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The share prices of LinkedIn are doing very well post-IPO, closing at a record high of US$168.55 on 27 February, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. This is in sharp contrast to the performances of Zynga, Facebook and Groupon.

One of the key reasons for its stellar performance is that LinkedIn has become a major source of talent for Fortune 500 companies.

Chris Hoyt, who helps manage Pepsi’s human resources department, explained that the beverage firm has increased its spending on LinkedIn in the past three years, paying for career pages, job ads and a recruiter talent finder.

“There’s one tool consistently used across the board and that’s LinkedIn,” said Hoyt. However, he did not reveal an exact figure for Pepsi’s spending on the social network.

Nevertheless, Hoyt explained that Pepsi’s payment to LinkedIn is based on an annual contract wherein the beverage maker can raise its payment if it requires special recruiting initiatives.

Pepsi’s willingness to boost its spending on LinkedIn may help explain why the company is now worth US$18 billion, a quantum leap from the US$4 billion when it first went public in May 2011. Comparatively, the market capitalisations of Zynga, Facebook and Groupon have all fallen by 25 per cent to over 60 per cent since their market debuts.

LinkedIn was long considered social media’s ugly duckling, with investors baffled by its hybrid business model wherein the focus is on the less popular world of professional connections. LinkedIn focuses on attracting users but it sells its services mainly to businesses.

Today, dignitaries and representatives from many of the world’s governments will converge on Dubai to hold closed-door meetings to discuss various international interests, including the United Nations taking control of the Internet.  This is being seen as the preliminary attempt to take over the Internet and is being opposed by thousands of organizations and millions of people, including Google VP and “Father of the Internet” Vint Cerf.

Cerf and Bob Kahn are considered the two most influential in the founding of the modern Internet, developing the protocols and structures that underly much of what we use today  In a piece on CNN, Cerf points out that about 42 countries filter and censor Internet content (out of 72 studied) – 42 not counting Cuba, North Korea, and China.

Today, a closed-door meeting of the International Telecommunication Union has several of these censoring countries in attendance.  Many believe that with talk of taxing the Internet globally, with talk of putting “controls” on it, etc., this meeting will be the first of several with a goal towards giving control of the ‘Net to the UN.

According to Cerf:

“The ITU is bringing together regulators from around the world to renegotiate a decades-old treaty that was focused on basic telecommunications, not the internet. Some proposals leaked to the WICITLeaks website from participating states could permit governments to justify censorship of legitimate speech — or even justify cutting off internet access by reference to amendments to the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs).”

So is Cerf the only one concerned?  Hardly.  Adi Robertson at TheVerge calls it a New World Order scheme.  According to ZDnet, the entire Australian government is protesting the move by the UN.  Even PCWorld got into politics on this one, with Christina DesMarais penning a piece on the Dubai meeting.

Is this meeting of concern?  By itself, not really, but it’s likely the beginning of a much more sinister trend.  Every government, including our own, has made moves to control the Internet and all of these can be seen as infringements on the freedom that the ‘Net and only the ‘Net can provide to everyone in the world.  That is something we should all be concerned with.

Now that Apple has officially announced that yes, indeed, a new iPhone (#5) is coming, and thanks to some of the details given at the event, we can learn a lot about this upcoming smart phone.

Several websites have run with the information detailed at the release announcement last week.  What wasn’t given were some of the more technical aspects of the phone, but those details were given when you look through the presentation slides and specifications mentioned during the event.

Of course, since this stuff isn’t headline-grabbing exciting like the announcement of the new iPhone 5 was, it doesn’t tend to get as much notice.  Now that the initial excitement of the announcement itself is over, though, we can start looking at the underpinnings of this stylish new iPhone that’ll be coming soon to a pocket near you.

Given the one-sided curve (always up) of the iOS device tree during its development plus the photos shown of the new A6 PoP stack that will be inside the 5, we can see that this phone will be roughly 33% better than is previous generation (4S) in terms of bandwidth and memory.  Given the higher-resolution display, that’s a must.  Interestingly, it will also better the iPad 2, which is only slightly better than the iPhone 4S, and hints that the next generation of the iPad may see similar or more improvements.

For more details, we can look at Geekbench who managed to do a full benchmark of the iPhone 5.  It scored 1,601 on their tests, with Integer and Memory Bandwidth tests coming in low, but with Processor Floating Point and general Memory tests coming in very high.  That’s on the (likely) base model iPhone 5 with only 1GB of RAM.  It is for sure known that the processor is a dual-core system at 1.02GHz and that it will be running iOS 6.

That 1,601 score means little without context, though.  For comparison, the 4S received only a 629 and the iPad 3 got 766.

Quite impressive!

Social TV, or the use of social media while watching television, is becoming a mass-market phenomenon, according to a study by Ericsson ConsumerLab.

The survey’s data were collected from various countries including the UK, US, South Korea, and China. In total, 12,000 quantitative and 14 qualitative online interviews were conducted, representing over 460 million consumers.

ConsumerLab’s study revealed that the number of people using social media while watching television rose by 18 percentage points to 62 percent in one year. Only 58 percent of men engage in this kind of behaviour compared to 66 percent of women.

Moreover, 25 percent of the respondents stated that they utilise social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to talk about what they are viewing while they are watching it.

Niklas Rönnblom, Senior Advisor at Ericsson ConsumerLab, said portable devices are now a vital part of the television experience, with 67 percent of respondents using laptops, tablets, or smartphones for video or TV viewing. Additionally, 60 percent of the respondents are using on-demand services each week.

Aside from that, viewing TV while on the move is now becoming popular because half of the time spent watching video and television on smartphones is done outside the house.

Though viewing behaviour is changing, only seven percent of the respondents stated that they will cut back on their television subscriptions in the coming months. In fact, 41 percent of those surveyed are willing to pay more for a better viewing experience in HD.

The watch is beginning to change again.  Although it has been dying off as a fashion accessory and utilitarian part of our outfits, the watch is beginning to see a resurgence as new and more connected watches enter the market and capture the attention of people.

The watch has mostly left our wrists as we use cell phones and other always-at-hand gadgets to tell the time.  Now, technology companies are re-thinking the watch and rather than fighting the phenomenon are embracing gadgetry as the savior of the wrist watch.

Sony has the Smartwatch, a wrist watch with a 2-inch screen that can synch with  your phone to display its display, making glancing over tweets and texts a breeze – all while your phone stays in your pocket.

Nike has a similar idea with the FuelBand, which is geared towards synching with fitness apps on your smart phone, helping to monitor exercise routines and workout data.

Today’s smartwatch is becoming the way we will interact with our smart phones tomorrow.

Business executives are drawn to the Sony Smartwatch because it allows them to interact with their phones in meetings without seeming rude.  It is the extension of the phone that is appealing.  The wrist becomes a remote screen where you now have the ability to control your phone with a number of different applications.

It’s the watch, but rethought.

Many people think that Apple, with its US$661 billion (£419.49 billion) market share, is the most valuable company in history. However, it hasn’t quite reached that status yet.

Much of the media’s attention focused on Apple after it beat Microsoft in terms of market value. Columbia Journalism Review declared that the world’s most valuable company is not Apple, but rather International Business Machines Corp, also known as IBM.

Excluding inflation, Apple’s US$661 billion (£419.49 billion) market capitalisation would have surely surpassed IBM’s market cap of US$192.3 billion (£122 billion) in 1967. However, taking into account that one US dollar (£0.63) in 1967 is now worth US$6.85 (£4.35), IBM’s value stands at US$1.3 trillion (£825 billion) and exceeds Apple’s by a long shot.

Nonetheless, Apple can still take the crown if it can sustain its growth. The New York Times reported that with market capitalisation of US$500 billion (£317.32 billion), the iPhone maker would attain a market cap of over US$3 trillion (£1.9 trillion) by 2020.

The New York Times also revealed that this market capitalisation is higher than the gross domestic product (GDP) of Brazil or France in 2011.

However, the market capitalisation of companies does not always follow an upward trajectory. It can also depend on the rules of economics such as demand, investor confidence, and earnings projections.

Moreover, a recession or a severe downturn could occur and these could greatly affect the companies.

For its part, IBM is one of the few information technology (IT) firms that has a history that goes back to the 19th century.