A round-up of app's for the New LinkedIn application platform

"Now we have Magpie, which has the tag-line: “convert your tweets into bling-bling”. Magpie matches up advertisers with Twitter users who have agreed to periodically send out “magpie-tweets” containing the advertisers message, which will contain a link to the advertiser’s site."

"The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable."

At VentureBeat’s Downturn Roundtable event this morning, Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr just gave a rundown of the top 10 things startups should be doing right now to keep their companies afloat in hard times.

"…we are seeing many companies looking at their cash balances and burn rates and deciding to cut burn to increase runway. We've done an exercise with our own portfolio that I wanted to share with all of you. I am calling it the survival matrix."

"When the service first appeared a couple of years ago, its appeal seemed largely limited to narcissists who wanted to let everybody know what they were doing in real time. But, like blogs and social-networking sites, Twitter is starting to cross into the mainstream, as a wide range of people find interesting uses for the brief notes."

"To preserve cash, many tech start-ups are rushing to lay off employees and cut expenses. They are shelving their dreams of Google-size riches and getting small, humble and thrifty, all with the more modest goal of surviving the coming economic winter."

"Of course, one man’s trivia may be another man’s must-know scoop. For every reader bored by a tweeter’s updates on his daily doings, there’s another who’s delighted to learn that their friend is taking up the cello or buying a new computer. Sorgatz uses his feed in part to keep up with friends who live in other states: “It’s kind of ‘ambient friendship,’” he says, “I learn about what they’re doing from these little pieces of information I pick up. I feel more connected to them…It’s part of their life, what they’re thinking about.” "