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LinkedIn Builds Its Publishing Presence

June 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Unlike Twitter or Facebook, which are hives of message activity that attract constant monitoring, LinkedIn for years warranted little more than an intermittent update to a résumé, or a check on a job search.

Then, in October, LinkedIn began offering its own content, called Influencers, which consists of a select group of people in leadership positions posting their musings on life, careers and the secrets of success in both. Suddenly, LinkedIn was filled with New Age chief executive talk.

Bill Gates, Jeffrey R. Immelt and President Obama are among the more than 250 contributors, none of whom are being compensated with anything other than access to the site’s 225 million members.  In recent weeks, users were encouraged to read a post by Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, who asserted that a personal assistant was better than a smartphone.

“While gadgets like smartphones and tablets certainly do have a huge positive impact upon my working life, it is the people around me who really make the difference,” Mr. Branson wrote.

Others offering commentary included Meg Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, who explained why she listens to country music when she travels, and Henry Blodget, who wrote about why American corporations are like Scrooge when it comes to sharing their wealth. (Influencers also has several journalists who are contributors, including Adam Bryant and Charles Duhigg of The New York Times).

The clichéd nature of some of the observations (work at something you love), the fact that they sometimes come as neat lists (“7 tips for working more happily with your colleagues”) and the persistence with which the site promotes them has subjected the program to some mockery. “Why is LinkedIn e-mailing us about Mark Cuban’s 6-year-old colonoscopy?” The New York Observer asked in a February headline.

But Daniel Roth, the executive editor of LinkedIn, said that Influencers was catnip to executive-suite aspirants and was transforming viewer engagement on the site. Visitors viewed 63 percent more pages in the first quarter of 2013, ending in May, than they did in the quarter a year earlier, according to the earnings report. Mr. Roth said traffic to all its news products had increased eightfold since Influencers was introduced, although he would not say from what base it was measured. Top posts routinely record more than 100,000 views, according to the site’s own accounting.

With obvious delight, Mr. Roth conveyed what may be the most telling measure of success: “We have a long list of C.E.O.’s who are asking to get in,” he said.

 Influencers is not the only step LinkedIn is taking to entice users to spend more time on the site. More than half of the company’s income still comes from selling recruiting tools. To this end, LinkedIn has added features like rich media, which lets people include video and graphics in their profiles.

Still, in a conference call with analysts in May, Jeff Weiner, the company’s chief executive, reiterated that his goal was to make the company “the definitive professional publishing platform.” That’s a big challenge in a market that includes publishing titans like Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal as well as sites like The Huffington Post, which also regularly publishes contributions by the business elite.

So far LinkedIn has exceeded its own conservative earnings forecast for every quarter since it went public in 2011; it recently announced first-quarter net income of $22.6 million, up from $5 million the year before. Nevertheless, the stock is down nearly 5 percent since first-quarter earnings were announced last month — largely on concerns that the advertising models will not mature as quickly as hoped.

“While the Influencer program certainly helps LinkedIn’s advertising revenue,” said Kerry Rice, a principal with Needham Company, the stock is falling because some investors are worried that advertising revenue is still growing more slowly than their robust hopes.

In addition to Influencer, LinkedIn’s content includes articles produced by what it says are hundreds of thousands of other publishers, as varied as smaller niche publications like Quartz and national newspapers like The Times and The Journal. The content is fed to members based on what is trending online and also what LinkedIn editors think readers would like to see.

The hope is that users grow addicted to checking their news feeds, which are adjusted to their interests. The company will also weave sponsored content into feeds; it is already testing a pilot program that includes articles and videos from Shell, Xerox and American Express, among others.

“My personal goal is that within the next six months, no one in the business world starts their day without knowing what’s trending on LinkedIn,” Mr. Roth said.

Because writers are not paid, Influencers is relatively inexpensive to produce. Contributors are attracted by the ability to connect with a large audience of business professionals, while being only lightly edited. (Most executives say they write their posts by themselves.) LinkedIn also trades on the executives’ vanity.

Glenn Kelman, the chief executive of Redfin, an online real estate platform, said he wanted to be an Influencer on LinkedIn partly because his competitors were posting. He said he also liked being able to reach others in his industry to argue his points. But the most compelling part, he said, may be ego.

LinkedIn immediately reports how many hits each post gets, which is addictive to those attracting a lot of traffic. “It created a feedback loop that has turned me into a gerbil turning on the wheel,” said Mr. Kelman, only part jokingly. “Part of it is the glory. I have met other C.E.O.’s and we ask each other whether we have better things to do, but if you want people to know about your company you have to be there. It is just a new competitive weapon.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 17, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated Glenn Kelman’s position at Redfin, an online real estate platform. He is Redfin’s chief executive, not its founder.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/17/technology/sharing-business-insights-linkedin-builds-its-publishing-presence.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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India Ink: General Electric Chief Remains Cautiously Optimistic About India

February 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Jeffrey R. Immelt, chairman and chief executive officer of General Electric, in Washington D.C., in this Oct. 7, 2011, photo.Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images Jeffrey R. Immelt, chairman and chief executive officer of General Electric, in Washington D.C., in this Oct. 7, 2011, photo.

NEW DELHI – On a visit to India, the head of one of the world’s largest companies painted a fairly optimistic portrait of India’s growth prospects, although he hinted that Indian policy makers had reasons for concern.

Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chairman and chief executive of General Electric, said Friday that G.E. was investing nearly $200 million in a manufacturing facility in Pune and another $75 million in a research and development site in Bangalore. He said that he expected both facilities to grow smartly in the coming years.

“We think Pune could be a big facility because the demand here is so big,” he said. “Our revenue here should grow between 15 and 20 percent annually on a sustainable basis.”

He said he was very optimistic about the company’s medical products business in India.

“The doctors here are driving us to be innovative,” he said. “Every doctor in India is an entrepreneur. You have an incredibly entrepreneurial medical culture here because the system has grown up in a different way.”

But if India is to experience the kind of economic growth that has propelled China over the past two decades, it is likely to need large manufacturers like General Electric to use its operations in India to make products not just for the domestic market but for buyers around the globe. And on that score, Mr. Immelt was far from encouraging.

“If we manufacture something here, we manufacture it because it could be used in South Asia,” he said. “The United States is very competitive today.”

He went on to say that when it comes to costs, “everyone has to be a little paranoid because the absolute difference becomes narrower everywhere.”

India’s relatively low labor costs are becoming less strategically important from a business investment standpoint, he said. Labor costs play a fairly minor role in the overall production costs for most of General Electric’s products, he said, and power costs have dropped sharply in the United States in recent years.

Mr. Immelt said he was not overly concerned about recent tax-law changes, worries over India’s fiscal deficit or what he termed “a steady drumbeat of what I would say was some fairly negative news” about India. He complimented Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram as “being known to all of us around the world, and he’s quite well-respected.”

“I already see signs of a correction,” he said. “Progress will be made. Maybe not in a straight-line fashion, but it will be made.”

Article source: http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/22/general-electric-chief-remains-cautiously-optimistic-about-india/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Business Chiefs Step Gingerly Into the Federal Budget Fight

November 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

As Democratic and Republican leaders stake out their positions in the coming fiscal showdown in Washington, corporate executives are starting a political campaign of their own.

The chief executives taking part in two separate advertising blitzes that are set to begin on Monday and Tuesday are walking a delicate balance. They plan to press Congress to act quickly, even as they publicly steer clear of the political firefight surrounding the details of any far-reaching deal to cut the federal budget deficit.

Behind the scenes, however, the effort by business leaders could play a crucial role in shaping decisions on tax policy, including whether corporate tax rates go down even as individuals pay more.

By framing the issue as an attempt to balance the federal budget, the plan also offers some political cover to Congressional Republicans wary that voting for a tax increase could make them targets of the party’s powerful fiscal conservatives.

But a question remains over just how far the business groups will go. In the past, corporations have joined the call for fiscal responsibility, only to resist giving up specific perks and programs that benefit their businesses or offering other specific suggestions for deficit reduction.

The Campaign to Fix the Debt, a new group with a $40 million budget whose backers include Jeffrey R. Immelt of General Electric and David M. Cote of Honeywell, will run more than a million dollars’ worth of advertisements. The spots take their cue from well-known ads by the likes of Nike and Dunkin’ Donuts and feature slogans like “Just Fix It” and “Time to Fix the Debt.”

Mr. Immelt and Mr. Cote also feature prominently in a more traditional campaign by the Business Roundtable, which represents Fortune 500 companies and is one of Washington’s most powerful lobbying groups.

The Business Roundtable’s effort, set to begin on Tuesday, has a budget of close to half a million dollars, and is focused on news media in the Washington area, including outlets like Politico as well as conservative talk radio shows.

“America’s C.E.O.’s have a message for Washington: don’t take our country over the fiscal cliff,” warns a Business Roundtable commercial, referring to the package of tax increases and automatic spending cuts set to go into effect in January if Congress and President Obama cannot agree on deficit reduction plan.

Experts say that combination would equal a half-trillion-dollar blow to the economy that could cause a recession in the first half of 2013 — a threat the Business Roundtable has made the centerpiece of its campaign. “If Congress does not act, growth will stall, jobs will be lost and our nation’s credit will be harmed,” the radio ad says.

The debut of the ads in Washington coincides with the return of Congress on Tuesday for a lame-duck session that will take up the fiscal issue.

John Engler, the Business Roundtable’s president and a former Republican governor from Michigan, said that whatever solution emerges, “the tax code changes have to be permanent and the budget cuts have to be real.”

“Even the president has said the corporate tax rate is too high and needs to come down,” Mr. Engler said. “We’re in the position of saying everything is on the table.”

The new campaign ups the ante in the fight over fiscal policy, which is set to dominate the agenda in Washington through the end of the year, and comes during an increase in lobbying by chief executives on Capitol Hill.

“My sense is that their primary motivation is avoiding recession,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a former economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “But I think the key to whether they are serious or just posturing is the question of taxes, and if they’re truly willing to support raising more revenues.”

Still, big business has plenty to gain if some elements of what the groups are pushing for were to become law.

The Fix the Debt campaign was created by Erskine B. Bowles and Alan K. Simpson, who were chairmen of a presidential commission charged with developing a blueprint for fiscal change and deficit reduction in 2010, and the group backs many of their recommendations.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 12, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the company of which Mr. Brown is chief executive. It is Motorola Solutions, not Motorola.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/12/business/business-chiefs-step-gingerly-into-the-federal-budget-fight.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Obama Offers Training Plan Designed for High-Tech Jobs

June 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The program, which Mr. Obama unveiled during a visit to a lighting manufacturer here, would seek to marry private companies with colleges and universities in a bid to encourage students to focus on science, technology, engineering and math degrees.

“Right now, there are more than four job seekers for every job opening in America,” Mr. Obama said, in remarks at Cree Inc., which makes L.E.D. products. “But when it comes to science and high-tech fields, the opposite is true: businesses like this tell me they’re having a hard time finding workers to fill their job openings.”

In coming to North Carolina to promote his plans to keep high-tech, high-paying jobs in this country, Mr. Obama is trying to hang on to a state that he narrowly won in 2008. But highlighting the climb ahead for the president is North Carolina’s unemployment rate, which was 9.7 percent in April, the 10th highest in the country. The overall national jobless rate in May was 9.1 percent, up slightly from the month before.

“The world has changed,” Mr. Obama said. “And for a lot of our friends and neighbors, that change has been painful. Today the single most serious economic problem we face is getting people back to work.”

After his remarks at Cree, Mr. Obama met there with members of the jobs council he created. Two members of the group — Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chairman and chief executive of General Electric, and Kenneth I. Chenault, the chairman and chief executive of American Express — laid out, in an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal on Monday, a few ideas the council is exploring to increase employment.

But none of the ideas, which included setting up job training initiatives, providing loans to small businesses and trying to increase tourism, contained any groundbreaking proposals.

“To truly bend the curve over the longer term, we need a more strategic view,” the two men acknowledged in the article. “Over the next 90 days, we will turn to addressing the actions needed to make a more significant, longer-term impact.”

They said they would deliver recommendations in September focusing on “fast-growth” companies, small businesses and the competitiveness of the country’s infrastructure.

It was unclear how Mr. Obama planned to finance his latest jobs proposals. The administration is locked in a debate with Congressional Republicans over long-term spending and deficit reduction, facing an August deadline for a decision on raising the country’s debt ceiling.

There was a touch of nostalgia to the president’s trip on Monday; he visited the Cree headquarters here three years ago, when he was a senator running for the presidency.

Mr. Obama said his hair was grayer now. But, he added, “I have a better plane so it’s a fair trade.”

After North Carolina, Mr. Obama headed to Florida, another crucial state for his re-election hopes; he has scheduled several fund-raisers as part of his effort to raise a record $1 billion during this campaign.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama is making a rare visit to Puerto Rico, as part of the Democratic Party’s campaign to woo more Hispanic voters back in the mainland United States.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=6ad24b3c50caeaca2254d8b273ac158a

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Warren Buffett, Delegator in Chief

April 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment

That is Warren Buffett’s management style, as described in a biography by Roger Lowenstein. Mr. Buffett delegates; he empowers his executives. Mr. Buffett, the 80-year-old chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway known as Uncle Warren, has been praised as one of the world’s greatest business managers. He has racked up average annualized returns of more than 20 percent for four decades. Yet in a potential case study for business schools, the question is now being asked: Does Mr. Buffett delegate too much?

Just in time for his company’s annual meeting with 35,000 investors next weekend, Mr. Buffett’s management style is coming under scrutiny.

His heir apparent, David L. Sokol, resigned last month after it emerged that he had bought $10 million worth of stock in Lubrizol, a chemical manufacturer, a day after he began orchestrating a merger with Berkshire, which later acquired Lubrizol for $9 billion — increasing the value of Mr. Sokol’s holding by $3 million.

Although Mr. Sokol mentioned that he was a shareholder in Lubrizol to Mr. Buffett when he suggested that Berkshire buy the company, Mr. Buffett said he did not ask about “the date of his purchase or the extent of his holdings.” The controversy exposed a paradox: Mr. Buffett may be considered one of the world’s best managers, but he doesn’t actively manage the hundreds of businesses that Berkshire owns.

“Did Sokol’s actions reveal shortcomings in the company’s governance system that need to be addressed?” asked Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in a paper titled “The Resignation of David Sokol: Mountain or Molehill for Berkshire Hathaway?”

Unlike Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric, who spends much of his time on airplanes traveling the world to visit the company’s 287,000 employees and oversees a giant campus and management team in Fairfield, Conn., Mr. Buffett “manages” Berkshire’s 257,000 employees with just 21 people at his headquarters in a small office in Omaha.

Mr. Buffett’s business partner, Charles Munger, once described Mr. Buffett’s day. He spends half of his time just sitting around and reading, Mr. Munger said. “And a big chunk of the rest of the time is spent talking one on one, either on the telephone or personally, with highly gifted people whom he trusts and who trust him.”

And that trust has advantages. “Part of his genius is that he’s created a hands-off culture that encourages entrepreneurs to sell their private companies to Berkshire,” said Larry Pitkowsky, managing partner of GoodHaven Capital Management and a longtime Berkshire shareholder, “and, critically, that they keeping showing up for work every day without worrying that they are going to get a call from headquarters telling them how to run things.” How hands-off is Mr. Buffett? When questioned once about why Berkshire didn’t take a more active role in fixing Moody’s, the troubled credit rating agency, in which he was the largest shareholder, he declared: “I’ve never been to Moody’s. I don’t even know where they’re located.”

“If I thought they needed me I wouldn’t have bought the stock,” he added.

He sees himself less of an activist than as a passive investor, a stock picker with a nose for a good deal. “We don’t tell Burlington Northern what safety procedures to put in or AmEx who they should lend to,” he said at his annual meeting two years ago. “When we own stock, we are not there to try and change people.”

His management approach may be as much a function of his own philosophy as it is a practical preference. He likes to make his investments dispassionately, based on the numbers, rather than let emotions get involved.

Mr. Buffett’s investing antennas may be genius, but some of his critics have suggested that his trust-based management style may have left him too farsighted to quickly spot operational problems. As reported by Carol Loomis of Fortune magazine, when Mr. Buffett was first told in 1991 about indications of a possible scandal at Salomon Brothers that later nearly took down the company (Berkshire was its largest shareholder), he initially did not detect any reason to be particularly alarmed, “so he went back to dinner.” Only after speaking several days later about the matter with his partner, Mr. Munger, “did Buffett get a sense of real trouble.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=4dce6e2007a10e462899c2a34c2f890d

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