Lego Car Factory

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I love Lego.  I played with Legos as a child, and now, with my daughter, I am starting to enjoy them once again.  Of course, over the years, with very smart strategy by Lego, the line has expanded to include much more complex electronics.

This video is of a factory that automatically manufactures Lego cars.

The Enron Puzzle (or Mystery)

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Malcolm Gladwell has a very interesting article in the current issue of The New Yorker (The link is here, because it may disappear, if I am correct about The New Yorker’s web policy.)  I am not very sympathetic about the whole Enron story, or Jeff Skilling’s plight, but Gladwell, in his usual provocative style, raises some very interesting points.

Then, on his blog, he poses this very brave challenge:

Can anyone explain—in plain language—what it is Jeff Skilling and Co. did wrong?

I’m not asking for an explanation for what they did wrong as
businessmen. That’s plain. They did a mountain of stupid and arrogant
things. Nor is this about what Skilling and company did that was
unethical or in bad faith. There’s a mountain of evidence on that too.
The question is strictly a legal one: according to the way the
accounting rules were written at the time, what specific transgressions
were Skilling guilty of that merited twenty-four years in prison? For
the sake of argument, let’s stipulate that summaries must be three
sentences or less.

As I would expect, a lot of people have jumped at this challenge, to provide very well-stated explanations to the questions Gladwell poses.  In fact, the comments below the post are a case study on why blogs are a phenomenal knowledge management tool.

UPDATE: Gladwell follows on with a new thought on the issue.

Link Edin

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There’s a well known story about Chevy’s introduction of Nova in Mexico, where the name means "no go".  I must have heard about it ten times in the importance of local insight in business context.  With the global nature of the Internet, there must be a ton of new similar anecdotes.

A good friend of mine, who’s Turkish, is an academic in the US.  He recently admitted that when he first started receiving LinkedIn invitations, almost exclusively from Turkish friends and colleagues, he assumed it was a Turkish company.  His reason:  "Link Edin", in Turkish, means "get connected".

UPDATE: Seth Godin, in a post, comments that the story about Nova is not accurate – that Nova tanked because it was a lousy car.  I am sure he’s right.

Job Sites 2.0 Update

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Om reported this week that Jobster is going through a tough period.

Jobster, a Seattle-based job-focused vertical search engine, is mulling
a big round of layoffs and may cut up to half of its 145-strong
workforce, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans.

According to John Cook, the issue is a quest towards profitability.

Goldberg (CS: Jobster’s CEO) uses the words profitable or profitability half a dozen
times in the memos, saying at one point that "we are committed to
building a profitable company in 2007." He adds that "official news"
will be released in the new year and asks employees to "please try to
stay as focused as possible."

The interesting part of this news is that it highlights the lack of success stories in Jobs 2.0.  The Ladders, seems to be kicking butt in the $100K+ area, and I hear Accolo is doing well, too.  But, there has not been a serious challenge to the reigns of Monster.com and Hotjobs.  Jobster, Indeed or SimplyHired are not wowing people the way many expected them to.  I’d say the biggest careers story is Craigslist, but we all know their semi-business ways.

I must say I am surprised.  However, the social side of the careers marketplace has not been fully explored yet.  I expect a player in 2007 to make a lot of noise by taking some well explored Web2.0 tricks strongly into the jobs area.

I would bet that LinkedIn is pleasantly surprised by its jobs-related revenues.

LinkedIn’s New Round

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MarketWatch’s Bambi Francisco has a revealing article on a new round of financing LinkedIn has raised.  After the OpenBC/Xing IPO, the $250m figure is not surprising.  However, Bambi has dug deep to bring some numbers to the surface at LinkedIn:

Today, Linkedin has 70 employees and estimates to be a year behind
popular social network Facebook in generating sales, according to
Rabois. That means Linkedin is set to generate between $45 million and
$60 million next year. Linkedin CEO Reid Hoffman boldly predicts the
company will hit $100 million in 2008.
…
Today, it has 8.5 million members, with 30% to 40% active users. It’s
the No. 23 top social network site, with 1.5 million unique visitors
and 36 million pageviews, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.
….
Linkedin has three revenue streams today —
sponsorships, subscriptions to scour and contact Linkedin’s 8.5 million
membership base, and job listings. About 45% of the revenue comes from
subscriptions, according to Rabois. Corporations, such as Microsoft and
Salesforce, pay between $10,000 and $100,000 annually to let their
internal recruiting staff use Linkedin’s database for potential hires.

Individuals also pay $20 per month to
be able to contact people outside their network, but those paying
subscribers are 1% to 2% of the members who enjoy the service for free.

I have been receiving LinkedIn invitations from Europe lately, so it looks like there’s a big push there.  I think we’ll continue to hear about growth at LinkedIn, and this round will seem relatively cheap soon.