LinkedIn raised $22.7 million and their new investors include enterprise systems company SAP and publisher McGraw-Hill.

Strategic reasons? (just guessing)

An enterprise system company like SAP can port LinkedIn’s personal profile data, networks and network communications within the enterprise system. This automates the user experience so they may continue to work on LinkedIn, and have SAP capture this work. That’s only the first step; SAP and other enterprise systems will likely find ways to port bookmarking applications like Delicious and micro-blogging applications like Twitter or Yammer. They would use feed-based aggregation to port these data into their systems until they start looking like “Enterprise Facebook or Friendfeed“.

A publishing company like McGrawHill could leverage LinkedIn profile information to provide context to their articles in their magazines like Business Week. For example, LinkedIn could provide a “opt-in” on user profiles that allows publishers like Business Week to link quoted personage to their LinkedIn profile. Example: Pat Kitano says “blah blah”… LinkedIn would become the online Who’s Who, as well as a Who knows Who.

The larger the enterprise, the huger the knowledge management problems, simply because communication is harder to circulate across large groups. Not surprisingly, the easiest way to facilitate this communication is to “open up the channels”. But the enterprise management culture has historically been based on playing close to the vest. Although employees can become influential and knowledgeable by participating in the social media, management frowns on the risk of employees being too open with corporate data.

The current solution to Enterprise 2.0 is to segregate the worlds of privately and publicly shared data. Any data deemed corporate secret would be circulated within an internal enterprise system. Outbound activities like marketing and information discovery can be catalogued and shared by employees through broad population Web 2.0 applications like Del.icio.us or Google Reader. It’s a schizophrenic construct, and an interim measure until enterprises ineluctably realize that business transparency is becoming the norm.

Update: 09/11/08 1:00ampdt: Yammer, an enterprise version of Twitter wins the Techcrunch 50 competition. Twitter for corporations… these new applications will bridge enterprises into 2.0 while letting them feel that their network is behind a curtain. It’s illusory because any Twitter-like broadcast media will escape over walls any time it wants.

Notes on Slideshow

I made this short slideshow with Sliderocket, a new online slideshow creator instead of using MS Powerpoint and uploading the file. Here are the pros and cons with the system:

Pros

1. All image data is catalogued online for future use.
2. Slide elements are easier to manipulate than in Powerpoint.
3. Neat functions like slide transitions, automated image rendering, and quick slide and element duplication.

Cons

1. Less features than Powerpoint.
2. Sliderocket’s proprietary platform doesn’t allow me to upload slideshow onto repositories like Slideshare.
3. Some internet latency issues make watching this slideshow too slow.
4. CONCLUSION: Too many cons, I’ll stick with Powerpoint.