Business Weak

I hate to poke at a well-read journalist (again), but I must take issue with the way in which Aaron Ricadela mis-quoted me, obviously to support the hypothesis of his recent Business Week article titled "Fogeys Flock to Facebook."

Here's what I said to him:

"Clearly, Facebook has lots of traffic and a lot of that traffic is from the same group of users as on LinkedIn. But Facebook is a social application--it doesn't offer the same professional tools that make LinkedIn so popular, and so we see very little effect on the usage and growth at LinkedIn. In fact, LinkedIn continues to grow beyond the numbers Reid had projected at the time of our investment."

Here's what he wrote:

Even Facebook's competitors acknowledge change is afoot. "Clearly, Facebook has lots of traffic and a lot of that traffic is from the same group of users as on LinkedIn," says David Cowan, a managing partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, a LinkedIn investor (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/29/07, "LinkedIn Reaches Out"). Yet during Facebook's most recent growth spurt—it has added 1.3 million visitors since May, according to ComScore—LinkedIn's audience hasn't declined, Cowan says.

C'mon, Aaron. Next time please just report what I really said, instead of paraphrasing it to suit your story.

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