“The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age” by Linkedin CEO Reid Hoffman, with help from Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh, is number 7, 132 on Amazon’s bestseller list. But, according to BuzzFeed, a Linkedin filing Saturday reveals that the company spent $500, 000 buying 20, 000 copies of it “for marketing and branding purposes.”
Money well spent, considering Time magazine (remember Time magazine?) listed Reid Hoffman among its 100 most influential people walking the earth today.
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Makes you wonder how many copies of Time Linkedin will be buying now…
Facebook’s co-founder Sean Parker wrote the entry about Hoffman:
“Reid has tirelessly worked to channel the capabilities of social media toward a more productive purpose. LinkedIn succeeded in connecting the professional world, enabling social mobility on an unprecedented scale. The result was a revolution; the world was suddenly a much smaller, much more connected and ultimately much more productive place. And Reid remains a magnet for the smartest, most creative people looking to change the world through technology.”
Maybe. Knowing now that Linkedin is prepared to spend a lot of money to create the impression of success, one has to ask a couple of questions about this whole revolution thing and who’s paying for it.
Michelle Leder, an editor at Footnoted, is credited with the discovery. If you do the math, figuring Hoffman nets $3 for each copy sold, then he paid half a million dollars to earn $60 thousand.
Now, this is how you manage talent in the networked age!
