LinkedIn just announced they now have 100 million users on their website. The professional social networking site has been around since 2003. Out of the 100 million users, the majority is 44% U.S. users. Other countries that have shown substantial growth with users are lead by Brazil, Mexico, India and France. While 20% of LinkedIn users are in the service industry, 9% are in the high-tech business of some type. LinkedIn has been like the Facebook to many in the professional world and is continuing to connect people through out the world.

Big news from Pepsi this week as they announced they will stop using plastic to make their bottles! In an effort to go green, Pepsi has transitioned making its soda bottles from plastic to making them entirely out of plant material.

The bottles are made from switch grass, pine bark, corn husks and other materials. Eventually Pepsi plans to use orange peels, oat hulls, potato scraps and other leftovers from its food business.

The company plans to test these new bottles in 2012 with a few hundred thousand bottles and once they are positive they can produce the bottles at the necessary scale, they will transition all products over.

After the huge hit of the iPad release in 2010, the iPad 2 was released for purchase this morning. 14.8 million iPads were sold in the first 9 months on the market, with a predicted 30 million to be sold in 2011. The iPad 2 is promoted to be faster, lighter and have rear facing cameras with the capability for video chatting.

The pricing will range from $499 – $829.

Phone apps continue to become more popular as the use of smart phones continues to rise as well. New reports done by Forrester predict that smart phone apps will reach the $38 billion mark by 2015. Apple leads the app sales with their iPhone and  with a little over 80% of the market. Additional smart phones coming out such as the Android, Windows phone and Google also offer apps that will help contribute to the large amount of sales. Last year, apps made $1.7 billion reflecting a strongdemand for phone users.

Pepsi has come up with a “skinny” design for their new Diet Pepsi can. The new design is a taller and slimmer shape that is meant to, “…compliment today’s most stylish look”, according to chief marketing officer, Jill Beraud. The product will launch in March after being introduced to New York’s fall fashion week. Window display specialist Simon Doonan is also helping with the release of the Diet Pepsi’s new design and image of fashion and style. Although the new diet can will be available shortly, the older version will also still be available.

The chairman of the Number Resource Organization recently announced that they ran out of internet addresses to give out. The group, that gives addresses to service providers, says they went through their 4.3 billion addresses. Although they have currently run out of addresses, there are already new ones in the works. The new pool of addresses has an additional 340 trillion groups, each containing of one trillion networks. The Number Resource Organization thinks this will not be something they encounter again in the future.

A handful of airlines including AirTran Airways, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta, United Airlines, U.S. Airways and Virgin America have teamed up to free in flights Facebook access during the month of February. Gogo Wi-Fi network and Ford will be making it possible to logon and update your current status while in the air this month. Additional internet access other than Facebook with start at $4.95.

Are you using social media in your advantage? We may feel a certain level of discomfort at first, but as we push through we will be able to get a lot of valuable comments and ideas on how to better ourselves and the product we are offering. People are going to write whatever they want on your “wall”, but, often rewards await those who push through the discomfort of the unknown. Push through the discomfort and use everything in your advantage. Building trust with your customer base doesn’t come easy – each day is a step forward towards a successful product.

We are all trying to find ways to process all the projects fast and get them off the ground for 2011. Take each task one at a time and find ways to frame the right conversations with your team managers. Framing your conversation and keeping everyone on target and on the issue brought for discussions will help you in pushing projects through more successfully.

According to Searchignite, the demand for paid searches went up in 2010. While only 17.4% of search ad spending was done through Bing and Yahoo, Google dominated with 82.6% of search ads. The market is up 18.5% from 2009 when search ad spending was beginning to decrease. Retailers had very impressive spending because of the busy holiday season. December by itself had a 44.8% increase. While some speculated that there would be a continued decrease, these numbers prove something different. Leadpile uses ad spending as an option just as many others are continuing to do.

Tax season is creeping up on us again.. and as we get closer, something to think about it how you would prepare for an audit.

According to WalletPop, the IRS is ramping up the number of audits in an attempt to close the gap between the taxes it believes it should have collected and what was actually collected. In 2001, the tax gap was $250 billion.

There are 2 types of audits, paper and people. A paper audit is most common – if the IRS thinks you made a mistake, they were notify you that they have recalculated your tax , they may also ask you to send additional documentation to back up claims you may have made. A audit in person is less common and are generally triggered by something very out of the ordinary on your return. Typically with an in person audit, the IRS will set up a time to meet with you and let you know ahead of time what documents they need to review.

A list of frequently asked tax audit questions can be found here: http://www.walletpop.com/2011/01/03/tax-audit-frequently-asked-questions/

It was another great Affiliate Summit for the Leadpile team. We are now returning from ASW and are excited to move forward on all the great things we discussed with our partners. Unfortunately, we did not have time to meet with all those publishers and advertisers that we wanted to, however if we were unable to connect with you, please reach out to us to get something going!
Leadpile’s message this Affiliate Summit was for the excitement we have for 2011 and all the exciting new things we are going to be getting into. Leadpile is looking at getting into some new verticals such as insurance, senior care, and credit reports (which is already live). We are currently working in bankruptcy, auto finance and payday loan lead types, and we are looking for lots more traffic on all of these verticals. The sky is the limit in 2011, and if we are not already working with you, we definitely want to!