticed a difference in your LI feed?

(Not) Home For The Holidays

I’m pretty happy I don’t have to travel today.  I’m going to wait until tomorrow, when all the turkeys have gotten off the road.

Of course, watch out for Wal-Mart and other big retail parking lots.  The consternation about having to work on Thanksgiving is pervasive, and I wouldn’t want to see any customers attempt to play Frogger in those big parking lots.  It’s dangerous enough just trying to get through the doors and into the store!

As always, my wise counsel is to shop from the comfort of your couch.

Walt Mossberg, the ever-dependable tech journalist with The Wall Street Journal, has written an article about “Making Sense of All the New Laptop Flavors.”

He goes on about the various flavors of Windows 8 PCs and tablets, before concluding that the “least costly Mac laptop” is the 11-inch MacBook Air, for $999.

I bought one just about a year ago, and I maintain it’s still the best, fastest, lightest, most dependable computer I’ve ever owned, and I’ve owned plenty.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have splurged for more SSD, but that’s it.

If you want to make sure your personal shopping engine is fully revved before Black Friday, Gizmodo’s providing its Ultimate Black Friday guide for geeks, grouping deals by category, and offering a list of when every retailer is slated to be open on Black Friday, just in case you prefer shopping in a mosh pit.

As for an update on my new Apple Mini-me “mini,” otherwise known as the 5th generation iPod touch, I can only say I have no buyer’s remorse, even now after having seen the iPad mini in the flesh.

The retina screen and the small form factor on the newest touch are working perfectly for me thus far. I bought a new “Need for Speed” racing game just to be able to check out the graphics in full force, and the retina screen is simply stunning (as are movies and Netflix streams). I’ve always read what a great gaming platform the touch is, but playing that racing game has cemented it.

Over the next several days, if you want to keep pace with IBM’s annual holiday campaign “Digital Analytics” benchmark, just follow IBM’s e-shopping analytics guru, @jay_henderson (a fellow Texan!).

Jay and his team will be working and posting reports throughout the weekend and into next week to keep us all informed how the holiday e-retail season is going. Jay’s already indicated we can expect to see growing numbers on the mobile and tablet shopping footprint this year.  You can read Jay’s holiday set up piece here.

That said, don’t ignore those retail emails piling up in your in-box — email continues to be the e-retail Trojan Horse, with lots of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals already being distributed. From Amazon to Golfsmith, I’ve received a number of holiday email deals, and it’s all I can do to keep my credit card filed away in my anti-scanning wallet!

If you’re looking for gainful employment this pre-Thanksgiving Wednesday, you might want to try somewhere other than LinkedIn. LinkedIn’s Website had a “service unavailable” message this morning, and TechCrunch has been reporting a LinkedIn site outage.

As for me, I’ll be (mostly) disappearing from the cyber maze over the course of the next week. It’s my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary, and I’m taking them on a cruise in the Caribbean to celebrate. I may send a post or two via email if I’m so inspired, but mostly I’ll be spending some quality time with my parents and some extended family, and gazing out at the Gulf of Mexico in a pina colada-induced haze (virgin pina coladas, of course).

For all of my readers here in the United States, I wish you a very happy and restful holiday weekend. For those of you outside the U.S., enjoy the email and conference call silence from your U.S. colleagues…it won’t last long!

IBM Business Partners Get Social

It’s snowing in Toronto today.  And I mean, like, really, really snowing.  Like it apparently hasn’t snowed all winter.

Ed Abrams, vice president of IBM's midmarket business, leads a discussion on LinkedIn about the use of social media by small and medium-sized businesses.

I’ve very much enjoyed my two days on the ground here thus far — the team has been most gracious and I’ve learned more than I can process about our live chat operations (no, not THAT kind of chat!).  The kind where we help you buy the stuff you’re looking for!

And on the help front, I wanted to share some news coming out of the IBM PartnerWorld event taking place in New Orleans this week.  Today, IBM announced the expansion of a global skills initiative to educate clients and business partners on social media tools and techniques to showcase expertise and create new business opportunities.

With today’s news, IBM is further investing in its clients and business partners across the world including emerging markets such as China, Australia and Saudi Arabia to develop the skills that will enable them to sharpen their social networking capabilities to build even stronger and more interactive ties with their clients.

The IBM eight week social media boot camp is available to IBM business partners to provide the education and skills necessary to successfully engage in social media and begin driving the conversation around their brand.

This initiative provides IBM business partners and clients access to one-on-one social media coaches who set measurable goals for building and exercising social acumen. The customized curriculum is designed for organizations to become more comfortable and effective in their marketing and sales efforts.  By using social networking tools and techniques participants learn to integrate social media into their daily business activities.

IBM Business Partners Gets Social 

IBM Business Partner Starfire Technologies, Inc. was among the first organizations to enroll in IBM’s Social Media Boot Camp. Prior to the program, Starfire’s use of social media channels was limited. After enrolling in the eight week social skills program, Starfire is now leveraging social channels to re-architect the way it does business.

For example, as a result the tools and techniques offered by the Social Media Boot Camp, Starfire is reconstructing its company website, integrating social media tools and platforms to best interact with customers. The organization has transformed its business strategy by extending its reach through the social networks to create   significant interactions and two-way conversations with its customers.

“IBM’s Social Media Boot Camp was instrumental in our understanding of how to effectively and strategically engage with our customers and business partners over social media platforms,” said Mary Spurlock, Vice President of Marketing, Starfire Technologies, Inc..  “It also taught us enhanced ways to listen to our customers and engage in interactive conversations.  We learned to listen on the channels where our business partners and clients are participating, thus helping to identify and move opportunities faster through the pipeline. It’s also helped us to create a valuable collaborative forum for marketing and client support.”

To join in the conversation around IBM’s Social Media Boot Camps, visit LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Floats

Whoa. How about that IPO for LinkedIn that floated earlier today at the NYSE?

Perhaps business social networking is sexy, after all.

At least, so it seems, to investors.

A few days before its IPO, LinkedIn raised its offering price some 30%, to a range of between $42 and $45 per share.

Then, I see this coverage on TechCrunch indicating they started trading at $83 per share, before rocketing past the $100 market and even into the $130s, before settling back into the $105 range.

As Leena Rao points out, even at $83 a share LinkedIn is looking at a $7.8 billion market cap.

I was watching the talking heads yesterday on CNBC about whether or not this new way of social and tech-related IPO interest suggested a “tech bubble,” to which I just laughed out loud.

Putting aside whether or not you believe LinkedIn’s float came at too high a price, comparing today’s environment to the tech bubble of the late 1990s is absurd on its face.

I remember those 1999 IPO valuations, where a Web metrics report and a PowerPoint seemed to justify hundreds of millions in value.  LinkedIn, on the other hand, along with a number of the emerging social plays, are actual revenue-generating companies who benefited from the Internet cloud build-out since the bubble burst.

Lower storage and computing costs, higher and more ubiquitous broadband access, open source and lower cost development tools and platforms, and yes, a great diversity of venture capital…all are factors that helped pave the way to this digital renaissance.

But make no mistake, compared to many Internet outfits in 1999, the GroupOns and Facebooks and LinkedIns of the world are generating cash, which is always helpful to a viable and ongoing business concern!

And speaking of viable concerns, the latest IBM SmartCamp was held in Austin, Texas, earlier this week, and though I was too busy to attend, the event was covered on LiveStream.

SecureWaters has a patented technology that monitors, detects, and identifies toxins in surface water, and sells a smarter, real-time early warning electronic monitor and alarm system.

You can see their one-minute elevator pitch here.

IBM SmartCamp is an exclusive event aimed at identifying early stage entrepreneurs developing business ventures that align with IBM’s Smarter Planet vision.

Applications are still being taken for the New York City event on June 28-29, but you to have applied by June 3, so if interested, get those applications in!