LinkedIn Facts and Figures in 2014 You Need To Know

Social media is now a universe of splintered and diverse niche networks but there are a few that dominate the landscape. Some are embedded in our lives. Think Facebook and then maybe Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

But there is one social network that is essential for knowledge workers and professionals to be participating on, and that’s LinkedIn. In the past it was locked up and locked down and a little bit stiff shirt and tie. But it has started to make its platform more social, open and content centric.

In 2013 it started publishing more content from a selected group of  150 “influencers” including Richard Branson , Bill Gates and even Barack Obama. That list has now grown to about 500

Is this a defining moment for LinkedIn?

On February 20, 2014 Dan Roth, (the executive director of LinkedIn) announced its new content strategy that allows “all members” to create and publish long form content on LinkedIn. This means that as a professional you can now display your knowledge and expertise to your peers and to the world. It is easy to use and allows you to even embed images and links.

How important is this?

For Linkedin it will make it more attractive as a “go to” place for reading thought provoking insights and also possibly the latest news and trends in an industry. It will drive engagement and also potentially increase time its users spend on the platform.

Can it make a difference for you?

As a blogger or online publisher you can now create and display your content on LinkedIn. This provides another place to build thought leadership and create personal brand awareness through the power of content. For potential and current thought leaders it is an opportunity to shine on an ecosystem of over 300 million global professionals.

If you get the headline right and the topic resonates with your audience it can appear on the homepage of LinkedIn.

This is what can happen!

I was surprised when I wrote a piece titled “Why You Should Forget Facebook” on my blog and republished it on LinkedIn and then all hell broke loose!

This is what happened!

• The article received over 160,000 views in 24 hours!
• Attracted 736 comments, 2,146 LinkedIn likes, 7,129 LinkedIn shares and 1,110 retweets on Twitter
• Appeared on the homepage of LinkedIn
• Became the #2 ranked post for views on LinkedIn for the day
• Ranked as the #3 article globally for the week

This for me demonstrated the new potential for writers and publishers on Linkedin. Have something to say?….. then maybe its worth crafting a LinkedIn post or repurposing one of your past top blog posts.

The strategy I would advocate is to publish it first on your “owned” online digital asset, such as your website or blog. Then share it on LinkedIn where it may “earn” some additional attention and drive traffic and engagement back to your site.

The “Top 10″ LinkedIn facts and figures in 2014

So where is LinkedIn up to in 2014 after starting 11 years ago on May 5th, 2003?

1. It has now passed 300 million users
2. There are now over 1 billion LinkedIn endorsements
3. 41% of LinkedIn visits are now via mobile
4. LinkedIn has 5,000 employees
5. 2.1 million LinkedIn groups
6. Average time a user  spends a month on LinkedIn is 17 minutes
7. Worth an estimated $7.5 billion
8. The top 5 countries by user numbers are. USA (93 million), India (24 million), Brazil (16 million), UK (14 million) and Canada with 9 million.
9. The top 3 fastest growing countries are Turkey, Colombia and Indonesia
10. The most likely demographic profile is Male, Asian, 45-54 years, Earns $150,000+, No kids and has a Grad school education

If you want to learn more about how to use LinkedIn effectively, Alex Pirouz (a LinkedIn power user and expert) is running a free webinar to show you how to tap into the power of LinkedIn. Click here to register

For more facts on LinkedIn you can view the Infographic from dpfoc.com

Google and your email

Google Inc updated its terms of service on Monday, informing users that their incoming and outgoing emails are automatically analyzed by software to create targeted ads.

The revisions more explicitly spell out the manner in which Google software scans users' emails, both when messages are stored on Google's servers and when they are in transit, a controversial practice that has been at the heart of litigation.

Last month, a U.S. judge decided not to combine several lawsuits that accused Google of violating the privacy rights of hundreds of millions of email users into a single class action.

Users of Google's Gmail email service have accused the company of violating federal and state privacy and wiretapping laws by scanning their messages so it could compile secret profiles and target advertising. Google has argued that users implicitly consented to its activity, recognizing it as part of the email delivery process.

Google spokesman Matt Kallman said in a statement that the changes "will give people even greater clarity and are based on feedback we've received over the last few months."

Google's updated terms of service added a paragraph stating that "our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.

 

A $6 billion investment from Intel will expand Kiryat Gat factory; government to provide 300-600 million dollars for project. Lapid: This is a vote of confidence for the Israeli economy.

American technology giant Intel announced its intentions on Wednesday to invest six billion dollars in upgrading its plant in Kiryat Gat where the company plans to add 1,000 employees to its workforce

Representatives from Intel informed Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Economy Minister Naftali Bennett of the plans. Israel in turn agreed to cover 5-10 percent of the costs of renovation, amounting to anywhere from 300 to 600 million dollars.

Intel didn't confirm the statements made by the Israeli government, which put the full cost of the project at six billion dollars. The final business plan is set to be delivered to the ministers on Thursday.

The company has spent the last two years examining which of their factories should be upgraded with the latest and most advanced technologies. Its choice of renovation in Israel means that it sees its future of production in Israel which could lead to additional factories.

According to Israeli sources, if Intel had chosen to invest in a country other than Israel, the Israel factory would likely be closed in the near future due to ageing facilities and all the jobs it currently holds would be lost.

"This is excellent news for Israel and an excellent gift for its 66th birthday," Bennett told Ynet. "This is one of the biggest investments that have ever been made in Israel and the significance for the periphery and technological education is tremendous."

Photo: AP

Bennett, who lead negotiations on the deal with Intel said: "There are also demands for industrial cooperation. I also want to take this opportunity to thank Yair Lapid who took this journey with me."

Lapid also welcomed the successful conclusion of negotiations, saying: "We will continue to promote investments in advanced industries in Israel. This is a vote of confidence for the Israeli economy."

"These investments will directly create an additional 1,000, and tens of thousands of jobs indirectly, all for the Israeli middle class," said Lapid.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the investment and said, "the plans for this investment are the result of a process that we've been working on for a few years already. Israel is a world center of technology and investing in it yields profits both for the investors and for the citizens of Israel.

"I call on additional international companies to expand their investment in Israel, and for those who still haven't taken advantage of the benefits of the Israeli market to come and invest here," said the Prime Minister.

Director of Intel in Israel and Vice President of Intel Maxine Fassberg, said, "Over the last 40 years, Intel's exports added up to 35 billion dollars and most of that came from Intel's production factories in Kiryat Gat."

"During 2013, Intel's factory in Kiryat Gat won Intel's prize for prestigious quality, the Intel Quality Award (IQA)... Intel is committed to continuing the sequence of achievements in qualitative results of operations in Kiryat Gat," said Fassberg.

The Fab28 Intel factory in Kiryat Gat produces 22 nanometer technology chips and the company is interested in beginning to produce the more advance 10 nanometer chips in Israel.

Intel's first factory in Israel was built in 1996 at the cost of 1.7 billion dollars of which the government paid 680 million or 40 percent of the cost. The second Intel factory built in 2011 came at a cost of 2.7 billion and the government paid 200 million or seven percent of the investment.

BitTorrent Sync Allows You To Skip the Cloud Entirely

BitTorrent is harnessing their infamous filesharing protocol for good.

As cloud service companies battle it out for supremacy, one file sharing service sets itself apart by skipping the cloud altogether. It’s called BitTorrent Sync, and starting this week, it’s going to be available through Netgear’s native app store.

Sync is like a cloud storage solution, only with no actual cloud storage involved.

Cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive keep your data in a central online database that you can access from any device — for example, you can work with files on your tablet or laptop, and when you switch over to your PC, the files will still be accessible.

Sync is similar, only there’s no central database. All of your devices are simply connected to one another, so when you change a file on your phone, it will update that information across all of your devices directly.

Sync takes the BitTorrent protocol that’s often used to download music and movies illegally, and harnesses that technology for good — helping you move files at what BitTorrent claims is seven times the speed of Dropbox. It’s free to use, and the only limits on how much storage you have are based on whatever devices you’re connecting with it.

The software is still in beta testing, but has already racked up two million users.

(image via BitTorrent)

Still, cloud services do have one thing going for them: with Sync, the sending and receiving devices need to be turned on in order to move the information back and forth. Cloud servers are always “on” and can transfer and update information even when some of your devices are off.

That’s where the Netgear partnership comes in. Netgear makes network-attached storage (NAS) devices or, put simply, file servers. Individuals and businesses who want to avoid cloud storage can get a small server and use Sync to make it their own private cloud storage.

“When you have a NAS device, it’s designed to be always on,” BitTorrent VP of Product Development Erik Pounds told Betabeat, “so it will hold your data and make it available even when your device is off.”

This gives BitTorrent an edge for anyone wary of cloud services, which have been giving people more to worry about lately than just pricing and storage limitations.

“[Cloud storage servers] are just very big data servers that are growing and growing and growing,” Mr. Pounds said, “and the more they grow powerful, the more control they gain over your data.”

Handing all of your data over to a cloud service can cause all kinds of problems. For one, a thief getting his hands on your username and password could potentially let him access all of your files. But another growing concern — especially in the international community — is that cloud storage services that keep databases here in the U.S. are compliant with the NSA.

Dropbox has taken flak lately for its compliance with government requests for access, and that outrage came to a peak when they took Condoleezza Rice onto their Board of Directors. If the government requests data from Dropbox, there are instances when Dropbox can hand it over without informing you that they’ve even done it.

“If someone shows up with a discover complaint, cloud services can abide by that and not let you know,” Mr. Pounds said. With Sync, if the government showed up with a warrant, at least you’d know, and could deal with it personally.

People who are hesitant to use cloud storage are Sync’s biggest market opportunity — whether it’s businesses and individuals looking for something more private, or governmental organizations that are legally unable to use cloud services.

BitTorrent doesn’t have a plan to monetize Sync yet, and insists that the basic product will always be free. They don’t see themselves as Dropbox or OneDrive’s competition — more like ahead of the game entirely.

“There’s a lot of benefits to cloud storage,” Mr. Pounds said, “but we’re at the tip of the iceberg.”

Atlassian: $100M+ Business With No Sales People?

Traditionally, the sales cycle for business software has been long.


And it often requires the support of a salesforce, which can certainly be expensive (such as with commissions and travel/entertainment).



But there is a company that has found a way to scale its software business without any salespeople: Atlassian. Founded in 2002, it now has more than 24,000 customers across 138 countries. Some of the brands include American Express (NYSE:AXP), eBay (Nasdaq:EBAY) and IKEA.


In fact, Atlassian was profitable from the start. Then again, it had no choice. The company had to rely on a $10,000 credit card loan.

“Our goal was to build a great product,” said Scott Farquhar, who is the co-founder and CEO. The first offering was JIRA, which helped with tracking software bugs. “We wanted to make it extremely easy to install and use. It was about applying the consumer model to business software. From there, we benefited from word-of-mouth marketing.”

Scott realized that to get adoption, the software had to also be inexpensive. This meant there was often no need to get approval from the C-suite.

Another key was the simplicity of the sales process. “We have a standard contract and there are no discounts,” said Scott. “We do not want to waste time and money on legal.”

Over the years, Atlassian has leveraged its growing footprint. The result has been more products, such as Confluence, Bamboo and Crowd.


Interestingly enough, about a year ago Atlassian received a $60 million investment from Accel Partners, which is a tier-1 venture capitalist. It was actually the firm’s largest investment in a software company.

“We want to have a company that’s built to last,” said Scott.



Atlassian
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Atlassian
Type Private
Industry Software
Founded 2002
Headquarters Sydney, Australia
Key people Mike Cannon-Brookes
Scott Farquhar
Products JIRA
Confluence
Stash
Bitbucket
HipChat
Crowd
Bamboo
GreenHopper (now JIRA Agile)
SourceTree
FishEye
Clover
Crucible
Bonfire (now JIRA Capture)
Confluence Team Calendars
Revenue $102 million (2011)
Employees 600+[1]
Website Atlassian


Atlassian /ˈætlæsiʌn/ is an Australian enterprise software company that develops products geared towards software developers and project managers.[2][3][4] It is best known for its issue tracking application, JIRA, and its team collaboration product, Confluence.[3][5]Atlassian serves over 25,000 customers globally, and its clients include Audi, NASA, Twitter, Infor, and Cisco.[2][3][6][7][1]

Atlassian is headquartered in Sydney, Australia.[2] It also has offices in Amsterdam andSan Francisco. As of May 2013, the company has over 600 employees.[1]On Valentines Day of 2014, Atlassian president Jay Simons announced the opening of an Austin office that will eventually employ 600.



Contents [hide]
1 History
2 Revenue Model
3 Products and Services
4 Motivation
5 Awards and Recognition
6 External links
7 References


History[edit]

Atlassian was founded in 2002 by Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar.[2][1] The pair met while studying at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.[8] They bootstrappedthe company for several years, financing the startup with a $10,000 credit card debt.[5] In July 2010, Atlassian raised $60 million in venture capital from Accel Partners.[6]

In 2006, Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar were named Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneurs of the Year.[9] The two also maintain a 100% GlassDoor rating.[10]

In March 2011, the company raised $1 million for the charity Room to Read from sales of its $10 “Starter” licenses.[11]
Revenue Model[edit]

Atlassian does not have a traditional sales team. Instead, it lists all prices, information about products, documentation, support requests, and training materials on its website.[12] The company does not offer discounts, with the exception of academic and charity organizations.[13] All products are available as hosted or installed versions, starting at $10 for 10 licenses, but pricing does not scale up linearly. In 2011, Atlassian announced bookings of $102 million, up 35% from the year before.[14]
Products and Services[edit]

Atlassian provides developers and project managers with hosted or installed software falling into six categories: Project and Issue Tracking Software, Collaboration and Content Sharing, DVCS Solutions, Code Quality, AddOns, and Training Products.

Atlassian’s flagship product is JIRA, a project and issue tracker, which was released in 2002. The following year it released Confluence, a team collaboration platform that lets users work together on projects, co-create content, and share documents and other media assets.[15]

In 2010, Atlassian acquired Bitbucket, a hosted service for code collaboration.[16] In May 2012, the company launched a Marketplace website where customers can download plug-ins for various Atlassian products.[17][18] That year, Atlassian also released Stash, a Git repository for enterprises.

Additional products include Crucible, FishEye, Bamboo, and Clover, which are targeted at programmers working with a code base. FishEye, Crucible and Clover were added to Atlassian's portfolio through the acquisition of another Australian software company, Cenqua in 2007.[19] In 2012, Atlassian acquired HipChat, an instant messenger for workplace environments. In 2013 they announced the launch of JIRA Service Desk, a service desk product with full SLA support.
Motivation[edit]

Atlassian also began a now-popular tradition at software companies where software developers can spend 24 hours tackling any problem they like. Atlassian calls these ShipIt Days, though for years they were known as FedEx Days until FedEx asked for its name to be disassociated with the process.[20]

Author Daniel Pink devoted a chapter to Atlassian's FedEx Days in his bestselling business motivation book, Drive, and the concept has been adopted elsewhere, Pink noted.[21]
Awards and Recognition[edit]
Company Awards[22]
Annual Computerworld Honors Program Names 2012 Laureates[23]
Best Places to Work finalists revealed[24]
Atlassian Wins Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Award[25]
Technology Pioneers[26]
External links[edit]
Official Website
References[edit]

^ Jump up to:
a b c d "We Love Software". Atlassian. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
^ Jump up to:
a b c d Moses, Asher (15 July 2010). "From Uni dropouts to software magnates". The Sydney Morning Herald.
^ Jump up to:
a b c "Why Atlassian is to Software as Apple is to Design". Forbes. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ Finley, Klint. "Atlassian Challenges GitHub to a Fork Fight". Wired. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
^ Jump up to:
a b Mckenzie, Hamish. "Hard yakka: Why Atlassian’s founders are the pride of Australia’s startup world". PandoDaily. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
^ Jump up to:
a b Tam, Pui-Wing. "Accel Invests $60 Million in Atlassian". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ Williams, Alex. "Atlassian Extends Confluence Collaboration Platform, Now Competing More With Jive Software And Other Social Providers". TechCrunch. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ Asher, Moses. "From Uni dropouts to software magnates". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ "Ali Moore speaks with Michael Cannon-Brookes (video)". YouTube.com. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ "The 25 Highest Rated CEOs that are Hiring Now (CHART)". Forbes. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ Cannon-Brookes, Mike. "You did it! Atlassian raises $1 million for Room to Read". Atlassian Blogs. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ Fidelman, Mark. "Why Atlassian is to Software as Apple is to Design". Forbes. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ "Licensing & Purchasing FAQ". Atlassian. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ Schonfeld, Erick. "Atlassian’s 2011 Revenues Were $102 Million With No Sales People". TechCrunch. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ "Products". Atlassian. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ Rao, Leena. "Atlassian Buys Mercurial Project Hosting Site BitBucket". TechCrunch. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ Miller, Kyle. "Browse, Try, Buy, on Atlassian Marketplace". Atlassian Blogs. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ "Atlassian announces app store for app developers". SD Times. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ Burnette, Ed. "Atlassian acquires Cenqua, drops .NET". ZDNet. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ Smith, Fiona. "Is Atlassian the coolest company in Australia?". BRW. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ Pink, Daniel H. "How to deliver innovation overnight". Daniel H. Pink website. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ "Company Awards". Atlassian. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ "Annual Computerworld Honors Program Names 2012 Laureates". Yahoo! Finance. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ "Best Places to Work finalists revealed". San Francisco Business Times. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ Khalil, Laura. "Atlassian Wins Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Award". Atlassian Blogs. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
Jump up
^ "Technology Pioneers". World Economic Forum. Retrieved 15 May 2013.

Influencers in the Startup Space Australia 2013

THE WORLD'S MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES 2014

If you Google the phrase "faith-based businesses," the results point to companies that pursue a religious agenda. But there's another kind of faith in business: the belief that a product or service can radically remake an industry, change consumer habits, challenge economic assumptions. Proof for such innovative leaps is thin, payoffs are long in coming (if they come at all), and doubting Thomases abound. Today, pundits fret about an innovation bubble. Some overvalued companies and overhyped inventions will eventually tumble and money will be lost. Yet breakthrough progress often requires wide-eyed hope.


In this special report on the World's Most Innovative Companies, there are plenty of examples to make you a believer ("I've never been more excited about the possibilities ahead of us," Nike CEO Mark Parker recently told me). Our staff has spent more than six months gathering and analyzing data. To generate our list of the 50 Most Innovative Companies--and the accompanying top 10 companies in various sectors--we assessed thousands of enterprises. From all that work, I've pulled out 12 rising trends. Risk of failure and collapse are always with us. But the culture of innovation across the globe is more robust than ever. We think that's worth celebrating.


GOOGLE
FOR BECOMING A $350 BILLION GIANT THAT LETS LOOSE ALMOST TOO MANY INNOVATIONS AND MILESTONES TO COUNT.


BLOOMBERG PHILANTHROPIES
FOR DOING GOOD, METHODICALLY.


XIAOMI
FOR REINVENTING THE SMARTPHONE BUSINESS MODEL IN THE WORLD'S LARGEST MOBILE MARKET.


DROPBOX
FOR BECOMING THE EVERYTHING CLOUD.


NETFLIX
FOR CREATING GREAT TV IN A NEW CONTEXT, USING AN ALREADY-PROVEN MODEL.


AIRBNB
FOR MAKING THE MOST OF ITS HOSTS.


NIKE
FOR SETTING A SUSTAINABLE EXAMPLE.


ZIPDIAL
FOR TURNING A CONSUMER CHEAT INTO AN ASSET.


DONORSCHOOSE.ORG
FOR SETTING ITS SIGHTS ON EDUCATION REFORM. READ MORE »