The launch of “Google Drive” has been a poorly kept secret in Silicon Valley, with the product name and a rough description of the online storage product widely circulated in recent weeks as Google has worked out the final bugs. Drive opened up to millions of users around the world Tuesday, allowing users to synch their files between PCs, smartphones and tablets.

But the success of Drive will ride largely on whether Google can differentiate its offering from already established fast-growing cloud storage startups that were in the market first, such as Dropbox and Box, as well as Microsoft’s SkyDrive service and big consumer media competitors like Apple’s iCloud and Amazon’s Cloud Drive.

Existing Google Docs files, the centerpiece of Google’s existing cloud storage offering, will move to the Google Drive service once users download apps and install the new service. Google will offer users up to 5 gigabytes of storage for free, and up to 25 gigabytes for $2.49 a month, with prices for larger amounts of data lower than many competitors.

Like Dropbox, Google Drive integrates into the operating system of a Windows PC or a Mac, or an Android mobile device, meaning that one copy of a file is stored locally on each synched machine, along with a copy that is stored on the cloud. Google is developing a version for Apple’s iOS mobile operating system that powers iPhones and iPads.

A user who downloads the Drive app and syncs their devices through the cloud will see their files automatically updated between devices each time they change a file in one location.

For clients who are engaged with SEO (Search Engine Optimzation), please see below how Google Panda works, what the impacts were and the various updates from Panda 1.0 through Panda 3.2 that have happened along the way.  The updates affected some publishers while rewarded those that followed Google’s guildlines along the way.

It is now both a personal and business social network after launching Google+ brand “pages” on November 7, 2011. Google plus enhanced the visual aspect of social networks by making its images significantly larger than the photos on Facebook. Facebook has since responded with a revamp of its design that allows for much larger images in its new “Timeline” for personal profiles.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen a huge increase in social networking usage from a variety of users, from students to large corporations. Tons of new platforms are popping up daily – and, as you probably already know, the latest addition to the social networking family is Google+. But what exactly is its purpose and can it help you and your online brand?

Google+, the newest brainchild from its namesake, is a social platform that essentially merges all your activity into one site. Think of it as a rolled together version of all the popular networks, like Twitter and Facebook. With Google+, users can:

• Create a profile, including adding photo and video
• Arrange their networks into Circles or small groups
• Engage in video chatting with Hangouts
• Meet up with friends in chat rooms in Google+’s Huddles
• Show off and share your interests in multiple categories with Sparks, and more

Though it’s probably only the tip of the iceberg for Google+, it’s rising popularity in such a short period time (currently 25+ million users since launching on 6/28/2011) proves that the platform is not going anywhere soon, even with reports of traffic declining.

So, can Google+ actually help boost your online brand? Absolutely, especially if you use all its features to your advantage.

As with any social network, it’s important to complete your profile in full before you start spreading word of your Google+ platform. Apart from the usual information, you can include places you’ve lived in the world, “bragging rights,” and +1’s, which are what you’ve liked on the Web using Google’s +1 button. Further, think about linking back to your other social sites so you can create a more concrete brand. You can also chose which Circles you want to display on your profile as well, which could be convenient when you want to keep certain parts of your life private.

Next, try to find people you admire, like influencers or mentors, and add them to a separate Circle. Why separate? Circles are designed to make your Google+ experience easier by helping you organize your network. When you check out your stream of updates, you can chose to see what a certain Circle is talking about, posting, questions they have, etc. This makes commenting and interacting with your networks much easier.

Lastly, just having a presence on a popular social networking site can do wonders for your brand. As with the others, update and maintain your Google+ profile regularly. Above all, don’t just create an account and never take advantage of it. It can be a great resource if you use it to it’s full potential. Your brand will probably look better if you do so.

Are you using Google+? What tips do you suggest for new users who want to improve their online brands? 

IPO Details:
LinkedIn’s initial public offering priced at $45 a share Wednesday, the company will raise about $350 million via this offering.

Shares of the social networking service for professionals will begin trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol LNKD.

The 8-year-old company will make its stock market debut with a value of $4.3 billion as investors clamor to get a piece of the most hotly anticipated IPO out of Silicon Valley in years and the biggest from a U.S. Internet company since Google set the gold standard nearly seven years ago when it went public.

Whether LinkedIn can maintain this valuation has implications for Silicon Valley and the broader Web industry. LinkedIn is one of the first social-media companies to go public, leading a wave of expected IPOs from other Web companies such as Facebook, Groupon, Twitter, Zygna.

LinkedIn Businesses:
For supporters of LinkedIn’s offering, the company is in a unique position to profit from the change in the way professionals connect to one another and search for new jobs. LinkedIn has a fast-growing membership base of more than 100 million subscribers and three diversified revenue streams: online advertisements sold to businesses; premium subscriptions for individuals; and hiring tools sold to recruiters.

LinkedIn’s subscribers also tend to be relatively wealthy because it is a professional-networking site. That makes each member more valuable to advertisers, compared with people who use Facebook and Twitter. In economic downturns, more job seekers also tend to use sites like LinkedIn,

Inside Shareholders:
Reid Hoffman has a 20% stake in the company which this time Thursday will be worth $858 million.

Chief Executive Jeff Weiner will also be in the money: His 2.5% stake is worth roughly $105 million.

Dual-stock Structure:
LinkedIn has a dual-stock structure, which lets the company’s insiders retain significant control over shareholder decisions even after others become stockholders. Google and Facebook have similar structures.

Co-founder Reid Hoffman and other executives hold Class B shares, which have 10 times the voting power of the Class A shares LinkedIn will sell to the public.

It’s a method that’s controversial to shareholder advocates but popular among tech startups, which want to ensure that their founders are able to execute their vision.

Who’s selling?
LinkedIn itself is selling about 4.83 million shares, and existing stockholders are selling about 3 million.

Hoffman and his wife, Michelle Yee, are selling about 115,000 shares. Even after the sale, they’ll still own more than 20% of the company’s stock. That will be worth more than $850 million at the $45 per share price.

The Yuri Milner (Digital Sky Technologies) purchase of the house owned by Fred Chan (ESS Technology) has set a record. Yuri Milner’s price of $100 million is the highest amount ever paid for a single family residence in the U.S..

Of note, Ron Baron paid $103 million for a residence in East Hampton, N.Y., but that was 40 acres of vacant land with no single family residence on the property.  The Fred Chan house is located in Los Altos Hills near Silicon Valley.   It boasts 25,500 square feet, 5 bedroom and 9 baths, with indoor and outdoor pools, tennis courts, spa, gym, ballroom, wine cellar and car wash.  It sits on 11 acres.

Who were the sellers and buyers? Chan founded ESS Technology which makes audio and video equipment. The Chans will carry at $50 million note on the house.  The house was reportedly not publicly listed for sale. In addition to this home, the Chans are trying to also sell a 5.4 acre mansion on Oahu for $80 million.

Yuri Milner’s Digital Sky Technologies is an international investment firm focused solely on the private Internet sector.  Its Silicon Valley investments includes investing $200 million in Facebook, $180 million in Zygna, $135 million in Groupon, among others.

LinkedIn, which has more than 90 million members around the world, announced its intention to go public in a document filed Thursday with the SEC.

In the document, the company for the first time disclosed its financial data, reporting net income of $10 million for the first nine months of 2010 on revenue of $161.4 million, which doubled from the same period in the prior year. However, the net income dropped to $1.85 million after accounting for “undistributed earnings allocated to preferred stockholders.”

For all of 2009, LinkedIn posted a net loss of $3.9 million on $120.1 million in revenue. But revenue has risen dramatically since 2007, when it was $32.5 million.

The IPO papers filed Thursday by LinkedIn put the 8–year–old company on a path to make its stock market debut in the next three to four months, barring any major stumbling blocks.

LinkedIn’s filing could encourage other rapidly growing Internet services to test the public markets after amassing followings of millions of users. Other likely candidates include: online coupon service Groupon, which rejected a $6 billion takeover bid from Google Inc. last year.; online game maker Zynga; online messaging service Twitter; and potentially the biggest investment opportunity of all, social networking phenomenon Facebook, which already has indicated it’s likely to file its IPO plans by the end of April 2012.

LinkedIn, based down the street from Google’s Mountain View, California, headquarters, is the most mature of the group. It started in 2003, a year before Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg launched his website while he was a Harvard University sophomore.

Since then, Facebook has emerged as a hot spot for having fun and wasting time while LinkedIn has positioned itself as a place for getting down to business.

Not surprisingly, kibitzing with friends and family has proven to be vastly more popular than contemplating work.

More than 90 million profiles have been set up on LinkedIn, compared with more than 600 million on Facebook.

But LinkedIn has carved out a profitable niche. The company earned $1.85 million on revenue of $161 million during the first nine months of 2010.  During the same period, Facebook earned $355 million on revenue of $1.2 billion, according to documents recently distributed to its newest investors.

LinkedIn warned it will sustain a loss this year as it invests in its service in an effort to attract more users. It’s also trying to ward off competition from similar services overseas, such as Xing in Germany and Viadeo in France, and a looming threat in Salesforce.com, which has developed a tool for professional networking.

Most of LinkedIn’s revenue comes from fees that it charges for recruiters and businesses that want expanded access to the website to help fill job openings. The company also sells online ads.

In contrast to Facebook, most of LinkedIn’s principals are in their 40s. Zuckerberg, who has been Facebook’s CEO since its inception, is just 26.

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, 43, will be the biggest winner in the IPO. Hoffman also stands to profit from Facebook’s eventual IPO because he was among the early investors who backed Zuckerberg’s idea after he moved from Massachusetts to Silicon Valley.

Hoffman remains LinkedIn’s chairman. He also served a stint as CEO until turning that role over to former Yahoo Inc. executive Jeff Weiner in 2009. Weiner, 40, owns a 4.1 percent stake in LinkedIn.

The company’s other major shareholders are venture capital firms: Sequoia Capital with an 18.9 percent stake; Greylock Partners with a 15.8 percent stake; and Bessemer Venture Partners with a 5.1 percent stake.

LinkedIn has raised about $103 million since its inception and now has nearly $90 million in cash.

Some of the major stockholders plan to sell shares in LinkedIn’s IPO, but Thursday’s filing didn’t spell out those or other key details, including the projected price for the IPO. That target will likely be set as the sale of stock draws nearer.

The filing said LinkedIn will raise $175 million in the offering, but that figure often escalates as investment bankers gauge demand. Morgan Stanley & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch are the main investment banks steering LinkedIn’s IPO.

Based on stock trading by employees in secondary markets set up for privately held companies, LinkedIn is believed to be worth more than $2 billion.

Demand Media Inc., an online service that hires freelance writers to produce stories about frequently searched topics, went public this week and now boasts a market value of about $1.8 billion — higher than The New York Times Co.

The lofty appraisals have evoked memories of the late 1990s when investors were clamoring to pour money into startups that had set up websites to cater to the tens of millions of people who were just starting to embrace the Web.

This time around, though, Internet startups have been staying private longer than predecessors did during the original dot–com boom. That has given them more time to build their audience and, more importantly, develop moneymaking business plans.

The Nexus S, manufactured by Samsung Electronics, is one of the first smart phones in the United States to include built-in support for Near Field Communication. The wireless standard enables consumers to make a payment by waving a device over an electronic reader, or pull information from NFC tags embedded in movie posters, stickers in shop windows and more.

The Nexus S is also the first device that will ship with Gingerbread, the 2.3 update of Google’s increasingly popular Android operating system. It’s faster than earlier versions and includes improved Internet calling, copy-and-paste functions, and support for NFC and a gyroscope, an orientation sensor that is expected to show up in growing numbers of smart phones.

“Android keeps getting better, and that’s important because it creates a really viable alternative to Apple’s iPhone,” said Carl Howe, director of consumer research at the Yankee Group. “One can argue it’s meeting its promise of actually becoming the default smart phone operating system.

“The Nexus S features a 1-GHz processor, front and rear facing cameras, 16 GB of internal memory, a 3-axis gyroscope sensor, a dedicated graphics processing unit and a 4-inch display that the company says is contoured to comfortably fit in the hand or along the face. The orientation sensor, which Apple’s latest iPhone also includes, provides more accurate detection of a device’s precise position in space, which can improve gaming and augmented reality applications.

Google Nexus S will be available Dec. 16 online from T-Mobile for $199 or unlocked for $529 and at Best Buy Dec. 20