Facebook stock is likely an attractive long-term buy, Y Combinator might be seeing stress signs from its expansion, and Greylock Partner’s Discovery Fund is now three-quarters through its $20 million in capital. So says Reid Hoffman.

Joanna Rees has been riding buses and knocking on doors to drum up support for her campaign to become the next mayor of San Francisco, and she’s been doing it in her Chanel pumps, according to at least two newspaper accounts. It’s easy to laugh at the image, but the onetime venture capitalist, who reportedly [...]

Josh Silverman has just been named head of American Express’s U.S. consumer services unit, which manages consumer cards and travel services. A repeat entrepreneur who, at 41, has already made more career moves than most people in their lifetimes, Silverman is joining American Express from Greylock Partners, which brought him on as an entrepreneur-in-residence last [...]

Remember when I speculated that the LinkedIn IPO might not make Reid Hoffman a billionaire? Open mouth, insert foot. With LinkedIn’s initial public offering today, Herr Hoffman is a billionaire two times over (at least at LNKD’s intraday share price of more than $100).

But the LinkedIn co-founder isn’t the only one who has made out like a bandit in the IPO. Four venture firms — Bain Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital — as a group hold shares worth in excess of $4 billion.

Following is a slideshow of the top 10 biggest winners in the IPO — based on LNKD’s price of $107.00 per share at 12:27 p.m. EDT. Given that the stock zoomed from an opening price of $80 to as much as $122.70 today, it is anyone’s guess as to where it will finally close at the end of the day. Still, that won’t affect our rankings.

LinkedIn’s IPO was the big story Wednesday, and it promises to top the news again Thursday when its shares start trading on the NYSE. The company’s bankers priced its shares at $45 apiece — the top of their range, and much higher than the $32 to $35 range anticipated just a week earlier — giving [...]

LinkedIn sought to capitalize on the pent-up demand for social media companies by announcing Tuesday that it would boost the offering price of its shares by 30%, implying a market capitalization of more than $4 billion. Shares of the social networking site for business professionals are expected to begin trading on Thursday at an offering [...]

In this week’s Social Scene, Eric Schmidt is building fancy new digs for his personal VC firm; Joanna Rees has convinced Reid Hoffman, Marc Pincus and others to back her bid to be mayor of San Francisco; Vinod Khosla says he will donate half of his fortune to charity; Mark Kvamme is moving to Ohio (seriously!); Jeff Bussgang hangs with the famed SEAL Team 6, Robert Simon, Eric Wright and Katja Gehrt all have birthdays coming up, and more.

Schmidt in building mode

Onetime Google CEO Eric Schmidt is building out the “entire top floor” of a building in downtown Palo Alto, Calif., for his personal investment firm, Tomorrow Ventures, reports Peter Delevett of the San Jose Mecury News.

Delevett spoke to a commercial real estate broker who speculated

LinkedIn offered more details of its pending IPO on Monday, along with the news it plans to float its shares to the public on May 19. Undoubtedly, the offering will be a great success. LinkedIn is the first major social networking company to enter the public realm, and pent up enthusiasm for social media companies [...]

If your grad school was the only determining factor in getting onto Forbes magazine’s Midas List of top venture capitalists, which school should you attend?

A.) Harvard Business School
B.) Stanford Business School
C.) None

According to an analysis of the Midas List by James Newell, a senior associate at Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), the answer is B – Stanford.

The next big technology shift is right around the corner. We just don’t know what it is. Or better said, we don’t know its consequences. That’s what makes predicting the future difficult and why Ben Horowitz, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and Reid Hoffman, partner at Greylock Partners and executive chairman of LinkedIn, deserve credit [...]