Have you ever wondered what happened after the tortoise beat the hare in that famous race? I hadn't ever really stop to think about what might happen the next time (or times).  While jamming on some ideas for stickers to give away for a bike safety station my friend was organizing, I did a quick search for images of the tortoise and the hare. We wanted the caption to say: "Are you really in a hurry?". On my search I found a speculative epilogue to one of my favourite children's stories.  I won't recap the story because it's quite short and a great read, but suffice to say, there are a few new morals that present themselves - learning from our mistakes, never giving up, and yes - collaboration.  Oops, did I just give it away?

This is not the end of my blog today.

In the context of slow and steady... an article today in Time Magazine caught my attention about social networking platforms, and the race to critical critical mass.

While MySpace got to critical mass first and Facebook became the poster child for the social-network generation, LinkedIn has always been the tortoise in this race. 

Reid Hoffman founded LinkedIn in 2003. I have not joined this network but after reading this article and given my intense interest in the Slow Movement, this platform is said to be focussed not on quantity but - quality. You mean I won't get invitations for Vampire, Werewolf, Mummy, and Lil' Green Patch applications? Great. That's not to say they won't be adding applications as they have just signed some deals with Google and Amazon, but they will be very mindful so as to not clutter the user experience - that they will actually be useful in fostering intelligent social connections between professional people.

The main point of this article is that LinkedIn continues to thrive in the midst of these unsettling economic times and it has a lot to do with Hoffmans' strategic, long term planning approach. The author of the article writes:

That's the kind of counter-conventional wisdom and smart strategy that Hoffman is known for. He was one of those guys who obsessively played military board games as a youth. (He once told me he never lost.) Over a year ago, Hoffman starting looking for funding to ensure that LinkedIn would be able to thrive during what he then described as the coming nuclear winter. (He figured a reserve of cash would help LinkedIn buy up companies during the downturn.) All in all, the company has raised $100 million, boasts a $1 billion valuation, and last week signed up its 30 millionth member. (A spokesman told me the sign-up rate has escalated of late and now includes one new member per second.)

Counter conventional wisdom... I like the sounds of that. Perhaps I will be the next new member of the second. Or perhaps I'll take my time to join into yet another. social. media. platform.  After lunch.