We’re inundated with social media these days. I consider my friends who aren’t on Facebook lucky, they don’t have to deal with the onslaught of senseless status updates and the latent narcissism that it entails. Facebook has slowly but surely blurred the lines between friends and acquaintances and strangers, but hasn’t put much emphasis on close friends and family. This is where PassedOn comes in.

The startup, based here in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam, focuses on creating an online diary of experiences with your loved ones for the English-speaking global market. And as the name implies, creating an album of videos, photos, soundbytes, and thoughts with them before you or they pass on.

The project has been online since November 2012 and already has over 100,000 users with “some more active than others”. Marco Oparq, CEO of PassedOn, has his sights set on working with companies like Dropbox to add value by personalizing their services instead of working with big companies like Facebook and Google. All of the data on PassedOn is encrypted so not even Marco knows how users are using the service.

I chatted with Marco for some insight into what he terms intimedia and the story behing PassedOn:

Intimedia is a new generation of websites that are more private and intimate than the jungle of social media that is currently offered. The WWW has an overload of information sharing and too few places that you can consider for yourself and your direct loved ones.

Marco goes on to say that Facebook is for friends, Twitter for business and friends, LinkedIn for business, dating sites for new lovers, but for your mother, daughter, and best friend, there isn’t a website that takes care of people you currently care about.

How did you come up with the idea?

Marco: I was on a holiday to Cuba with my wife, and the airplane had turbulence. At that moment, I realized that if the airplane would have crashed, basically we had nothing arranged. My kids were with my parents in law in Colombia, and they don’t know my parents, they don’t even have the contact number. Nobody in Vietnam knew where I was, and actually my parents in Holland, didn’t even know I was on a holiday.

Then I thought, I’m surely not the only one who hasn’t taken care of the basics (bank details, crucial information, etc.). Then a couple of months, I started to talk with people and see if it would be a nice idea to have an online portal to arrange these necessities in case something unexpected happens. Throughout these months, I realized that in fact it is more important to leave behind your thoughts and emotions than the actual administrative parts.

What happens when a user dies?

Marco: When a user dies, the “eWills” will be released to their loved ones and added to their profile. Later, we will add functions like being able to receive a printed version of the eWill in a nice book and allowing the people to “Leave a message to the World”.

But Marco emphasizes that PassedOn is not about death:

Marco: In general, I think it is good to mention that PassedOn is not about Death it is about realizing who and what is important for you and get a certain peace of mind that you have collected these thoughts and moments in a special place so you can share it with those you care most about.

What about older generations who are not accustomed to services like this?

Marco: First: the UI will be more visual. Second: we use the first wave of members (young mothers) to teach them. They are surely a target group.

I asked what Marco thinks of other competitors in this space like Deadsocial, LivesOn and Legacy Locker, but he says that these services don’t focus on the emotional ties between loved ones. PassedOn is decidedly about preparing “for only the few people before you are not here anymore, and only they can see it at that time.” Google has also entered this space with its Death Manager today.

The project plans to do a UI refresh this month, release a new app in the beginning of May, and start a new service that allows people to email their pictures and data directly into the service.

Check out the video for more on the service:

LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) announced yesterday that it has reached the 200 million user milestone. And to mark the occasion, Linkedin released an infographic illustrating some insights about the company’s growth so far.

Drilling down to Asia, we can see that India is still the number one country in the region on LinkedIn, and is the fifth-ranked country overall with 18 million members. The fastest growing Asian country is Indonesia, which according to LinkedIn’s ad creation tool, has around 1.7 million members at the moment and is now the third ranked Asian region in terms of users. Surprisingly, China represents Asia’s second largest LinkedIn user base with around 2.8 million members.

It’s also worth noting that the most-followed person on LinkedIn is US president Barack Obama who briefly spent his childhood in Indonesia; he has 617,239 followers. Indian-American author Deepak Chopra MD is third overall with 372,903 followers.

Below is the new infographic in its entirety. You might also want to check out another recent infographic from LinkedIn about the most desired professions in Singapore. (Via TNW):

For more fun graphics like this one, check out previous entries in our infographic series.

LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) is announcing today that it has surpassed the one million user milestone in Malaysia. The company launched its Bahasa Malaysia language site late last year (along with Indonesian and Korean), and appears to be growing well since then.

The professional social network boasts a sign up rate in Malaysia which is faster than the global average of two new members per second.

According to LinkedIn’s own ad creation tool (which it disclaims is an approximation), Malaysia had a user base of more than 600,000 over a year ago, and in comparison to other regions around Asia, Malaysian users do indeed seem to be signing up fast. Indonesia, which also received language support last year, has over 1.3 million users according to the ad tool. The company says it passed 1 million users on February 21, 2012.

Of course, India is still the undisputed Asian champion of LinkedIn with around 18 million users (officially 17 million+ as of October 10, says LinkedIn). Interestingly, the network still hasn’t made much progress with Japanese users it seems (despite its past efforts), so it remains to be seen if the company will continue to push much there. As for Korea, it looks to have just over 300,000.

For the Asia Pacific region as a whole, LinkedIn has about 34 million members in total.

according to LinkedIn’s ad tool, approximate

Singapore, out of the 393 professionals surveyed, engineering and teaching took the top spots for males and females respectively. Below are some of the statistics of the most favored jobs in the country:

As for dream jobs like astronaut, artist, zoologist, or race car driver, those stood at 2.5 percent, 1.8 percent, 0.3 percent, and 1 percent respectively. I guess I wasn’t alone, standing side by side with the 1.3 percent wanting to become superheroes someday. And yes, people do dream of becoming princes or princesses (0.5 percent), and even ninjas (0.3 percent) too.

According to LinkedIn, we have some pretty awesome careers among the site’s members in Singapore. There are apparently 4,700 who are fashion stylists, 115 geologists, and two archaeologists residing here in Singapore.

It was also revealed that having a high salary is not the main allure of a dream job. In fact, more than 70 percent of the professionals surveyed said that “taking pleasure in your work” was most important, followed by “helping others.”

It’s interesting when schools opt for technology to find better solutions. As reported by The Times of India, the IIM-A has partnered with LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) to help connect its students to recruiters through the professional social network’s groups function.

To take advantage of this, students must have a LinkedIn account. So far, there are over 31,000 LinkedIn users at IIM-A.

Besides alumnus, the LinkedIn group will also include headhunters and recruiters. And as time passes, the group will become armed with a great network and resources for future graduates to tap into. It would be interesting to see if LinkedIn could follow this same approach for other colleges across Asia.

Coincidentally, I also stumbled upon a comment from LinkedIn’s APAC boss Arvind Rajan, calling the agreement, “A great partnership between IIM-A, Indian’s top business school, and LinkedIn.”

To date, LinkedIn has reported 17 million users in India.

[Source: Times of India]

Barack Obama & Mitt Romney are among suggested people to follow

Recently LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) announced a new feature that allows people to follow influential business and thought leaders of their choosing. These leaders will post articles from time to time, sharing their knowledge and professional insights. You can also comment on the articles, and if you’re lucky, the leaders might even reply back (though we think that is quite unlikely as these people are highly busy with their own daily businesses already).

There are articles on various topics already from the current 150 thought leaders. Among them, Kaifu Lee’s post about the reason American companies fail time and time again when expanding business to China is quite interesting. Startups might also be interested to hear about US-based entrepreneur Andrew Chen’s thoughts on the startup industry. Rakuten’s CEO Hiroshi Mikitani and Freelancer’s CEO Matt Brie are there too [1].

One crazy thought of mine though – will people spam the articles just to have the chance to send a message? For example, maybe Indonesians would send a lot of comments over LinkedIn if US President Barack Obama wrote articles regarding a controversial anti-muslim film. Would they do really do that? I certainly hope not.

LinkedIn is also open to people interested in becoming one of its thought leaders. You can check more information about it here. But who else would you like to see added? We’d love to hear from you about this.

[Source: LinkedIn]

According to Lee:

The average Chinese internet user is almost young enough to be the average American user’s son/daughter! That is why Chinese users tend to use less email and more IM, less e-commerce and more games, less search and more blogging.

He did admit, though, that his data comes from a study from “before mobile and SNS really took off in China” so those numbers are probably pretty old. Lee says he’ll be sharing more in the coming weeks. In the meantime, an interesting discussion seems to be taking off in the comments section and Mr. Lee has even personally responded to one comment, so head on over to the page and toss in your two cents!

Renren Vice President, Huang Jing(Middle)

Perhaps by now, most people realise what is the next wave in the internet industry. It’s mobile.

At Techweb’s IT Conference yesterday, Renren’s (NYSE:RENN) Vice President Huang Jing, and the deputy CEO of JingWei, Lee Youcai, shared some insights on how mobile will affect the landscape of China’s social networks, especially in the field of professional networking, where LinkedIn has been very successful. Huang says that China has the potential to replicate LinkedIn’s success, but he believes that mobile social networking is how China will answer, noting that 60 percent of Renren users are doing so from a mobile.

Almost everyone carries a mobile phone these days, and more and more people are using mobile to access the net. According to Huang, LinkedIn experienced 80 percent growth in China, and 111 percent in Indonesia where it has the biggest number of users in 2011. To date, China has approximately over one million LinkedIn users.

There are already quite a few LinkedIn clones in the market, such as Tianji, Dajie, Ushi, Zhenhedao, etc. And precisely because there are too many of such similar and perhaps mediocre products, users are confused and the market share is diluted. That’s probably why the professional social networking market has not developed in China.

Huang also feels that there is a need for a breakthrough product in the market and he commented that JingWei’s mobile name-card app is a positive indication that developers are still trying to fill this gap in the market and there are many possibilities. Weijing is basically a social media app created for business professionals. It is very similar to Youlu (YCard), another business-oriented app that collates name-card information onto your smartphone.

As the market shifts towards mobile, and there’s also a huge demand for a professional network, it won’t be long before we experience the next social media hit in China. Watch for it.

[Source: Image]

From time to time, startups do have to outsource some work to third-party vendors. It could be design, backend, or mobile expertise that a startup is looking for. But sometimes, it is hard to find a tried and tested development firm or freelancer to help you out. This is also where ContractIQ comes in, which describes itself as a service that curates “real-time credibility data about service providers.”

ContractIQ is a platform that helps you search for trusted development firms; the data is submitted by folks who have tried their service. But these aren’t any old Tom, Dick or Harry. Folks who recommend someone do so in a way that it’s tied to their LinkedIn accounts (pictured below). Co-founder Ashwin Ramasamy shares with me more about his startup service:

ContractIQ’s discovery engine runs on top of LinkedIn API. When a startup founder recommends an agency for a specific service (say, mobile app development), our engine automatically tells the recommender’s network that he/she has had a positive experience. The message is also broadcasted within the ContractIQ network. This gives the buyers, and us, a real-time feed of recommended agencies that can be further evaluated.

Recommendations for developers from folks who hired them, with links to the developers' LinkedIn profiles. Click to enlarge.

The evaluation process within ContractIQ is also a mixture of community-driven submissions and algorithms. Ramy reveals that there are a total of 54 differentiators to decide if a dev firm/agency is contextually relevant. After eight months, ContractIQ claims to have over 15 product engineering transactions, and 50 agencies across 11 countries using its service. Ramy says that all these are achieved based on word-of-mouth with zero spending on marketing.

ContractIQ does have some competitors such as freelance marketplaces like Elance. But the service looks promising as credentials and recommendations are highly curated through its community, algorithm, and also its deep integration with LinkedIn’s real-name professional social network.

On future plans, Ashwin tells me:

We just started with the discovery part now and we have much to innovate within ‘discovery’. We shall progressively expand the scope of the platform over the next 12 to 18 months. We are indeed open to strategic investments and are looking to expand our founding team.

I wish Ashwin and team the best of luck.

China-based professional social network, Ushi, shared some of its plans for the future today. And they are ambitious plans too, I think.

In the statement, Ushi said that it is looking to be profitable by 2013. And it is going to do it by providing human resources solutions to HR managers, helping them find talent across its network. Ushi’s core members are white collar workers, investors, HR managers, and entrepreneurs, so the product will be built to cater for this core group.

Regarding LinkedIn, Ushi believes that the U.S.-headquartered professional network isn’t working well in China. Ushi explains that LinkedIn’s “Do it yourself” model hasn’t been popular in China. In contrast, China-based Ushi claims it understands what professionals in the country really want and thus is “gradually gaining acceptance” in the market.

Ushi is also looking to the West for inspiration on how it could better engage with entrepreneurs and investors who are registered on its network. In fact, CEO Dominic Penaloza is currently in the U.S. discussing the possibility of working with AngelList closely. Penaloza said that Ushi has been studying how AngelList works, so it looks like there’s a fair chance that Ushi will have AngelList-like features in the future too. On a side note, there are in fact similar services in China, like AngelCrunch for example.

Personally, I’m not sure what exactly the communication goals are for Ushi. I would have thought most Chinese companies are usually silent about their strategic movements, so as not, to use a Chinese expression (“hit the grass and alert the snake“). But Ushi seems to be pretty transparent about its plans and I’m sure competitors are listening.

A month ago, you may recall, we reported that Ushi aims to raise $5 million this year.

I have been following this LinkedIn China group for quite some time. It keeps me updated on job movements in China, ranging from IT to financial roles. The group sends out email updates on job opportunities posted by recruiters. It also has a long list of career network subgroups for different regions and expertises too (see below).

The group was created and is managed by Thomas Zhou who is a partner at DaCare International, a firm that helps foreign companies recruit talent in China. It’s an interesting use of LinkedIn to get crowdsourced job postings focusing just on the Chinese market. Zhou’s LinkedIn profile also states that he is a “China LinkedIn/Social Media Strategist” who helps other companies better make use of the professional social networking platform.

The group announced recently that it has over 70,000 members which is a pretty healthy number considering its niche nature.

LinkedIn has about two million users in China. Though that is a small chunk of its total user count at 161 million, it does suggest that LinkedIn is a useful platform for China, especially when jobs are at the international level. While Facebook and Twitter are blocked in China – LinkedIn has an edge merely by still being accessible.

Tianji, a similar local service, previously told us that it is attracting 500,000 users each month which looks like a healthy growth figure. We haven’t heard much about Ushi which is another similar service in China.

In Asia, LinkedIn has offices in India, Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. We were told several times in the past by LinkedIn that China isn’t quite yet in the pipeline, though my gut feeling tells me otherwise. Anyway, if you’re on Linkedin, don’t hesitate to connect with me.

List of other subgroups:

• Shanghai Jobs & Career Network 上海工作机会，职业人士联盟 – http://linkd.in/J5mYjI
• Beijing Jobs & Career Network 北京工作机会，职业人士联盟 – http://linkd.in/J5n22P
• Shenzhen Jobs & Career Network 深圳工作机会，职业人士联盟 – http://linkd.in/J5n6j2
• Hong Kong Jobs & Career Network 香港工作機會，職業人士聯盟 – http://linkd.in/J5n8aC
• China Expat Job Network 老外找工作 – http://linkd.in/HOHgYD
• South China Career and Professional Network 华南职业人士联盟 – http://linkd.in/KyDlD5
• West China Career and Professional Network 中国西部工作机会和职业联盟 – http://linkd.in/KyDmad
• North China Career and Professional Network 华北职业人士联盟 – http://linkd.in/KyDpD4
• Central China Career and Professional Network 华中职业人士联盟 – http://linkd.in/KyDruu
• East China Career and Professional Network 华东职业人士联盟 – http://linkd.in/KyDtm9
• Taiwan Jobs & Career Network 台灣工作機會，職業人士聯盟 – http://linkd.in/KyDx5o
• China Hi-Tech & IT Job Openings 中国高科技人才招聘 – http://linkd.in/KyDzu9
• China Finance & Accounting Jobs Opening 中国金融人才招聘 – http://linkd.in/KyDFBU
• China Sales & Marketing Jobs Opening 中国市场营销人才招聘 – http://linkd.in/KyDG8V
• US, Canada Jobs & Career Network 北美地区工作机会，职业人士联盟 – http://linkd.in/KyDGWr
• Asia Jobs & Career Network 亚洲地区工作机会，职业人士联盟 – http://linkd.in/KyDNRX
• Europe Jobs & Career Network 欧洲地区工作机会，职业人士联盟 – http://linkd.in/KyDRks
• Australia, New Zealand Jobs & Career Network 澳洲地区工作机会，职业人士联盟 – http://linkd.in/KyDRRJ
• South America Jobs & Career Network 南美地区工作机会，职业人士联盟 http://linkd.in/KyDUgj
• Africa Jobs & Career Network 非洲地区工作机会，职业人士联盟 – http://linkd.in/KyDXJ7

The Hubblr dashboard now support's China's Renren (pictured) as well as Sina Weibo.

Last winter we looked at Hubblr, a dashboard for global social marketing that includes support for China’s Sina Weibo as well as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Back then it was in private beta. But now the startup’s founder, Michael Lam, informs us that it’s launching officially this week with lots of refinements and also brings support for brands to engage consumers on Renren, the Facebook-esque social network. Now that it’s fully open, Michael says that the Australian startup’s “target market is brands or organizations who engage with their customers in both Western and Chinese social networks.”

The main web app at Hubblr.com is where all the posting and analytics (pictured below) action happens, and the slick service is reminiscent of HootSuite – except that Hubblr includes China’s two hottest social media that have the kind of moneyed, blue collar workers that brands chase after. The startup has given us some stats from its beta testing period: over 200 organizations signed-up to make use of it; those beta users were managing over 2,200 social profiles with an average of 11 social profiles per organization that participated; and, users came from 15 countries, including China itself, Hong Kong, the U.S., Canada, Vietnam, and beyond.

The Hubblr team has also made some technical changes, such as fine-tuning its pricing system, which has three tiered packages that offer access to a greater number of profile pages. Also, Michael says:

We added representation in Hong Kong [and] migrated our solution across to Amazon Web Services to make it scalable.

Whether you’re a fellow startup that needs to reach out to Chinese consumers on Weibo or Renren, or a major brand with multiple campaigns to run, check out the Hubblr tour, and share your social marketing thoughts in the comments below.

One element of the social media analytics in Hubblr (Click to enlarge); Below is the new Renren login.

LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) has been making a strong push into Asia of late, showing impressive growth over the past year and establishing new regional offices, most recently one in Hong Kong. But India remains by far the biggest stronghold for the professional social network, and the company has announced today that it has officially passed the 15 million user mark in the country [1].

Hari V. Krishnan, the country manager for LinkedIn India commented on the milestone:

We are delighted to reach the 15 million member milestone. It demonstrates that professional networking is becoming increasingly important to Indian professionals. In just three years we have scaled our operations in India and our member base has grown by over 300 percent. We attribute this growth to the tools we have developed that help professionals to stay connected, gain insights for their businesses, bag that dream job and ultimately, realize their professional potential.

Besides India, LinkedIn doesn’t really have any staggering user figures in any country in particular, but rather appears to have chipped away at the Asia Pacific market country by country, gradually building its user base. After India, the network appears to be most popular in Australia, China (although it still hasn’t ‘officially’ entered China), the Philippines, and Indonesia.

LinkedIn has also been making a push into the Japanese market over the past few months, launching a LinkedIn Navi website to explain how the service works to Japanese users.

[Via Business Standard, photo: Near Shore Journal]

Back in February we told you about Beepmo, which at the time had just launched in public beta. The mobile service is billed as an Asia-focused location-based social network which targets professionals. By using information from your LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) account, it populates your Beepmo profile so you can use the service.

Despite the fact that Beepmo is just a few months old, we got word today from founder Simon Lower that the service will has partnered with the Next Bank Asia Conference (in Singapore, May 9th to 10th) to provide real-time, location-based professional networking to participants. He explains:

Beepmo was designed to help professionals expand their network and discover business opportunities around them. Beepmo really comes alive at events and conferences and we’re thrilled to be partnering Next Bank Asia.

According to the announcement, Next Bank Asia will be listed as a premium event in the Beepmo app. From there participants can browse the profiles of nearby attendees [1], as well as other important event information such as speaker lists and the event schedule.

Beepmo is currently available for iOS, Android, and Blackberry, so that should cover the majority of conference attendees, most likely. If you’d like to give the app a try on your own smartphone, you can check it out over on Beepmo.com.

As LinkedIn already has offices in India and Japan, the North Asia reference almost certainly refers to China where the network has over two million members, the third most in the Asia Pacific region after India and Australia. (Note that this is according to the LinkedIn’s ad tool, which I’m going to accept as an approximate indication of the actual regional member counts [1])

Overall in the Asia region, LinkedIn claims more than 25 million members as of early February – check the breakdown in the chart on the right – which is a significant portion of its 150 million members around the world.

When we spoke with the company’s APAC vice president Arvind Rajan back in February at out Startup Asia event, he noted that the company is “studying” and “thinking about” China, but doesn’t have a presence there yet, adding that it’s an exciting market where many western companies have tried and failed.

The Hong Kong office will have about a dozen local staff, according to the company’s announcement. You can check out LinkedIn’s own infographic about its Asia presence below, as well some characteristics about its membership in Hong Kong.

LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) is continuing its strong Asia push, having passed the 25 million user mark in the APAC region back in February. The service officially launched in Japan back in October, and opened an office there as well. And just yesterday the company launched a LinkedIn Navi site, in an effort to more fully explain the service to potential Japanese users.

The site can be accessed at jp.navi.linkedin.com, and from there users can find out what LinkedIn is, and how to use it and benefit from it. There is also a helpful video (see below) to break down what LinkedIn is about, as well as user interviews that shed some light on why the service is useful [1].

The idea of developing this sort of stand-alone ‘navi’ site is not a new one. Readers might recall that there was a similar sort of Navi Facebook site launched in Japan last year. Before that, there was howtotwitterinjapanese.com, although it has since gone offline.

Creating these sort of sites as a part of your localization strategy is an interesting tactic that I don’t recall seeing in many other regional markets. But you can’t hand-hold your users too much, so it’s definitely wise for LinkedIn – and any other company aspiring to enter Japan – to create a thorough, one-stop informative destination to educate new users.

Currently, LinkedIn’s own ad creation tool estimates there are about 426,000 members in Japan. So apparently the professional social network still has a lot of work to do. But this Navi site is certainly a good step towards reaching out to potential users in Japan.

We’ve been watching LinkedIn’s (NYSE:LNKD) growth in Asia over the past year or so. Just last month the network announced it had reached 25 million users in the Asia Pacific region. While the vast majority of those users are in India, the network is making progress in other Asian nations.

Today the company announced that it has just hit the one million members milestone in the Philippines. This brings the Southeast Asia’s representation on LinkedIn up to about four million. According to Clifford Rosenberg, the company’s managing director for Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia:

LinkedIn is about connecting the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful and this milestone demonstrates that professionals in the Philippines are interested, and in fact are already seeing significant benefit in building their online brands on LinkedIn.

There’s still lots of room to grow as well, as internet penetration in the country is growing year by year (see chart on the right) [1]. As of 2010 there were nearly 30 million internet users in the Philippines, and the current numbers might up around 35 million or even more.

According to LinkedIn, there are some interesting characteristics about its members in the Philippines thus far. The top industry represented among the one million members is ‘Information Technology and Services.’ LinkedIn also notes that there are 62,723 members with ‘entrepreneur’ in their title, which is a good sign for the business community.

20 million was the number of LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) users in Asia Pacific (APAC) last publicly announced. Just four months later, today, the figure has grown by 25 percent to 25 million. We were told that four million of the users originate from Southeast Asia. Singapore, though small, boosts about 700,000 members island-wide. The growth in Southeast Asia was likely triggered by LinkedIn’s recent language localization move, which provides users with LinkedIn in Indonesian, Bahasa Malaysia, and Korean languages.

There aren’t any plans for China so far, as Arvind Rajan, managing director and VP for Asia Pacific and Japan, said last week at coffee chat session at Startups in Asia 2012 (Singapore). But he did, however, shared that LinkedIn in China is growing as more Chinese are using the tool for hiring. There are more than one million LinkedIn users in China so far.

And for Japan, LinkedIn will have an engineering office specially for the Japanese language, which highlights LinkedIn dedication towards localization. Arvind explained in our discussion last week:

One of the things I’ve loved about LinkedIn is that we tend to be very entrepreneurial in the way we approach things. Growth has been impressive and exciting, especially in the APAC region.

India makes up the vast majority of the networks users in Asia, with over 13 million users, according to LinkedIn’s own ad tool.

Arvind Rajan, at our Startups in Asia event

All users have to do is to key in their LinkedIn login to start using the mobile app. Beepmo helps professionals to track other professionals who are nearby. If you find someone whom you wish to meet, simply connect with him/her, and then send a message to arrange a meeting/coffee. The app also has an “ice breaker” feature that helps you to find out who are your common friends on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. It could be said that Beepmo is like Badoo for professionals.

This app would come in handy at conferences where participants could use it to find and connect with other folks who are in the same area and also on Beepmo. It also has an event tab which helps users keep track of what conferences are coming up in the region. The app is well-designed and intuitive to use and I have no complains (for now) after using it for about an hour.

Beepmo just recently launched on February 1st, and is now available for iOS users. The Android and BlackBerry versions will soon be released. The founders behind Beepmo are Simon Lower and Mark White and their venture is funded by Greencloud Labs, a startup idea lab which they founded themselves.

Some of you might remember Simon Lower, who founded Soundbuzz, a Singapore-based digital music distribution site, which was later acquired by Motorola in early 2008. Lower explained to me the inspiration behind Beepmo:

First, the opportunity to build a mobile-centric social network for business professionals focused on Asia. We think the time is right for that. And second: the opportunity to disrupt the way people network at events and conferences – this really hasn’t changed for centuries! It still pretty much consists of a name badge and an outstretched hand.

We figured a service that used existing social networks like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter to show you what you share in common with people you’d like to meet, coupled with location, would be a powerful tool that both professionals and event organisers would want.

Reviewing Beepmo reminds me of China’s Zaizher which is another professional networking mobile app which depends on not LinkedIn but Sina Weibo for data. But Zaizher is solely focused on the Chinese-speaking market while Beepmo is aimed at English-speaking parts of the region, specially India, Australia, and Southeast Asia as a whole.

For iOS users, you can give Beepmo a try here (iTunes link) and let us know what you think in the comments.

Summary

Penn Olson founder Willis Wee talked with LinkedIn APAC VP Arvind Rajan about running LinkedIn like a startup. Arvind talked about how he focuses heavily on taking the time to hire the right team.

They also talked about LinkedIn’s expansion, which has kept Arvind on the road nearly 80 percent of the time over the past few months. As for the elephant in the room, China, they’re looking at it, but Arvind wouldn’t talk specific plans. He did suggest LinkedIn doesn’t see a “breakout” competitor there yet, though.

What advice did he have for startups? Focus your time. Be sure you’re spending most of your time on the most important problems and moving your business forward. Because you have to juggle so many balls at a startup, it’s easy to get bogged down in the unimportant things. Also, be careful about your team. You spend all day every day with them, so you don’t want to hire weak links, and you really don’t want to hire assholes.

Liveblog

#10:17: And that’s it for that session. Thanks folks. Check out the next one with Steven Goh of mig33, coming up immediately!

#10:16: The hardest part of working at a startup is prioritizing. Focus on high-value opportunities, especially low-risk high-value opportunities. Work on the stuff you really think is going to move the business forward.

#10:15: Tips for startups: Don’t expand too quickly. Test first and make sure you’ve got the model right. LinkedIn waited five years before they opened an office outside the US because they wanted to get it right. But once they figure things out, they expand quickly.

#10:14: Would you ever quit and try to build your own startup? “I’d never say no,” but he’s happy and engaged in LinkedIn for now, hasn’t thought that far down the road.

#10:13: Arvind says he hasn’t mingled with the startup crowd in Singapore much, in part because he’s on the road more often. “But as I build the team out [...] I’m looking forward to do more of that.”

#10:10: LinkedIn does have a recognizable brand, which can be a hiring advantage, but there are also people who prefer to build something. Sometimes startups have an advantage, too.

#10:09: “We want to make sure wherever you walk into a LinkedIn office…it still feels like the same culture. We spent an awful long time [...] talking about culture and values.”

#10:08: Languages? “I speak Tamil like a 3 year old, French like a 10 year old, and Spanish like a 5 year old.” No Chinese or Japanese though. So how do you manage an office if you don’t understand the languages? “It comes down to hiring the right people [...] we look to entrepreneurs to run our offices.”

#10:06: What’s exciting? Because Asian markets can be so different, we get to innovate. Also says he’s really enjoyed growing their markets in India. Australia also growing fast. “There’s a lot going on here!” LinkedIn’s focus is on professionals worldwide. 40 percent of them are in Asia. “We’re still at the very start of a journey in Asia” and that’s exciting.

#10:05: Are you here long term? Not really. “I think for now, I’ve got the most exciting job in the world.”

#10:05: Arvind hears from lots of clients, ‘we’re looking to hire more in China.’ So it China is important to lots of people.

#10:03: Why hasn’t LinkedIn been blocked in China? Advantage of context. People use LinkedIn for professional life; people don’t use it for politics. LinkedIn is about business, and that’s OK. “We have Chinese users connecting to professionals all over the world, and getting deals done.”

#10:01: Worried about competition in China? “I wouldn’t say that we’re not worried [...] but we haven’t seen anyone break out yet.” What about Tianji? “They’ve done OK [...] I wouldn’t say they’ve received a lot of success. But we don’t discount them.”

#10:00: “We’re thinking about it [but] we don’t have a presence there yet,” Arvind says on China. Big competitors there too: Tencent, Renren, Weibo. Says no one on the professional side that has achieved significant scale yet though.

#10:00: What about China? China is difficult. But exciting. Scale and scope impressive, but it’s a market where many Western companies have failed. ‘So at this point we’re studying and thinking about it.’ No official Chinese version yet.

#9:59: Localized development is going to be the approach in Japan, Arvind says they’ll be taking that approach elsewhere as well.

#9:57: Japan is LinkedIn’s newest Asian office. Arvind says he’s on the road around the Asian offices a lot, 65-75% of the time. Plus he’s looking at new markets around Asia. Which new markets, asks Willis. Arvind dodges.

#9:55: No exact numbers, but LinkedIn has “roughly half of the professional workforce” in Singapore.

#9:55: One challenge in Singapore is finding talent, as unemployment here is very low and competition for talent is fierce. But, of course, they can find people through LinkedIn. “We only use LinkedIn for hiring.”

#9:54: “I don’t want to hire assholes.” In LinkedIn, as in a startup, you just spend too much time together with the people you work with. Hiring jerks can be a big problem.

#9:53: Remember, hard refresh your browser to see the latest updates!

#9:53: “The biggest single thing I think about every day is finding the right talent [...] it’s easy and tempting to hire the first warm body you see, and I think it’s always a mistake.”

#9:51: Do you like Singapore? Arvind says it’s hot, but yes, he does. And it’s so convenient!

#9:51: “One of the things I’ve loved about LinkedIn is that we tend to be very entrepreneurial in the way we approach things.” Growth has been impressive and exciting, especially in the APAC reason.

#9:50: What makes LinkedIn APAC like a startup? They hire very slowly and carefully. Building the right team is paramount.

#9:49: LinkedIn APAC: offices in India, Japan, Singapore, Australia. But Arvind says they’ve got users everywhere, and are adding languages. Singapore team has grown from six people, now approaching twenty.

#9:47: Arvind: One of the challenges of working in Singapore, where he is now based, is that the time zone difference is rough when he has to communicate with offices in the US.

#9:47: This session is a discussion between Penn Olson founder Willis Wee and Arvind Rajan, the managing director and VP of LinkedIn for APAC and Japan.

The Infographic of the Day series visually expresses important stories from Asia and the world of technology.

Motivated. Dynamic. Innovative. Three much-used – indeed, overused – adjectives on many people’s CVs. There are other resumé regulars, too – such as “interpersonal skills,” “track record” – that have become cliché and tiresome, used unthinkingly, and which are blasts from the past that really ought to be avoided like the plague and used few and far between. D’oh!

LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD), the business-oriented social network, has picked through the buzzwords on the profiles of its 135 million users worldwide and found which words and phrases and most overused in each region. Users in Singapore seem most fond of the term “track record” in a presumed bid to show that they are long-serving experts in their fields.

Before looking at the infographic, LinkedIn got Chan Ngee Key, a career Coach and strategist at YourOwn360, to give some advice to users on avoiding such trite turns of phrase:

Competition for opportunities can be fierce, so craft your LinkedIn profile to stand out from the professional pack. Some objectives you should keep in mind are: Banish buzzwords from your profile. Use language that illustrates your unique professional accomplishments and experiences. Give concrete examples of results you’ve achieved whenever possible and reference attributes that are specific to you.

Singapore’s top ten trotted-out buzzwords are:

1. Track record
2. Motivated
3. Effective
4. Creative
5. Dynamic
6. Innovative
7. Problem solving
8. Communication skills
9. Extensive experience
10. Interpersonal skills

Malaysia, Indonesia and Korea represent a huge growth area in Asia and we’re tremendously excited to help millions of local professionals establish their professional identity and network. The addition of three new languages is the latest step in our strategy of making LinkedIn a more relevant experience for our growing professional member base around the world. We believe there is a lot we can learn from our local members that will also benefit our global member base.

LinkedIn has also provided us with the user breakdown in the respective countries:

• More than 800,000 professionals in Indonesia
• Nearly 300,000 professionals in Korea
• Nearly 700,000 professionals in Malaysia

LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) already has more than 135 million users worldwide, 20 million of whom are in Asia. After opening its Singapore and Japan offices, LinkedIn continues to push hard to be a truly globalized company by today introducing three more local languages in Asia — Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malaysia, and Korean.

With the additional of these three new localizations, it makes LinkedIn available in 14 different languages. In fact, Arvind Rajan, MD and VP for Asia Pacific and Japan, actually blogged about the news on the official LinkedIn blog yesterday. He commented:

The launch of the local languages will better support the growing number of professionals joining LinkedIn. Local language availability often precipitates a whole new generation of LinkedIn members locally, enhancing the experience for the entire community. The member base in Asia Pacific is growing and we believe LinkedIn has a massive opportunity for growth here.

For sure, Asia has massive opportunities for any company who cares to localize. And I’m particularly pressing hard to find out when LinkedIn is going to introduce Chinese on its platform. But of course, LinkedIn hasn’t revealed anything whenever I’ve asked the team that question before.

Meanwhile, its competitor in China, Tianji, recently told us that its professional network is growing very quickly, picking up 100,000 new users each month in the middle kingdom alone. Assuming that LinkedIn’s growth isn’t as strong as Tianji’s, that news must have given LinkedIn some pressure to structure a proper growth plan in China. So it is safe to assume that LinkedIn – one of the very few foreign social network sites to not be blocked there – is studying China very closely. But when it will execute its plan is still a mystery.

Anyway, rejoice for Korea, Malaysia, and Indonesia – have fun with the new localized LinkedIn site. That also makes me wonder if Singapore will have a localized LinkedIn built on Singlish. Unfortunately, I don’t think so!

Arvind Rajan, LinkedIn’s Managing Director for the Asia Pacific region is an experienced entrepreneur, corporate leader, and also an advisor. And we’re of course glad to have him at Startup Asia Singapore held on 3 February 2012 for a coffee chat, not at Starbucks but live on stage.

I met Arvind a couple of times just to chat and to get to know him better as a friend. He is a nice chatty guy and also a person I go to when I need advice.

When in our chats, one of the many questions I asked him was why he had actually decided to move to Singapore to head LinkedIn’s operation in Asia. It isn’t at all an easy step to take, leaving U.S. Nonetheless he did it, made the move, and is now loving Singapore.

On his decision, Arvind’s reply to me was that he wanted the challenge. While LinkedIn is now a listed corporation, its Singapore office, which was formed just this year, functions pretty much like an agile startup.

Arvind has to built everything from scratch just like an entrepreneur but with more resources — Choosing an office space, hiring, managing, and driving performance. The Singapore office is just one of many challenges. This year, we also saw LinkedIn setting up a new office in Japan and it is safe to expect Arvind and his team to make moves to other parts of Asia in 2012.

One thing that I haven’t really asked was how he has actually managed LinkedIn Singapore/Asia so far. As Arvind has the DNA of an entrepreneur (He co-founded Grassroots Enterprise which was then acquired by Edelman after building it for nine years) and with a small team I would expect LinkedIn Singapore to function very much like a Startup.

And beside LinkedIn, I will also pick Arvind’s thoughts on the culture, entrepreneurs, and opportunities that he is seeing in Asia so far. Who knows? Perhaps Arvind may decide to run another startup in Asia after seeing a good opportunity in this continent? I know he wouldn’t rule out that possibility. But it will surely be exciting to hear him live on stage at Startup Asia Singapore on 3 Feb 2012.

More Startup Asia Coffee Chat Preview

• Raising Capital, Generating Revenue, and the God Damn Exits!
• Co-founder of 55Tuan To Discuss China and Entrepreneurship at Startup Asia Singapore

There are a lot of social media dashboards out there that try to bring together your social missives, but only one includes integration with China’s hippest social network – that’s Hubblr.

It’s a brand-new, enterprise-oriented web app from an Australian start-up that’s aimed at making PR and online marketing across the globe – including China – a safer and slicker experience.

Hubblr’s CEO and co-founder, Michael Lam (pictured right), gave me a guided tour over Skype, and then we coincidentally ran into each other again at TC Disrupt Beijing last week, giving me ample time to get a feel for the service.

Right now, Michael says, it’s in private beta and free – but it will launch soon and come ready with a number of packages for brands to do their global marketing and PR. Apart from multi-posting to Twitter, Facebook, Sina Weibo, and LinkedIn, it also features analytics, a profanity filter, one-click translation, embedded image viewing, scheduling, and some advanced gizmos for marketing professionals to follow-up on individual tweets. They’re also “working on Renren and Tencent Weibo” integration.

Hubblr is, he tells me, a spin-off from Cornerstone Tech, and is “now boot-strapping, looking for funding.”

Weibo Marketing to China

The main Hubblr dashboard, showing a mix of tweets from Twitter and Sina Weibo.

Asked what Hubblr offers, he says, “It’s aimed at global brands who operate in China. It gives them visibility. Plus, it’s real-time and instantaneous, and gives brands immediate feedback.” Michael adds:

It can prevent a PR disaster by blocking swearing, and you can add any words to monitor, such as your brand name – or even a misspelling of your brand name.

The stats and analytics begin from a user’s first day on Hubblr, and include monitoring of posting levels and follower counts.

The last time we looked at corporate use of social media across Asia, we found that microblogs – i.e. Twitter and Weibo – were now second only to broader social networks such as Facebook in terms of them being used for engaging with consumers. But, in China, a brand’s presence on Sina or Tencent Weibo is now arguably more essential than being on, say, Renren.

Simul-Posting Dashboard

Hubblr analytics allow you to visualize followers, engagement, activity, etc.

The Hubblr post box allows single or multi-posting to numerous social networks.

Aware that his start-up risks getting blocked in China, Michael has “implemented an IP filter” so that it cannot post to Twitter and Facebook for users in China. And so the emphasis is firmly on enterprise users overseas reaching out to Chinese consumers, and not for individuals looking to tweet behind the GFW (as HootSuite and Seesmic used to be able to do, before Net Nanny blocked them).

Personally, I don’t think it’s a good idea to multi-post the exact same thing to different social networks – especially not if there’s a language barrier between the two. But that’s not an issue on Hubblr, as it can be used as a launchpad for posts to any social network either separately or simultaneously, and you still get the benefits of the other features. That means an overseas company can easily manage its Sina Weibo account, despite the original site not having an English localisation.

If you’re with a company and would like to take Hubblr for a blast, click the link to reveal the Hubblr email address and fire them an email with “Penn-Olson invite” in the subject – you’ll be given priority access to the private beta.

We all knew this was coming from news earlier this year, but we were a bit taken by surprise just now to learn that LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) held a press conference today to announce its Japanese launch as well as its new office in Tokyo.

The AP quotes LinkedIn’s head of operations in the Asia Pacific region, Arvind Rajand, as saying:

We think there are tremendous opportunities for growth not only in Japan but in entire region … If you look at LinkedIn’s business as a whole around the world, we feel we’re still just scratching the surface.

Arvind has a post on the LinkedIn blog today describing the news as well.

A quick revisit to LinkedIn’s own ad-generator tool (which we will assume is relatively accurate) shows that LinkedIn still doesn’t even have half a million users in Japan (418,848 users, according to our latest check). That’s a gain of about 50,000 users, since we last checked four months back.

As for the rest of Asia, India still accounts for the majority of the region’s users, with over 12,000,000 LinkedIn users. Next is China, with about 1.7 million. The total for Asia user count sits at 19,640,610.

As we told you earlier today, Penn Olson is now one of featured publications listed on LinkedIn Today. And while our readers span the entire globe, I thought I’d revisit some of LinkedIn’s user numbers for Asia, to see how many of the network’s 120 million users are representin’ the east side (so to speak.)

When I last peeked in back at the end of June, India was the big outlier with over 10 million users, which (assuming that LinkedIn’s figures are reliable) accounts for more than half the users in the entire Asia region. Factoring in the added users since that time, India is still by far the big story for LinkedIn in Asia at 11 million strong and still growing.

But let’s take India out of the equation for a moment, so we can get a closer look at everyone else. China holds second place pretty comfortably, with over 1.5 million total users. Now those aren’t big ‘China numbers’ by any stretch, but it is a significant chunk of LinkedIn’s base in Asia. And if the past six weeks are any indication, the figure is still growing.

It’s also worth noting that there are nearly 2.4 million LinkedIn users in Australia and nearly half a million in New Zealand (not charted). The service is still doing pretty poorly in Japan with about 400,000 users, but it is working to make inroads there as well.

In any case, no matter where you are, if you’re on LinkedIn we hope that you check us out over there. And if you have some feedback or tips, feel free to drop us a line.

[Data sourced from LinkedIn Ad Tool, June 30, Aug 17]

We’ve been live on the site since late last week and we’re seeing some of our readers already connecting with us on LinkedIn Today. If you’re an avid LinkedIn user and reader of our blog, head over there to give us a follow. Our team thanks you in advance.

Just for your information, here’s a video by LinkedIn which will give you some tips on how to use LinkedIn Today efficiently and effectively.

Other free subscription channels:

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Tip: Follow our feeds based on country or author. You can search for the country and author on our site and the RSS feed link is available right at the top. Here are some examples:

• By country – China | Indonesia | India | Japan
• By Author – Rick Martin | Steven Millward | Charlie Custer

They revealed several interesting statistics. Of the 80 million Indians online, one-third of them are on social media sites. Breaking down the stats, there are about:

• 28 million Facebook users
• 9 million Twitter users
• 9 million LinkedIn users in India.

Social media is so popular among Indian Internet users that consulting firms in the country will hire 35 percent of their staff from LinkedIn and other social sites online. Plus, on the personal side, 13 million Indians use social media media to research on their future partners.

We have also previously written how hospitals in India are using social media to build awareness and educate people on health related topics. Social media is also used to fight against corruption and celebrate Cricket games and victory online. So much so that start-ups like Twtbuck, a social media advertising platform rode on the popularity to achieve success. Even the Indian Cricket Premiere League and Bollywood movies are streamed-live on YouTube.

India is a fascinating country for Internet lovers. Check out the video below to find out more.

Derek Ling, CEO and founder of Tianji

Derek Ling is the CEO and founder of Tianji, the largest professional social networking site (SNS) in China with over 6 million registered users.

Prior to Tianji, Derek was at Motorola to lead the company’s market entry strategy and business development in Greater China. He also served as Apple’s Director of Business Development for Greater China and was responsible for building iPod and education markets in China. He was also the former Vice President at Sina. In this interview, Derek shared with us about Tianji and also the professional social network market in China

1. In your view, what is Tianji and why should people join your network?

Tianji provides Chinese people with a platform to build and maintain their professional networks and to look for career and business opportunities. It’s a place to build their professional identities and to promote themselves, so that opportunities find them. We don’t want it to be simply a site for people looking to get something, but rather somewhere that people can be part of a community.

Most of our members are mid to upper mid-level professionals, ranging from 25 to 40 in age. We have a younger target audience than you might find in other markets. For comparison, LinkedIn’s average age is 43. However, in China, people above 40 are generally less Internet savvy and thus not our ideal target market.

2. What inspired you to create Tianji in China?

The original inspiration came from a realization that professionals in China, unlike their U.S. counterparts, get very little help throughout their career development. Tianji was created to help young professionals connect with like-minded elites of the business world.

From my experience as a VP at Sina, I could see that there was tremendous potential for the Chinese market. We understood that there was real value in a Chinese-focused platform that could help professionals keep in touch and leverage a broad base of relationships. The problem was that nothing in the Chinese market could provide this kind of value. It’s been truly exciting building a base of six million users, and the future looks even better.

3. Do you see yourself as the “LinkedIn of China”?

We feel that the best way for us to succeed in such a unique market is for us to be ourselves. We make great efforts to ensure that our services are specifically tailored to the needs of Chinese professionals.

China is traditionally a connection based society. Everyone knows about the concept of “guanxi,” but it means something totally different in the modern world than it did even 20 years ago. People understand that having three close friends who are well connected, and going to bars and KTV with them is not enough to succeed in modern China. We have worked hard to ensure that Tianji provides our users with a solution for a better way to stay connected in an increasingly complicated and geographically diverse landscape.

4. How does Tianji differentiate itself from similar services?

The value of a professional social networking is the quality of the users and contacts that you can make. We have 6 million registered users, more than any other site in China, and our monthly increase of new users has doubled since the start of the year to 200,000. Our users have access to a broader range of professionals than any other site can offer.

In addition, we target people who already have a few years of working experience. In fact, 90% of our users are age 24-40. We believe that these professionals are best positioned to provide and take value from the site. What I mean by this is that Tianji users are at a stage in their careers where they have something to offer to their peers—adding value—but are also eager to make connections, which draws them to the site—taking value.

The strategy has been highly successful, with 58% of our network reporting that they are management level.

Tianji's homepage

5. What are the obstacles you faced while building a professional social network in China?

It has taken some time for Chinese users to get comfortable with social networking sites that require real identities. When we started in 2005, Chinese users still treated the Internet as a virtual environment and were very hesitant to publish their real names and identities. Only in recent years have users in China begun to get comfortable with the idea of their real identity being on the Internet, which has been largely spurred by the gradual maturation of social networking services.

Professional social networking sites have taken a little longer, but the recent growth has been tremendous. The best analogy is China’s e-commerce sector. In the U.S, Ebay and Amazon were already widely used in the late 1990s. Meanwhile, it is only much more recently that the big sites in China have taken off. However, once people got used to the idea of e-commerce, the sector has been on fire.

While professional SNS is taking hold later than e-commerce, Tianji is now seeing a huge ramp up in new users and we are experiencing hockey-stick growth.

6. How many total registered users and active users are on Tianji now? Are there any non-local users using Tianji?

Tianji has six million registered users, significantly more than any other professional SNS in China. About 15% of the users are active, as defined as logging in at least twice per month.

Part of the value of Tianji is that we really focus on the local market and work to create a product that is particularly appealing and useful to the Chinese professional. This means that we have focused our energy on the Chinese-speaking audience exclusively. We want to make sure that we have a Chinese platform that does what it’s supposed to do, so that’s been our emphasis.

Having said that, we definitely also have Chinese speaking professionals in our network who live and work in other markets.

7. We understand that Tianji is part of the Viadeo Group. How does the partnership work for Tianji? What are the benefits?

It was a great opportunity for us in 2009 when Viadeo Group purchased us. The company has an excellent global track record and is the leading professional SNS company for non-English markets throughout the world. Viadeo has been revenue positive since 2009, which has given Tianji the opportunity to focus on growing our user base and the quality of services. It has been a truly great experience.

8. What is the business model? Is the company profitable?

Tianji is part of the Viadeo Group, a professional SNS, which globally has more than 35 million users. Viadeo Group is the biggest global professional SNS company for non-English markets. You’ve probably seen the Viadeo button in the space for SNS sharing links on the bottom of articles for the Financial Times and other prominent outlets.

Viadeo Group has been profitable since 2009 by tapping into three different avenues of revenue. The first source is subscriptions, which has been highly successful and brings the largest percentage of our revenue. Our two other sources of revenue have been advertising and recruiting, which have also performed quite well.

9. LinkedIn recently went IPO and could be expanding into China. Any thoughts?

It’s great to see that people are finally recognizing the massive potential for China’s professional SNS market. Since we first started operations in 2005, there have been at least 20 professional SNS platforms that have come and gone. We are proud that we have emerged from this early period of fierce competition as China’s market leader.

10. Tianji is the largest professional social networks in China with 6 million users. What steps do you plan to maintain the lead and growth?

Six million users is a great accomplishment, but that’s really just a baseline for us. We have exciting plans for new ways to allow people to find relevant connections and to grow our user base even faster. We’re seeing 200,000 new users a month now, up by 100% for the beginning of the year, and we only see that acceleration going forward. Tianji will continue to create a better experience for our users, which will help us reach our target of 10 million users by the end of 2011.

Last night, together with a group of tech friends in Singapore, I attended a meet-up session with Arvind Rajan, the APAC Head at LinkedIn .

It was a casual session, and also a way for Rajan to understand the technology (and political) scene in Singapore and Asia. Rajan briefly shared a little about LinkedIn’s history and how he ended up in Asia. The rest of the session was totally casual, no scoops (unfortunately), and no hard-sell PR bullshit (thumbs-up go out to the folks at Edelman for an event well done).

When politics was the topic on the table I was mostly listening quietly, but I got a little more active when tech and entrepreneurship became the talking point. I was very glad that Arvind was open to share his experience as an entrepreneur.

He started his journey as an entrepreneur at age 22 dealing with electric cars, and eventually his company was acquired. He also founded Grassroots, an interactive public affairs firm that develops marketing and influencer programs for Fortune 500 companies. It was eventually acquired by Edelman.

I was surprised to discover that LinkedIn is the first major corporation he has ever worked at. He explained that he took on LinkedIn’s APAC role because he enjoys working in a start-up-like environment. And now that LinkedIn Singapore is hiring, the company is busy building a team and taking on exciting new challenges.

For fellow entrepreneurs, I noted the tips that I heard from Arvind’s discussion and have summarized them below:

1. Be fair, not tough

I shared with Arvind that in my previous company people respected me but at the same time were scared of me. I played the “slave driver” role while my partner was the connector and the person to go to when there were problems. I explained that it is difficult to balance being tough and being a friend. Arvind’s advice was to be fair. Employees need to know that decisions are made out of logical business reasons and have nothing personal against them.

2. Set targets, monitor

Whenever a new employee joins the team, it is important to communicate the goal. What do you want a new member to achieve in the next 30 to 45 days? Communicate that to him. He will have a better view of what is expected. It sounds like no-brainer but it’s something that a lot of companies aren’t doing.

3. Hire fast, fire faster

Hiring fast is tough. But firing fast is tougher. Often, entrepreneurs and managers have a gut feeling if someone isn’t working well within a team. But we often ignore and dismiss this gut feeling which only drags the problem further. If someone isn’t working well, communicate with him the gap between your goal and what he is currently achieving. If needed, dismiss him straight if the goal wasn’t met. Of course, tip number one applies. Arvind emphasized the need to treat employees with respect, even when firing. Check out this article from TechCrunch too.

4. Build value, not for acquisition:

A lot of start-ups are built with the aim to be acquired. But Arvind said that acquisition is just one out of many exit options. There are just too many variables like competition and market need that would affect the chance of being acquired. In other words, getting acquired isn’t something that can be controlled. He said that start-ups should first build value and make the company profitable. With the foundation established, there are many options available like IPO, expansion and even acquiring other businesses.

In the same statement it was revealed that LinkedIn has 18 million users in the Asia Pacific region, with a significant number of users in India and Australia. Visitors from Asia Pacific increased by 132 percent from March 2010 to March 2011, according to LinkedIn citing a comScore report.

LinkedIn’s Singapore office will manage key markets in India and Australia while seeking to expand to other countries in Asia . LinkedIn also said in the statement that it is set to open a Japan office later this year.

Arvind Rajan, Managing Director and Vice-President for Asia Pacific and Japan explained:

These are exciting times for LinkedIn. Our membership across Asia Pacific is being driven by professionals using LinkedIn to network, build their online brand, gain insights from the community and find new career or business opportunities.

We intend to focus our efforts on delivering the best product experience for our members in their careers, the brand marketers who want to reach them, and the recruiters who are looking to hire the best talent.

Earlier this month, at CHINICT, a technology conference in Beijing, Rajan also indicated interest in bringing LinkedIn to China but remained cautious with his approach. “LinkedIn will not jump in and provide something that won’t be successful,” he said.

Note: We’ll have more updates on yesterday’s meet up with Rajan and other tech folks later in the day.

Advertisers can create Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn marketing campaigns on Twtbuck.

The campaigns are tailored according to their needs such as geographical location targeting, category targeting, maximum cost per click and ad copy.

It saves advertisers the hassle of having to go to each individual platform to manage their campaigns. It also saves the trouble of having to find digital influencers to help spread the words. At Twtbuck, it is a one-stop-shop for social media advertising. Campaigns can even go live within few minutes after customization.

“We work with a number of advertising agencies to help them with customized social media campaigns, providing 50,000-100,000 clicks a month for their clients,” explained Gaurav Sharma, CEO and founder of Twtbuck.

The task can’t be completed without publishers such as influential bloggers and Twitter users. Publishers have to simply register with Twtbuck and start spreading the available ads on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google Buzz to earn revenue based on a per click rate.

“We give our publishers 50% cut from advertisers’ spending, 3% goes to payment gateway, 5% goes to affiliates (users referring publishers/advertisers). So our gross margin comes around 42%-47% . The business is profitable since January 2011. And going by our recent partnerships and campaign orders, we are eyeing a monthly revenue of $20,000 for month of June,” said Sharma, when asked about his business model.

Sharma also revealed that Twtbuck currently serves 416 advertisers, 21,000+ publishers and four agencies/ad networks.

From Banker to Entrepreneur

Twtbuck started as an experiment. During April last year, Sharma was testing this concept on his own blog and websites. Surprisingly it produced amazing results. And the results got better even when he was busy with his full time job at an investment bank. The positive results gave Sharma confidence to leave his high paying job and move full time to Twtbuck.

“The increasing cost-per-click rates on Google, Facebook, and Linkedin and lack of advertising options on Twitter inspired us to create Twtbuck,” explained Sharma.

Sharma now spearheads the Twtbuck team together with four engineers and two sales people. The team is currently based in Delhi, India and Sharma said that he will be traveling to Singapore this June to explore opportunities to start a sales office in Singapore.

It has been a period of growth and profitability and naturally, investors are eager to invest in the start-up.

“We were very close to signing a deal with an investor in December 2010 but the term sheet conditions were not suitable hence didn’t go for funding at that stage. And at the present, we are in talks with four Venture Capital funds and 2 angels [investors] and will be finalizing our investor by the end of July,” said Sharma.

Investing in Twtbuck looks like an attractive deal. Let’s see if Twtbuck can keep up with its current growth rate and attain success if it expands to Singapore.

Marketing Interactive confirmed the news and reported that the office will be located at Marina Boulevard, near Microsoft Singapore. So far, LinkedIn Singapore is looking for folks with experience in advertising, finance or human resource:

• Marketing Director – APAC
• Account Director – Marketing Solutions
• Financial Controller – APAC
• Financial Planning & Analysis Manager – APAC
• Human Resources Director – APAC

LinkedIn Singapore’s office will focus on sales. No engineering-based job has been offered yet. It’s pretty much the same for Google and Facebook Singapore where sales is of primary focus.

Besides Singapore, LinkedIn also has strong interest in Japan and China. LinkedIn’s efforts in Asia will be spearheaded by Arvind Rajan who joined the company in 2008. He now leads the company’s initiatives and efforts in markets outside the United States and Europe.

Prior to joining LinkedIn, Rajan co-founded Grassroots Enterprise, an interactive public affairs firm where he developed pioneering online grassroots marketing and influencer programs for Fortune 500 companies. He spent nine years with the firm, where he served as Vice President of Business Development, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Executive Officer before it was acquired by Edelman Public Relations.

This announcement was made after Joi Ito’s who is also a Co-founder and Director at Digital Garage. Reid Hoffman, CEO at LinkedIn , is also part of Digital Garage’s advisory board since 2007.

As far as I can see, LinkedIn has all the needed connections to be successful in Japan. However, Japan’s unique anonymity culture on the Internet could prove to be the biggest barrier for LinkedIn, as professional web consultant and TechCrunch writer, Serkan Toto explained:

Historically, all business social networks in Japan have had a hard time establishing themselves in the market. In fact, there is not even a single social network of this kind with critical mass in Japan, for a number of reasons (the biggest being the general tendency in Japan to stay anonymous online whenever possible).

Unlike U.S, social networks in Japan (including game networks like Mobage ) thrive in a sea of anonymous users. It is also a key reason why Facebook, which builds on real identities, isn’t gaining steam in Japan. While Twitter, to a certain extend, gain popularity because users can choose to stay anonymous. It remains to be seen if LinkedIn can be the first successful real-identity network in Japan.

LinkedIn’s Value Proposition

One advantage LinkedIn has over Facebook is its value proposition: LinkedIn could provide Japanese with business contacts abroad, an offer certainly more valuable than Facebook’s.

Plus, other social networks like Mixi and Twitter are good Facebook-replacements in Japan. LinkedIn’s value proposition remains unique in Japan and could achieve success if it plays to its strength. In other words, Digital Garage is taking on an important role to ensure Japanese professionals understand how LinkedIn can make a difference in their work. The task is certainly more than just providing a Japanese LinkedIn site for the users.

“Japan is one of the most professional network oriented business environments in the world and LinkedIn has enormous potential to increase productivity of individuals and organizations in Japan and help Japan in its global context,” said Joi Ito.

With the right connections, value offered to users, and execution, there is a good chance that LinkedIn will succeed in Japan. I look forward to see how LinkedIn will take on this challenge (what an excitement!).

Arvind Rajan, LinkedIn’s international vice president, said at a technology conference in Beijing today that China has 100 million professionals, which is equivalent to the company’s current number of users. While China looks lucrative, Rajan said that LinkedIn “will not jump in and provide something that won’t be successful.”

Although LinkedIn doesn’t have a local site dedicated for Chinese professionals, Rajan revealed that foreign companies are actively looking for Chinese companies while Chinese companies use LinkedIn to look for opportunities abroad.

Update: A spokesperson emailed us that the technology conference referred by Bloomberg was CHINICT.

China, a tough market

China has proven to be a tough market for Western companies. While LinkedIn has Joi Ito, to help bring the service to Japan I wonder who would be the key figure or company to bring LinkedIn to China. Competition from local professional social networks like Ushi and Tianji (which claims to be the number one professional social network in China) would also pose some challenge.

Hopefully, we can get Arvind Rajan to answer some of our questions when we meet up for an event this coming Tuesday.

[Source: Bloomberg]

So, this is my last “real job” before I transition over completely to the Media Lab role: helping to launch LinkedIn in Japan. And we’re looking for the best talent out there. We need an awesome, dedicated team to run LinkedIn in Japan. This team will be responsible for the strategy, product roadmap, and growth in Japan – this the chance to be highly entrepreneurial while having the strength of a global brand behind your team.

LinkedIn recently hit the 100 million user milestone and is expanding in areas outside the US and Europe. Vincenzo Cosenza, who whipped up this wonderful infographic, cites LinkedIn’s own ad creation tool in putting Japan’s current user total at just over 300,000.

Ostensibly this expansion effort would give LinkedIn Japanese language localization, which should go a long way to bringing non-English speaking Japanese people into the LinkedIn community.

Out of the 100 million, 56 million users are based outside the United States. LinkedIn also said that India is one of the fastest growing countries with a 76 percent annual growth rate in 2010.

In absolute terms, India has over 9 million users while other prominent LinkedIn Asian countries include China and Australia has about one million and 1.94 million users, respectively.

Thanks to China, LinkedIn was able to celebrate its 100 million milestone earlier. The professional social network site was banned during late February, last month. Fortunately, the ban was short-lived and access to the site was regained within just 2 days. Chinese professionals heaved a sigh of relief as the ban was lifted. With Twitter and Facebook blocked, LinkedIn naturally became the only social platform to connect with the world.

LinkedIn users are still largely from U.S and Europe. It isn’t very popular among Asians. However, Singapore seems to be the outlier country. Despite a total population of just 5 milliion, the island-nation has more than 1 million LinkedIn users. That is equivalent to 20 percent of all Singaporeans.

Enjoy the infographic designed by our friend, Vincenzo Cosenza:

Connect on Facebook:

“We’re now seeing indications that access to the LinkedIn service has been restored in China,” said Hani Durzy, LinkedIn’s spokesman.

Aileen Meng, a friend of mine from Beijing told me that she could access LinkedIn since last Saturday. “It is lucky that LinkedIn isn’t really blocked in China. Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn is a professional social communication platform. There isn’t a need to block it actually,” she said.

With more than 90 million members, LinkedIn describes itself as the world’s largest professional network on the Internet. Professionals in China also use LinkedIn as means to connect with professionals abroad. With Facebook and Twitter blocked, LinkedIn is the next best service that allows Chinese to stay connected with the world.

“We can confirm that access to LinkedIn is being blocked for some in China. This appears to be part of a broader effort in China going on right now, involving other sites as well,” company spokesman Hani Durzy told AFP.

Many LinkedIn groups were set up to discuss on the pro-democracy protests currently spreading through the Middle East. The messages could have spread too widely via LinkedIn and caught the attention of Chinese netizens. With Facebook and Twitter both banned in China, LinkedIn is naturally the next best platform for Chinese to participate in such discussions.

“I am almost certain that it (LinkedIn) was blocked because there were so many messages related to the calls for Jasmine protests,” said Jeremy Goldkorn, editor of the Beijing-based China media website danwei.org, which also is blocked by censors.

Just-ping.com reflected that LinkedIn is unavailable in Shanghai and Beijing. The block is an ongoing censorship effort by the Chinese government to prevent the similar uproar within the country. Facebook and Twitter were also banned due to anti-government or censored messages spreading within the network. It is likely that LinkedIn would suffer the same fate too.

“Phrases like ‘extensive experience’ and ‘proven track record’ can appear empty to a potential employer and may do more harm than good when you include them in your profile or resume,” said Lindsey Pollak, a career and workplace expert.

“If you’re using any of these 10 terms, wipe them out. Instead, note that you have eight to ten years of experience or that you increased sales by 300 percent. Include meaningful phrases that apply specifically to highlights you’ve achieved in your career.”

Other advices include:

1. Complete your LinkedIn profile: Add in pictures and fill in all the needed details on your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn states that a user is 12 time more likely to be views for potential opportunities if user has more than one position listed.

2. Pull in your friends: Bring your network to LinkedIn and leverage their network to find other connections. You can also asked colleagues or clients to write you a testimony if you are able to meet or exceed their expectations.

3. Make your profile searchable: If you can’t find your name on LinkedIn profile on Google, you might edit your URL to make it more searchable. Nowadays, it’s a norm for people to google you before meeting up physically. A searchable LinkedIn profile with good track record could help to improve first impression even before the meeting has started.

Although LinkedIn plays a core role in your online resume, other social profiles like your blog, Twitter and Facebook are also touch points to consider. These profiles are equally searchable on the Internet. To learn more, check out our post on Social Sites are Your Dynamic Resume.

Analyzing data over the past 12 weeks, one share on Facebook equals $2.52, a share on Twitter equals $0.43, a share on LinkedIn equals $0.90, and an email share equals $2.34. The aggregate value of a social share equates to $1.78 in ticket sales.

Stickiness is the main reason why each Facebook share could command a higher value in sales. For Eventbrite.com, Facebook is the number one referring site. Each Facebook share drives 11 visits back to Eventbrite.com, compared to the average across the other social channels, one share drives 7 visits. It’s a vast difference of 4 visits!

SEO and banner ads used to be the primary ways to gather web traffic. Apparently, time has changed. As the social layer in the World Wide Web solidifies, it’s increasingly essential to integrate social as part of your digital strategy.

Take note that the data is not applicable to every industry and is strictly a reflection of EventBrite’s social commerce success. Results may vary. Ensure you have a proper social plan, backed with numbers before making suggestions to your superior. Leave a comment if you have any questions. We’ll gladly help to answer them.

For more information on tech + business, follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

LinkedIn is becoming the world’s default online resume and professional network. Some companies, typically in the tech industry, only accept linkedin profiles as resumes. Interestingly, there are people who even advertised on Google just to get their potential employers’ attention.

That said, the traditional hard copy or PDF resume still works but its power is diminishing. Instead of securing jobs instantly, it has simply become a tool to strike a good first impression.

Why? In huge corporations, the hiring manager receives hundreds or even thousands of resumes. Trust me, he wouldn’t bother reading through every one of them. Instead, resumes which are presented neatly or creatively are picked out for further reviews. If that’s the case, sending in a plain piece of resume would just add load to his waste paper basket.

Just like an ad, we have to be creative with our resume to grab attention and secure that interview. One of Penn Olson readers, Vivier Valentin, from Madrid, Spain, did exactly that. Check out our short interview with him below.

Hey Vivier! It’s a cool CV. How did you create it?

I created it from scratch in dreamweaver sneaking into Google’s results page code to find stuff such as colors, images, borders, and positionning stuff. I tried hard to follow all the CSS rule to ensure it looks exactly the same as Google. I created the rest of page (ads for example) with Illustrator and Dreamweaver. It took a day and a half to have all the designs ready. It took me 3 days to get everything up (designs, content) and running.

How did this idea come about?

I had this idea when I started looking actively for a job a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to create a CV that is creative and one that could show my control in Internet design and culture. I had a couple of other ideas but this Google CV is the best so far.

What type of jobs are you looking?

I’m looking for an Online Marketing Manager or Internet Product Manager sort of jobs. I’ve been specializing in marketing online for 3 years and have a strong interest in social media, web culture and online marketing. I’ve worked in a couple of Internet companies and really enjoy technology and digital advertising.

So, any luck so far?

The overall response has been great. Hiring managers are pleasantly surprised when they receive my CV. I’m currently waiting for the results.

Cool, we wish you luck!

Thanks!

Catch Vivier Google style CV here.

Through a study of more than 500 marketers, they devised a two-fold survey where the focus is to determine the impact of mobile marketing in email and web marketing programs; and, identifying the importance and impact of social networks in relation to their email and web marketing efforts.

The end result, according to eROI, was a better understanding of how marketers were using email, mobile and social, but also new ideas for better planning for and integration of the available opportunities. At the same time Flowtown illustrated the findings of the survey through an infographic below!

According to Nielsen (through BBC), the social-networking behemoth is the largest and also fastest growing site. Twitter, Orkut and LinkedIn are also part of the “up” category, while the “down” category consists of MySpace, Flickr, Bebo and Friends United.

Many social-network sites were formed over the last century. However, it seems clear, to me, that the world has made up its mind.

Facebook is certainly the number one networking site among friends. Twitter offers us a new way to receive breaking news and quick one-to-one conversations. LinkedIn, on the other hand, allows us to connect with professionals and build our online resume for greater visibility.

It’s good news for advertisers though. As the world congregates on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, it makes targeting a much simpler task. However, specific markets, like Brazil (Orkut) and China (QQ) still require alternative social platforms to engage its population.

According to a research from recruiting platform, Jobvite, nearly 75% of companies surveyed look for their candidates through social networks, and 58.1% have successfully hired a candidate.

Without a doubt, LinkedIn was the top social network for hiring – nearly 80% of companies recruit through this professional network. Facebook and Twitter were less popular, used by 55% and 45% of companies respectively.

Naturally, companies are also spending less on job boards and search firms. Social media has become the most cost effective, and efficient way to find talent.

With that, if you are looking for a job, or a better one, where should you put yourself? Nowadays, we look for jobs by making it easier for employers to look for us. Unfortunately, not many people are aware of the change. If you are one of them, I advise you to start building your online branding now. No idea how? Check out our article on building online personal branding.

Source: eMarketer

After ten months, LinkedIn has grown even stronger. To date, it has over 70 million members across 200 countries worldwide. Web statistics are pretty awesome; with the site accumulating more than half a million visits daily.

According to HubSpot, executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members and half of its total users are business decision makers. This set of data highlights LinkedIn as the world’s undisputed professional social-networking site. It is a perfect site for both B2B marketers and headhunting professionals.

In fact, a study by NetProspex and Rapleaf has revealed that 4 out of 10 employees use LinkedIn for business purposes. So, whether you’re an employee (for resume building) or employer (for hiring and advertising), LinkedIn certainly has a part to play in your career. Enjoy the rest of the infographic below.

More infographic here.

Most of which, I believe, are used for headhunting and employee validating. Promotion wise, business-to-business (B2B) marketers are actively seeking for potential partners and buyers.

With 70 million professionals on its site (and growing as you read), LinkedIn has slowly become an essential tool for employees, employers and marketers. On the flip side, this causes us to be increasingly pressured to beef up our LinkedIn footprint. Not only have social platforms made personal data “open”, our career track records are also widely available to anyone who searches through LinkedIn or Google.

While all the hype normally surround Facebook and Twitter, these sites are “less utilized” as they mainly offer advertising and communication opportunities. Companies do use Twitter for hiring but essentially still rely on LinkedIn for resume and validation purposes. This doesn’t necessary mean Facebook and Twitter are less capable or attractive. It simply highlights that different social site has its own strength. Understand where your audience are and mix and match for the optimum social strategy for your business.

According to Vincos, the number of LinkedIn registered users is nearing a whopping 70 million mark. It may not be able to match Facebook’s 400 million but many of us would have to admit that it has done extremely well to remain as an undisputed professional social site.

So, for marketers (B2B especially) who’re interested to leverage LinkedIn as an advertising platform, you would be extremely delighted to be able to reach out to people who have both buying and decision-making power.

The platform has also slowly become the “Google” for talent search or vetting, especially in the engineering and finance industry where most LinkedIn users are in.

The chart shows a huge disparity between Facebook and the other social networking sites in terms of unique visits. Facebook is the only obvious site that is experiencing an upward trending growth while others clustered at the bottom of the chart. LinkedIn and Twitter also appear to be growing at a steady pace but definitely in a different league from Facebook.

Regardless, both Twitter and LinkedIn serve different needs and aren’t much of a threat to Facebook (yet). Looking at this direction, the chart has taught us a simple business lesson: “To win, we have to differentiate from our competitors”. LinkedIn (professional networking) and Twitter (mirco-blogging) are two successful product differentiation examples.

[via businessinsider]

Employers are watching us on social media, and so are employees.

Last year, a research done by Harris Interactive and commissioned by CareerBuilder.com found out that 45% of employers have used social networking sites to screen potential employees. I was also asked once for my resume not by paper but by LinkedIn only.

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Your digital footprints can land you opportunities or strip you of them. Social sites are your dynamic resume, and like any resume, you write them with care.

DO: Show them what you’ve got

If you are looking for business or job opportunities, you got to show what you’ve got. It doesn’t matter what platform you use – a blog, Facebook or Twitter. We have seen pros teaching make up techniques on YouTube, finance students offering tips on blogs and foodies giving reviews on Facebook and Twitter. We can expect many more Justin Bieber and iJustine getting spotted for their talent.

DON’T: Leave them with any dirt about you

Employers are validating your paper resumes by checking on you through Twitter and Facebook, so you better be telling the truth. Calling in sick? Make sure your boss doesn’t catch your partying photos on Facebook when you are supposed to be in bed. Want to spew vulgarities and talk bad about your boss on your blog? Think twice.

Don’t hide from social media, embrace it

You might think that social media is robbing you of privacy. But instead of hiding and making yourself unsearchable, use social media to your advantage. Besides displaying your capabilities, you can check out your interviewers before meeting up with them. Know the kind of person they are so nothing comes as a surprise. Befriend your prospective company or boss to get noticed even before they see you in person.

From Chicago Business:

Ms Fisherman, managing partner of the Chicago office of BGT Partners, an interactive marketing firm with headquarters in Miami, says that candidates who initiate contact with BGT Partners on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn have an advantage in the hiring process because of those interactions. She expects to hire 10 new employees in Chicago in the first quarter of 2010 and says that many of the candidates she has met online have gotten her attention.

A recent research involving U.S college students from Anderson Analytics revealed that “Facebook is cool and other social sites are lame.”

A significant percentage of college students (both male and female) have ruled other social sites like MySpace, Windows Live, Twitter, LinkedIn, Hi5 and Friendster lame.

Seems like MySpace has made it as the “lamest social site” with 31% of the respondents’ votes.

Facebook, on the other hand is getting all the love from college students with 82% of males and 90% of females voting it as ‘cool.’

The only social site that matters?

Each social site has its own beauty, allowing us to consume information and connect with the world differently. For example, LinkedIn is a great place for professional networking, Twitter provides us with real-time bite size information and Facebook seems to have a little of what every site has, and more.

Facebook is doing so well, it might be catching up with Yahoo very soon. Being Jack of all trades might be what made Facebook cool.

Nonetheless, it leaves room for other social sites to thrive with a different social networking experience. LinkedIn has generated more than $100 million in revenue and we hope Twitter can do the same soon.

Via: marketingcharts

That would be right! The numbers represent the median age of users on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

Facebook is definitely aging as its median age increased from 26 in 2008 to 33 this year. We might have parents to blame for this!

Twitter is on the other hand, aging backward with 33% of users age between 18 to 29 year old, a significant increase from last year.

As you can see from the graph done by Pew Internet below, Twitter is attracting more Internet users from all age groups, particularly from the 18 to 34 group.

Oh Gen Y, why this sudden change of heart?

One big reason would be with more peers joining Twitter, young users see added incentive to use it for social networking. It’s very much a snowballing effect, which Facebook also faced before its user population exploded.

For the younger bunch, enthusiastic celebrities and companies, such as ASOS and Seventeen on Twitter are encouraging them to adopt and use it in their daily lives. Older of them are using Twitter to build their online profiles and social networks for work and business purposes.

Increasing adoption by schools and businesses are also catalyzing this trend as more people see value in Twitter.

With that said, would Twitter continue to age backward? It’s hard to say and it really depends on how big the younger age group would grow on Twitter. Currently, Twitter has very little when it comes to attracting the young ones.

This is especially so when it still has a lot of potential in the business user population. Social media in general is rising in the Asia market as more companies all over the world see value in it.

What do you think? Would Twitter continue to age backward? Tell us via the comment box!

With a simple search for “social media”, we can see what people from unique places, who speak different tongues think about social media.

The ideas of social media can be warped or totally random, but they translate to what social media mean to individuals. Note how some people view social media with such complexity while others have already integrated it into their lives with ease.

Social Media

Facebook

Twitter

Digg

LinkedIn

Blog

Along with a valuation of $1 Billion last year, it has generated more than $100 million in revenue (mainly through ads selling, premium accounts and recruitment platform) and is currently looking to increase its workforce by 50% this year.

According to its statistic, 1 member is joining LinkedIn every second, adding up to more than 48 million members so far.

LinkedIn has certainly lived up to its name as THE online social networking for professionals. This explains why executives from all Fortune 500 companies are members of LinkedIn!

According to Reuters, LinkedIn is

“…one of the Silicon Valley companies most eligible to go public, but founder Reid Hoffman and Weiner have said they are in no rush for an initial public offering. They have said there is no need to raise funds because expansion is being paid for from profits.”

For the benefit of people who are unfamiliar with LinkedIn, here’s a video to get started:

With all that said, LinkedIn could be seriously challenged if Facebook steps in with a business filtering feature, that allows its user to separate personal and work life. The question is, would it ever be possible?

Nonetheless, LinkedIn is probably over the moon with its success this year and we wish it all the best!

Updated on 14 Oct: Now has officially 50 million users

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