Social Networking Your Way to a New Job

Paul Baumann pointed out this video from ABC on using social media to support job searches.

Facebook losing value

Apparently Facebook’s lack of strong revenue growth is impacting its valuation.  Valleywag has an interesting article on Facebook’s true valuation, which they report to be about $3.7B, about 25% of the $15-16B estimate from last summer.  Although Facebook is privately held, the informal market for trading shares of Facebook has investors paying as little as $2.5o per share, which puts the companies value at $1.3B.  I thought we learned some of these lessons in the Dot-Com crash… Sure we can leverage network effects and build a huge locked-in user base, but without a solid business model for generating revenue off those users we’re just going to end up with a failure in the end.  Granted some of this drop in valuation could be due to the overall cold economic climate, but this smells a lot like an overvaluation bubble reminiscent of 2001 that’s losing some air.

Facebook and the Purple Tunnel of Doom

The extreme security measures at Tuesday’s inauguration caused some problems when at least 1000 ticket holders were stuck in a tunnel under the National Mall and missed the ceremony.  By Wednesday morning, one of these unfortunate guests started a Facebook group called “Survivors of the Purple Tunnel of Doom” and as of this morning there are over 4000 members.  This web roots organizing of the “survivors” has led to national news attention and a promise of inaugural commemorative memorabilia as a consolation (see more at MSNBC here).