lurker20

Interesting that now, 4 days later, after a brief runup to $115, LNKD is at ~$86, very close to the opening sale.

Unfortunately, some of use take negative vacations between jobs, cashing out unused vacation on Friday, and starting a new job on Monday. It's only a month or two later that we realize our mistake.

Sort of. The difference is that some benefits are linked to length-of-service or continuity-of-service, so an unpaid vacation in the USA can scuttle your health insurance, equity vest, 401(k) match, etc.

If you are on a contract (which from context I am guessing is full-time per week, short-term), you can take vacation before or after the term, right?

Here is what Microsoft should do with Skype and it's 140Million-member social network:

Beat Facebook. Turn Skype into Diaspora. (Specifically, take Skype's persistent chatrooms into the next dimension)

Integrate Skype with Windows Photo Album, Movie Maker, Spaces, blah blah. Mayke Skype a local application for managing your personal content -- photos, videos, thoughts, whatever.

Leverage Skype's encrypted P2P infrastructure to make truly privacy-protected social networking. Automatically send status updates and comments and stuff to a user's friends over the Skype network.

Make social network truly social, and not dependent on a central server.

Monetizations: * ads in the the client software * for-pay special privacy settings for business/paranoid: An Enterprise version that runs inside a private (corporate) network, with centralized IT authority. * For-pay broadcast-type features for self-promoters. * For-pay "professional" and other custom front-end for more specifically-structure communities than Facebook's free for all pseudo-"Friend" relationship.

Let users import/export their data between Skype and other network and blog systems.

Skype could displace Facebook, making social networking better for everyone, and rain money on MS.