Author Archives: Matt Kapko

LinkedIn today unveiled a new marketplace designed to help freelance professionals find consumers and small businesses in need of their services. LinkedIn ProFinder aims to deliver similar value for independent workers to what full-time professionals get on the social network. 

“The freelance economy is on the rise,” wrote Vaibhav Goel, group product manager at LinkedIn, in a blog post. “The number of freelancers on LinkedIn has grown by nearly 50 percent in just the past five years. As the workforce evolves, we, too, are evolving to ensure we’re creating opportunity for the expanding sector of professionals looking for independent, project-based work in place of the typical 9 to 5 profession.”

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General Electric’s (GE) CIO isn’t interested in picking a winner or loser when it comes to collaboration apps. Nor does he want to preclude any of GE’s 333,000 employees from using the collaboration tools that work best for them. “Collaboration is a noisy space right now because there are so many different tools,” Jim Fowler said during an interview this week at CIO.com’s CIO 100 event in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. “I’m not going to get in the middle of it. I’d like to see how it works itself out on its own.” 

In the fight against shadow IT, CIOs have faced for more significant challenges than modern consumer messaging apps. And the popularity of apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, iMessage and Google Hangouts has, in many cases, led to a more open IT approach to consumer communication tools in enterprise. 

When IT leaders let employees use their personal devices for work, it’s a safe assumption that multiple consumer messaging apps will also come into play. The onus is on the CIO and the IT team to mitigate potential problems that could come from the careless use of such apps at work, according to Adam Preset, research director at Gartner. CIOs should realize consumer messaging apps can increase staff efficiency, but they should also try to empower workers to make choices that don’t threaten their organizations, he says. 

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The cyberbullying problem at Twitter is so bad that critics are starting to suggest it could bring the company down.

On Thursday, a rumor about a Twitter shutdown in early 2017 spread faster than wildfire in Southern California. Users chimed in en masse, making #SaveTwitter a trending hashtag that spawned memes, jokes and ridicule. By midday, Twitter had to awkwardly deny reports of its death.  

[Related: Twitter needs to stop the harassment]

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Many titans of technology today have well-known reputations of being innovative and creative. However, new research based on the experiences of employees who work at these firms suggests external perceptions may not represent reality. 

Facebook, for example, doesn’t prioritize creativity in the workplace as well as its peers, and Microsoft is more specific than Facebook and Google when it looks for certain traits in employees, according a report from Good&Co, a firm that surveys professionals on their work histories and tries to match people with appropriate employers. The company recently evaluated responses from 4,364 users who work at the tech companies featured in the study and compared findings to develop profiles of tech’s biggest stars.

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Facebook this week took a stand against the makers of ad-block software by providing more controls for users to opt out of targeted advertisements. The company says today’s ad blockers are part of the problem, so it designed a new way to bypass ad blockers in desktop browsers and force ads through.

A number of motivations likely influenced Facebook’s decision. While it stands to benefit financially from the strong-arm play, the move is also symbolic, and the company should earn tremendous goodwill from the advertising and media industries.  

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Millions of fans will tap their favorite social networks during the coming weeks for live updates, highlights and on-the-ground reports from the Rio 2016 Olympics. Social sites are also where fans will turn to share the glory of the athletes’ greatest achievements in real time. Social media’s biggest companies all struck deals to better position their apps and services to showcase the action in Rio de Janeiro. Here’s how to follow it all from afar using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.

How Facebook does Rio 2016 

LinkedIn shot for the moon with its first broadcast TV commercial in March, but the company quickly careened back earth when Microsoft scooped it up for $26.2 billion in June. The 14-year-old company is financially healthy, but the acquisition suggests LinkedIn may have hit a ceiling. Are the company’s best days behind it?

The social network for professionals is diverse, with business units that range from publishing and educational training to sales-lead generation. But LinkedIn is still primarily a way for people to find their next jobs. Under Microsoft, LinkedIn has an opportunity to focus on its areas of strength and growth opportunities, according to a set of analysts and LinkedIn experts who spoke with CIO.com. 

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If Snapchat is still just a little too confusing for you, Instagram might have a solution. The Facebook-owned company today revealed a new feature that resembles one of Snapchat’s most popular attributes: “disappearing” photos and video. 

“Instagram Stories” could help you find a happy medium between over-sharing and under-sharing. As the feature rolls out globally via Android and iOS during the coming weeks, Instagram’s 500 million monthly active users will gain access to a daily feed of photos and video that resets after 24 hours. The photos and video added to the Instagram Stories feed will “disappear” after 24 hours and won’t appear in the main Instagram feed or in the grids on users’ profiles, according to the company. 

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