Linking Universe provides business tools in a social networking environment to help you sell your ice cream more effectively. Watch the video and I think you will understand…

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Our Linking Universe Facebook application provides a great platform for analyzing your network, communicating with business friends, and sharing and tracking business referrals and opportunities. Our Facebook application is currently offered free of charge in the Facebook environment.

Our premium service provides advanced CRM features in an online application including business opportunity tracking, extensive notes and communications tracking, scheduling, and even mass communications and pre-scheduled drip campaigns. Linking Universe CS is a full-scale, online CRM application that we will begin to provide at a convenient monthly cost.

You can see our Linking Universe CS beta at the following link: http://linkinguniverse.com/premium

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You can access the tour by visiting: http://facebook.linkinguniverse.com/Tour.php

The tour is a self-guided slideshow with screenshots of each section and explanations for key fields and features.

The tour is also available from withing the Linking Universe application on Facebook; just click on ‘Tour’ in the upper right corner.

Please share this latest news with your friends.

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The application is currently released as an ‘invitation only’ event. The invitation only status will be lifted soon. Until then, if you are interested, please complete our Contact Us form and let us know you would like an invitation and we’ll make sure you get one.

We are inviting people as fast as we can. We will begin with our close circle of business friends who have been watching the development, add the many of you who have requested to be included in the initial beta, and then begin to branch out to the masses.

Facebook recently constricted their invitation limits, which effectively halts our ability to invite more than just a handful each day. However, each of you who receive an invitation can also send to your groups of friends, so we anticipate the snowball will gather some volume in the days and weeks to come as more and more people receive invitations.

Please join us in celebrating our launch of a new, more mature Facebook application. As you know, we call it ‘Linking Universe’: Finally, a reason to use Facebook at work!

Don’t forget to request an invitation, and invite your business friends when you get on board.

Thank you for your support! We really appreciate the overwhelming positive comments we have received from those of you who have seen or heard of Linking Universe.

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Take for example the latest iPhone commercial. You may not have seen it yet, but Apple has chosen to feature Facebook in their latest television ad. This is a remarkable endorsement of Facebook, and lends to the growing credibility of the Facebook Platform moving forward.

Click Here to view the new Apple iPhone ad featuring Facebook: http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/ad16/

As you know, Linking Universe is working to bring robust business tools to the Facebook Platform. We are joining the outstanding social networking tools in Facebook with effective business tools and resources that will help Facebook users grow their social networks and leverage the inherent business opportunities.

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Linking Universe, Inc., announced today that the Linking Universe business application on the Facebook© platform was named among the favorite applications listed by authors Jason Alba and Jesse Stay in their new book titled “ I’m On Facebook — Now What???”.

In the new book the authors discuss Linking Universe, saying “Linking Universe is one of the coolest business applications we have seen on Facebook.” and explain that “Linking Universe is built around a method to define the quality, not just quantity, of your Facebook friends.”

The authors of I’m On Facebook — Now What??? further explain that Linking Universe provides an analysis of your friends and a helpful network score that shows “how substantive those friends are towards a business relationship.” They go on to describe several features of Linking Universe including the sales automation tools, saying the applications includes a “CRM tool that integrates with your Facebook friends and allows you to track your interactions with them and others.”

Linking Universe is an advanced Facebook application that includes tools that help you analyze your business network, communicate using business terms, and to track and share business opportunities with your network of friends and contacts.

The book is available on Amazon.com or at the publisher’s website, HappyAbout.info. For more information about the book visit http://www.FacebookAdvice.com.

Download the official press release, here: Linking Universe Praised In Book

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If you want to be informed of any coming events, join the group titled Utah CEOs With A Facebook Strategy in Facebook.

The luncheon was hosted by Paul Allen and his team at FamilyLink.com including Jason McGowan and Mike Jensen, each of whom presented during the 1.5 hour meet. About 40 people attended.

Paul Allen was first up, and presented some very exciting insights into the Facebook opportunity. I felt like I was watching Rocky for the first time, and left even more excited about the future of Linking Universe. Among the highlights I gleaned from Paul’s presentation:

• Facebook is gaining momentum (currently out pacing all other social networks in growth);
• The Facebook Platform is the first social environment to go ‘open‘, which is spurring unprecedented growth (the development community is jumping on the Facebook coattails faster than you can say ‘new applications’);
• Social networking, and Facebook in particular, is more than a ‘fad’ (not only is it here to stay, but new applications are adding functions and features that make it evermore valuable. Consider Linking Universe, for instance…).

Jason McGowan took over and led us through some incredible stats. He forwarded his presentation to me after the event (thank you, Jason). Here are a handful of interesting highlights:

• Facebook has over 62 million active users;
  • An active user is someone who logs in at least once each day;
  • More than half of active users return again each day;
• Facebook has an average of 250,000 new registrations per day, a remarkably huge audience of new customers that effectively stave off a saturation point for any application;
• So far, the number of active users has doubled every six months;
• More than half of Facebook users are outside of college;
• The fastest growing age demographic in Facebook is 25 years and older;
• Facebook maintains a marketshare of 85 percent among U.S 4-year universities;
• More than 95 percent of Facebook users have added at least one application to their account, or about 60 million.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that 34 percent of Facebook users are professionals, executives, and/or in sales, education, or technical fields. I quickly calculated the potential low-hanging-fruit for Linking Universe at over 20 million. Wow.

Jason wrapped up with a review of the Facebook interface and some tips about how to build applications more effectively, taking advantage of built-in features, and some marketing tips.

Mike Jensen spent some time discussing performance optimization and scalability. Among his advice:

• Go with Amazon’s EC2 platform;
• Plan ahead for scalability (he recalled the scaling nightmare they endured after going live and achieving overwhelming success);
• Loadbalancing techniques, memory optimization, and common practices regarding backups.

The meeting was informative, well informed, and well attended. The who’s who of our local Facebook community were in attendance, too, which made for a terrific networking opportunity.

Lunch was pretty good, too.

Our ‘Thanks‘ and appreciation go to the Utah CEOs With A Facebook Strategy for organizing a worthwhile event.

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Linking Universe announces a new business application for the Facebook© platform that allows users to take advantage of professional connections

Application calculates the value of a business network and automates communications and
collaboration with professional contacts.

Salt Lake City, UT (January 22, 2008) Linking Universe announced today a business relationship management application for Facebook that uses network analytics to assess the business value of a social network. Linking Universe offers opportunity management capabilities that allow users to exchange business referrals, and track opportunities through a sales or hiring process. The Linking Universe solution is the first add-on applications for Facebook to combine social networking with the completion of business processes.

With the availability of this product, Linking Universe leads the way in transitioning Facebook, the leading social networking utility platform, into a platform for business productivity. “Up until now, Facebook business applications have been simple versions of standard software like messaging or word processing,” says Coleman Barney, Linking Universe President and CEO. “Our product is the first application that let’s business people actively use a social network to get work done.”

Linking Universe is scheduled to debut in beta by January 31, 2008. It will be available for general release by the end of February 2008. Users will need a Facebook account and can access the beta free of charge from the Facebook applications directory. Interested parties can sign-up to be included in the beta at www.linkinguniverse.com/contact-us.

“The Linking Universe solution was created based on the realization that as college and university students move into the work force they will expect to use social networking skills in their professional lives,” said Cary Snowden, Vice President of Products. “Integrating social networking with sales-force automation and CRM is a natural evolution.”

About Linking Universe
Linking Universe is the first business relationship management application that allows you to unlock the value of your professional social network. The solution allows users to set-up a professional network of social contacts, and then manage and improve the network through the automation of business processes such as sharing referrals, sales-force automation and hiring. In addition, the company offers powerful analytics that help users understand and improve the value of their network. For more detail, visit www.linkinguniverse.com.

Press Contact
Cary Snowden
VP, Product Management and Marketing
csnowden@linkinguniverse.com
801.938.3466

Download a PDF of this release here: Linking Universe Announces Facebook Application

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The article shares an interesting insider perspective, in particular on the business numbers surrounding the sale and revenue potential of MySpace, and had some interesting things to say about Facebook.

Of particular interest was the assertion that “MySpace has challenges, especially from Facebook, which has leapt ahead of MySpace in technology and has been accumulating users at a faster rate.” Stelter goes on to say that “Facebook,… is also seen by some advertisers as a better bet.”

The article positions Facebook as a cleaner environment with more mature users against MySpace’s seedy reputation and privacy baggage.

Take a look at the article here.

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