The announcement comes as LinkedIn makes its annual disclosure of its performance over the course of 2011, and sees the company posting revenues of $167 million for the last quarter of 2011. This figure surpassed the target set by analysts, who had projected $160 million. This better than expected performance, found favor with investors who boosted LinkedIn’s share price 5% in after-hours trading.

LinkedIn has been on a tear since going public last year, and the Q4 2011 performance was actually a 105% increase over corresponding period in 2010. There was also good news about LinkedIn’s overall performance in the year. According to the release, the company posted revenues for the year of $522.2 million; this represents a 115% increase upon the total earned in 2010 of $243.1 million. Even CEO Jeff Weiner weighed in on the performance. Said Weiner, “Q4 once again exceeded our expectations for member engagement and business growth. It was a fitting end to a memorable year in which we reinforced our position as the per-eminent professional network on the web.”

In the grand scheme of things, this performance by LinkedIn proves that having a sharp focused user base can be one road towards profitability.

Now comes a report that Americans are watching video more than ever. According to ComScore, Americans streamed 43.5 billion hours of video in December 2011—a jump of 44% on the previous year. Much of that growth has been down to the growth in the number of Americans now watching video online, and according to ComScore data, a whopping 105.1 million Americans now watch video online each day. This figure represents a 43% jump on the 73.7 million Americans who streamed videos each day in 2010.

Of course, if we are talking video online, we are talking Youtube, and according to ComScore, the popular video sharing site is the biggest reason that more and more people are venturing online to watch video. As more and more content becomes accessible online, we can expect the Television to steadily decline in its use. Even of it doesn’t die absolutely; it will be probably absorbed into some hybrid device that leans more and more to the internet.

Is the TV on its last legs? Let us know below.

The number 2 most popular brand on Google+ is Samsung USA, followed by Pepsi, Starbucks and Burberry. But perhaps the most telling stat about Google+ brand ages growth is the reversal of fortune of other brands. Take for instance the number one brand that was measured a few months ago—it has now slipped to 13^th, and that may not be the limits to its fall. Google+ brand pages have been heavily pushed by Google in an effort to strengthen its ties with corporate giants and solidify its position as the number one place to attract customers. Businesses have responded in kind and now more than 62 brands call Google+ home.

Its still a ways to go before Google+ is anywhere near the reach that rival Facebook has, but with brands like H&M and Samsung on board, it may not take too long.

Do you think Google+ brand pages make for a good user experience on the platform? Share your thoughts below.

According to one source close to the funding round, “Blip now plans to develop new tools and services for independent online producers; invest further in advertising and distribution platforms; and foster more syndication relationships.”

Much of this fresh capital injection will go towards rebranding Blip and help it distinguish its content from that of traditional TV. Nowhere is this push for evident than in the new logo of Blip, which now does away with the ‘TV’ emblem that many are familiar with. This rebranding effort will also help towards shoring up the 13 monthly unique US visitors the site currently gets, as well as bolster the worldwide traffic which currently strands at over 30 million monthly uniques.

Using Twitter, a little blurb about what followers could enjoy was shared for all to see. Said the tweet: “A little Wilco, a bit of No Doubt—check out what else made it onto the new official #Obama2012 campaign playlist.”

This news is also big for Spotify who’s been having a great last 6 months with record number of paid customers and free users. Its US user base on growing and with an endorsement like this one from the President of the United States, more and more people are bound to flock to the service—at the very least to see what the service is about.

I suppose now it’s a question of whether any of the GOP candidates can muster up the social media and tech savvy to bring it to Obama.

Is Obama a sure winner in 2012? Share your thoughts below.

Many who may not see the wisdom in the purchase need look no further than Oracle’s own justification for the acquisition. According to Oracle: “Together, Oracle and Taleo expect to create a comprehensive cloud offering for organizations to manage their Human Resource operations and employee careers. The combination is expected to empower employees and managers to effectively manage careers throughout their entire employment, enable organizations to retain talent and optimize costs, and improve the employee experience through faster on boarding and better collaboration with team members via social media.”

For now though, Taleo will continue to operate as a separate entity, serving the over 5,000 companies that presently use its services. Oracle in the meantime is expected to make the necessary adjustments for the integration of this new arm. It’s not clear either if competition watchdogs have nothing to say about the deal, and if that rears its head, the deal could be in jeopardy. We’ll just to have to wait and see.

According to the filing, Zuckerberg makes around $500,000 annually, with a 45% bonus incentive tied into that amount. The rather low compensation package is part of Facebook’s own internal setup and other C-Level executives also have rather small packages. COO Sheryl Sandberg makes around $300,000 in base salary.

Its important to note though that base salary alone is not a good judge of how much these guys make at companies like Facebook. Zuckerberg for instance owns stock (around 28%) in Facebook and even at private valuations, those are worth in the millions at the very least. When the company does go public, that value in stock will also increase, and even if Zuckerberg continues to earn under $1 million a year, there will be no doubt about his wealth credentials.

For now all we can do is wait; the Facebook IPO is about to go nova and the company is reportedly looking to raise around $5 billion at a $100 billion valuation.

In its first earnings call since going public last October, the company is revealing revenues of $1.6 billion for the year 2011—a figure which represents a whopping 419% growth on 2010’s revenues. This massive growth is tempered only by the news that the company is still losing money–$350 million at the end of last year. But, there’s a silver lining because according to Groupon, much of these losses are as a result of international expansion. The company currently employs over 10,000 people, 7,000 of which are oversees.

Groupon’s US numbers weren’t half bad, and it recorded an operating profit of $22 million. Had it not been for international losses, the entire ship would be steady. Despite a few struggles in the middle of the year, Groupon still managed to end the year with a customer base of 33 million—a figure which represents a 275% growth on the numbers for 2010.

So does this mean that the daily deals model is very alive? Perhaps; but Groupon will still need to sleigh its arch enemy, LivingSocial if it’s to keep raking the sort of cash it did in 2011.

Do you use Groupon to cash in on daily deals? Share your experience below.

A recent posting of its revenues for 2011 revealed that the company made just over $637.1 million for the year– $137.8 million of which was made in the fourth quarter of 2011 alone. This late run at profits actually bettered the previous year’s quarter by 30%, something which many are attributing to some sort of growth in consumer confidence and the return of people to work.

I am not too sure if TripAdvisor would go that far in attributing its revenues, but one thing is certain, the numbers surely are looking good. The site currently gets around 50 million monthly unique visitors and has over 20 million registered members. This makes TripAdvisor the biggest website in the travel reviews space, something which many couldn’t have foreseen in the early days of 2004 when Expedia was acquired by IAC and the site was amalgamated.

CEO Steve Kaufer is very excited about TripAdvisor’s performance and recently stated that, “The fourth quarter capped an exciting end to a great year for TripAdvisor, as we grew our valuable user and content base, extended our platform and product offerings, and completed our spin-off from Expedia.”

Let’s just hope that Kaufer and his team can build on the momentum generated in late 2011.

According to reports, DocRun has managed to raise over $1.1 in seed funding from VC Michael Hirshland’s new fund, Resolute.vc, Google’s Don Dodge, and Kima Ventures. The backers are hoping that the fresh approach being championed by DocRun will eventually turn the company into a profit. Presently legal documents and other wares are presented in a very drab, standardized format. DocRun is looking to change that by offering people the opportunity to have documents personalized with their names, as well as making documents state-specific—pretty much the stuff that practicing lawyers do in various states across the US.

But aside from an innovative approach, DocRun has a bit of pedigree behind it. The company is the brainchild of legal start-up expert Jennifer Reuting. As DocRun’s CEO, Reuting is looking to draw on the experience gained from running InCorp and MyLLC, two companies he founded and which both operated in the same legal space.

DocRun will need a lot more than $1.1 million though if it’s to take on the likes of LegalZoom and RocketLawyer, two competitors which have their products firmly entrenched in the legal documents space.

NBC streamed the Super Bowl online for the first time ever, and the turnout was a whopping 2.1 million viewers. So successful was the streaming of the game that the NFL made a statement about its success. The New York Times reports the NFL as saying that “the game was a tremendous success in its first year online.”

The success of the streaming was evident at every level and SVP, Business Development and Managing Director of Digital Media at NBC Sports Group, Kevin Monaghan, held nothing back in expressing the excitement at NBC about the success of the streaming. Said Monaghan, “The Super Bowl XLVI live stream exceeded our expectations in every way. Increasingly, sports fans are looking to digital coverage as a complementary ‘second screen’ experience, and we delivered on that promise with unprecedented robust coverage. The record traffic that grew throughout the event, as well as the record high engagement numbers, underscores the complementary aspect of digital as an enhancement to our exceptional television coverage.”

All told, the 2,105,441 viewers that watched online did so for a total of 78,624,422 minutes. If Tom Brady and Eli Manning meet again next year, we can expect that number to at least double.

Did you watch the Super Bowl online this year? Let us know below.

Microsoft actually matches the contributions made by employees, so the figure of $100.5 million, when added to all donations since 1983, comes to a whopping $946 million. This level of giving is of course no match for the man himself, Bill Gates. Since 2007 Gates has given over 48% of his net worth to charity, a figure which puts him in the elite company of people like Warren Buffet.

Giving too seems to be a part of the tech culture in general, because Apple also has a matching system for the charity work carried out by its employees. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced back in November that the company had matched over $1.3 million in donations over a two month period.

Overall though, Microsoft rules the charity space as a tech company and since 1983, it has given over $5.5 billion in cash, software and other forms to charities all over the world.

Siri is important because according to a report released by the New York Times, about 25% of the queries to Wolfram Alpha now come from the Siri voice assistant integrated in Apple’s iPhone 4S. So heavy are the queries that the company has had to increase the in-house staff by 200 people. I suppose too that you can’t really understand Siri unless you understand Wolfram Alpha, so here goes: Wolfram Alpha acts as an Answer Engine, much like a search engine operates. But instead of displaying a series of links, Wolfram Alpha gives you an actual answer to a search query. For example, if you asked Wolfram Alpha when is Valentine’s Day, it will tell you directly, February 14.

It’s this direct giving of information that is making many wonder if Apple may have stumbled onto something powerful—something that could make it a direct competitor to Google. So far there’s not much talk about the Siri and Wolfram, but with this new report, that is bound to change.

Rapportive is relatively young and was funded by Charles River Ventures, Paul Buchheit, Scott Banister, Jason Calacanis, Gary Vaynerchuk, Dharmesh Shah, Shervin Pishevar, Roy Rodenstein, Kima Ventures, Zelkova Ventures, 500 Startups, Michael Zirngibl, Ashish Soni and David Cancel to the tune of $1 million. As a contact management platform, Rapportive allows for the aggregation and display of social networking information for people that are contacted through Gmail. Largely a service used by professionals, the acquisition was said to be heavily hinged on this fact.

This latest LinkedIn acquisition shows that the people who run the social networking platform are looking to scale things. It already has one of the highest median income user base of all the social networking platforms; adding more users will almost certainly make it more valuable to investors, not to mention help it strengthen its offerings to investors. Rapportive now joins Cardmunch and ConnectedHQ has a new piece in the growing social networking empire of LinkedIn.

Is LinkedIn buying too much, too quickly? Let us know below.

Observers are keen to point out though that Gaga’s social network looks much like the social sharing site, Pinterest. Both are of course heavy on visuals with very little scope for extensive written content. I suppose though that a site used mostly by ‘Monsters’ wouldn’t need much scope for writing, and at any rate, the web is now hot on pictures and video so it makes sense to stick with what’s working.

Backplane CEO and co-founder Matt Michelsen took the opportunity to shed light on the media-rich functionality of its first project. Said Michelsen, “Backplane is about bringing together communities and Gaga’s community just so happens to be the community we’re using to learn about proper functionality, we think we can really change the world.”

So far the site has a base of just over 10,000 people but that number is expected to explode once it is opened to the public.

Will you be joining LittleMonsters.com? Let us know below.

According to data collected by the National Retail Federation and eMarketer.com, Americans are expected to spend around $17 billion on Valentine’s Day presents this year—a figure which makes up 20% of what will be spent online for all of 2012. Unsurprisingly, men will spend more on presents this year than women, and all told will spend about $112.65 per person. This is more than double what women are expected to spend at $51.56 per person.

It appears too that age is big factor that affects spending and the ‘mood’ of love. 25 – 34s controls much of the Valentine’s spending, and the contribution drops steadily with the older groups.  In terms of actual location that accommodates much of this spending; the Discount store came out top accounting for about 37% of the spending. The Department store came in second, while Speciality stores round out the top 3.

Wherever the shopping is done, and by whom, retailers will have a wonderful February this year, and all things considered, that isn’t half bad.

Do you spend lots of money on February 14? Let us know below.

One such domain name selling company is Go daddy, which is successful and popular and sells many domain names for at an affordable price. Many people have probably heard of this company and their web site, Godaddy.com since they advertise on TV as well as online. On a recent sales day for Go daddy, 2/10/12, CommercialEnergy.com sold for $4,005, pakistanconstitution-law.org sold for $1,550, and aboveredirect.com sold for $1,505, leading the sales for that given day.

Here’s the list of other domain names that sold on 2/10/12 as well:

Though it is obvious from the above list that domain names can be quite pricey sometimes, depending on who they are purchased from and the URL itself, it is a wise decision for businesses of all kinds and sizes to consider moving their business online and purchasing a domain name. So many companies are doing business online nowadays and the domain name would more than likely pay for itself in the near future.

Many are pointing to the colorful life of its founder, Kim Dotcom,; but other are also pointing to the fact that since being founded in 2005, the site has had several run-ins with the law and other big industry players. Megaupload had a big spat with Google over Adsense payments, and even had several lawsuits filed against it in the US.

But perhaps what is more telling about the saga is the fact that at over the course of its life, the site made about $175 million in net revenue. This amount of cash of course necessitated a sizable staff, and the site is reported to have employed more than 55 people to manage its daily influx of traffic and data sharing. There are a reported 180+ million users registered worldwide, many of which are considered to be legitimate file sharers of non-copyrighted material. The fate of their uploads is still up in the air as at this writing.

It’s difficult to tell but if the site made so much money, it’s going to be hard to disaggregate what was made through legit means and what was not.

Are sites like Megaupload bad for the web? Share your thoughts below.