At least they won’t have to worry about paying bills after today’s rapture.
Eight Woolworths employees in Australia have been fired for “planking” on the job, which isn’t nearly as sexy as it sounds. Last week, Acton Beale, 20, fell seven stories in an attempt to photograph himself balancing on a balcony in Queensland, Australia. He was “planking” (AKA playing the Lying Down Game), lying stiffly in an odd location with plans to upload the photo on Facebook. So now people are freaking out about the dangers of planking. The Woolworths employees were fired for breaking the company’s health and safety rules. Three employees were planking on trolleys and 2 meter (6.5 ft) high shelving units then putting photos on Facebook. Two employees planked on a meat mincing machine, which is awesomely safe. Another was fired for balancing on milk crates. Meanwhile, six students in Queensland were suspended for planking. Back in our day, if someone said we’d been suspended from school for planking, somebody was gon’ be pregnant.
Everything went better than expected.
LinkedIn’s first day of trading as a public company went okay, said people who like to understate things. The company’s stock was up 108% after one day of trading, valuing the company at $8.9 billion, which is 36 times the company’s 2010 revenue of $243 million. For comparison, Google was trading at 5.5 times their 2010 revenue on the same day. This means LinkedIn is now worth more than many well known brands like Chipotle ($8.8 billion), Hormel Foods ($8.1 billion), and Electronic Arts ($8 billion). It’s still small compared to Facebook, which is valued around $85 billion.
LinkedIn’s first-day 108% gain was the fifth-largest one-day gain for any U.S. IPO in the last 10 years. Only the IPO’s for Baidu.com, Youku.com, Qihoo 360 Technology, and Nymex Holdings gained more in the first day of trading in the past decade. But LinkedIn isn’t anywhere near the top five when you look at all IPO’s in our stock market’s history. Every stock in the all-time top ten gained 350% to 700% in the first day; all of them also IPO’d during the tech bubble at the turn of the century.
So is LinkedIn worth $8.9 billion? The company is expected to have a revenue of around $500 million this year, meaning the stock is trading at about 20 times that revenue. It will have to grow very quickly to actually match, let alone exceed, that kind of multiple. On the other hand, the company is already profitable, makes more money per user than Facebook does, and hasn’t yet expanded outside the U.S. It wouldn’t be impossible for them to have explosive growth; on the other hand, how often have you used LinkedIn?
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- Eight people fired for “planking” on the job. (DailyTelegraph, picture via)
- LinkedIn’s IPO goes better than expected. (TechCrunch, Mashable)
- LinkedIn’s IPO put into historical perspective. (WSJ)
- LinkedIn is now worth more than these 13 well-known companies. (Mashable)
- Is LinkedIn worth it? (SAI)
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- Earlier this week, the official Twitter of the Centers for Disease Control sent out a tweet which started with “Prepared for a #zombie apocalypse?” and linked to their site. It was intended to drive traffic to a page about emergency preparedness for this hurricane season. Well, the prospect of a zombie apocalypse was so exciting that their page crashed from all the incoming traffic. You should have prepared better, CDC. (Scientific American, TDW)
- Freelance writer T. Michael Murdock penned an honest review that panned a video game which deserved poor reviews, Conduit 2 by High Voltage software. The creative director of the game company then sent out an email to the company’s employees suggesting they review the writer’s novel on Amazon. Pretty soon his book had dropped from five stars to 3.5 stars. Because intimidating reviewers always makes your product better. Oh, and TheEscapist noticed that one of the Amazon reviewers who gave the writer’s book a one star review had given a five star review to Conduit 2. Keepin’ it professional. (Marooners’ Rock via BoingBoing)
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- Did you get raptured yet? According to a Pew Research poll, 41% of Americans think Jesus will “either definitely or probably” come back by 2050. That number rises to 58% among white Evangelical Christians and 59% among everyone living in the South or West quadrants of the U.S. and among people with only a high school diploma or no diploma. (GOOD, picture via)
- LinkedIn had a huge IPO, but what about other companies which had big IPOs? Here’s a list of the ten biggest IPOs of the past decade and how those stocks are doing now. We should have bought Chipotle stock instead of Chipotle food. We’d have increased our investment about tenfold and we would have also saved a fortune on Chipotlaway.
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