Want to see LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye flinch? Do what Fox Business correspondent Liz Claman did this morning and ask Nye if rival social network startup Facebook has expressed interest in acquiring the company. "It just seems like it would be a perfect for say, a Facebook, to join up, to link up with you guys," Claman advises Nye. Suddenly a happy little conversation on camera turned awkward. Did he flinch because Facebook had expressed interest? Or because, unlike Claman, he knew Facebook wasn't even sniffing around — an admission that would call into question LinkedIn's value right when Nye's gunning to take the company public? That moment, above, and the full interview — replete with Nye's nonanswers about acquisitions and IPOs — below.

What's so bad about Mozilla's Toronto workspace? Besides the fluorescent lighting, the colorless white walls and the folding tables, the worst thing about Mozilla's Toronto workspace is how we're sure management would improve it. With corporate graffiti, company logos and too many colors. That was management's trick at Facebook and look where readers ranked it in our poll on tech's ten worst workspaces — as tech's second-worst workspace, just after Mozilla. Check out the full list, below.

After reviewing our post "The 10 worst workspaces in tech," commenter AdmNaismith described Facebook's office, pictured above, as "foggy, dank, dim, and utterly depressing." Commenter mothra1 hated Yahoo's New York offices more: "They suck! Lifeless and impersonal. Kinda like the douchebags who still actually work there." Meanwhile, Adobe apologist BlairHapjo told us we "clearly didn't get past Adobe's lobby," and the rest of the office features "Aeron chairs, real offices (with doors!), big picture windows." For us, the worst offices we found on Office Snapshots and elsewhere were the the ones that try too hard to seem Internet-hip, like Jajah and Google. Now it's time to settle the disputes. Below, vote for your least favorite and help us rank tech's 10 most dismal places to work:

We've toured the top 10 workspaces in tech. Click to viewNow, we've gone back to Office Snapshots to find the 10 worst. What makes them so bad? Some offend with exposed fluorescent lights, gray cubicles and a dystopian corporate sheen. But others, with their pseudo-hip graffiti, kindergarten toys and plastic decorations — all in a desperate attempt to seem "Internet-y" — come off even worse. We'll start with Yahoo's New York digs.

In person, Sarah Lacy's fierce dishiness is charming. On the screen, her insider know-it-all schtick becomes harsh and grating. Take Lacy's latest post on LinkedIn seeking a $1 billion valuation. The 30-word version: "I've I I I am not giving people the news as I write in my book, I hear from insiders. Imagine that! perhaps I can get to that later today." She has learned exactly nothing from an earlier post on Twitter, whose funding news she failed to break, yet also declared non-newsworthy.

LinkedIn has hired investment bank Allen & Co. to help it raise a round of funding that would set the company's value at $1 billion. Last fall, LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye said the company would sell itself outright only for a "a lot more" than $1 billion. In January, he told a reporter "an IPO is by far and away the most likely outcome." But that was January. While the public markets are rough, private equity remains flush, making it a safer bet for raising money. We hear LinkedIn takes a tidy profit, selling advertisers on its 41-year-old, six-figure-making average user and earning $45 CPMs on ads in the process.

At careerist social network LinkedIn, a marathon board meeting has sparked speculation about a new financing round. LinkedIn, often mentioned as an IPO candidate, has raised $27.5 million to date. [VentureBeat]

Seems comments made by Kevin Eyres, managing director of European operations for LinkedIn, were optimistic in pegging ad rates at a $75 CPM. To a degree. A customer who's bought advertising on LinkedIn wrote in to let us know that last fall they negotiated a campaign to run ads against the social network's "premium content" for a $12 CPM, $3 less than the listed $15 rate. The company is now charging $45 for that same inventory, they report. A quick look at the rate card shows that the $45 price point is for vertical banner ads targetted to IT and small business professionals. Custom targeting goes as high as $76.50 per thousand impressions. Good thing to know that you can bargain down those rates 20 percent. And it's still an order of magnitude more than any other social network has been able to charge. While Facebook charges less than a dollar for slutty come-ons, LinkedIn keeps it strictly SFW. After the jump, what the company refuses to allow in ads on the site.

Kevin Eyres, LinkedIn's European managing director, reported that LinkedIn commands $50-$75 per thousand impressions on its advertising, in discussing plans for the social network's expansion into the U.K .and the continent. That figure, if Eyres is not being overoptimistic, puts LinkedIn in the same range that high-end business publications like Forbes and the Wall Street Journal command for their websites, and orders of magnitude higher than the rates seen on consumer social networks like Facebook and MySpace. [The Industry Standard]

Nobody seems to have told LinkedIn that we're in a recession, at least according to the kind of perks they're offering to woo new hires who need no actual programming experience, just a "quantitative background." Does fantasy league baseball count? It must be hard to find new talent for the social networking company with even Google's chef leaving for Facebook. Maybe they should put up listings on the Yahoo campus. Full text of the job description and perks after the jump.

Back in my pre-glamour blogging days, I worked for a little trade magazine called Sales & Marketing Management. You may have heard of it: It was about sales, marketing and the management therein. It was awesome. And while there, I did a story about LinkedIn, the social networking site for business people. As part of my reporting, I joined the site. Now every month, some jerk I emailed once asks me to be a part of their LinkedIn network. Look, social networking is for witnessing the downfall of high school stars, not getting a job as a regional sales manager in Scottsdale, Arizona. Oh, by the by, BusinessWeek is partnering with LinkedIn. [Folio]

Star editor-at-large, having failed to make a splash in blogging, is now pinning her hopes on reality TV. Julia, if you're going to make it on the small screen, you need better advisors than a handbag designer and a former hedge-fund analyst. How about someone who's been there? LinkedIn marketer Surya Yalamanchili, a veteran of Donald Trump's The Apprentice, is the guy you need to talk to. Sure, he was fired from the show. All the more reason to seek him out, Julia. Let's be honest: If IT Girls is the best you can come up with, you're going to face a lot of rejection on Sand Hill Road.

Bill Gates may have stopped using his Facebook profile. Now he's planning to join LinkedIn, according to Beyond Binary. On Thursday, Gates will use LinkedIn Answers to ask "how technology can be better utilized for charitable causes." Charming. But since LinkedIn is said to be planning a "notable advertising announcement" for the same day, our guess is that the real news will be a Microsoft-LinkedIn ad-serving deal.

Dutch technology entrepreneur Evert Bopp had the pleasure of meeting with Irish tax inspectors last Tuesday. Things got really fun when one of them pulled out printed copies of Bopp's Facebook, Xing and LinkedIn profiles. "I was surprised," Bopp said. He shouldn't have been. A flack for the Revenue service told the Irish Independent auditors are free to use "any sources of information." You think the IRS policy is any different? It's one thing to get busted by the boss, quite another to get busted by the feds. (Photo by chadmill)

Now we know why Bebo's so eager for more cash. It needs more servers. According to Pingdom, Bebo has already been down for 12 hours and 28 minutes so far this year. Check out the full chart to see how 13 other social networks have fared so far.

Until recently, Nick Welihozkiy lived a double life: Sales manager at LinkedIn by day, athlete training for the hammer throw in the Summer Olympics by night, with the support of the company's management. That has come to an end: His boss abruptly fired him amidst the recent upheaval at the IPO-bound startup. Welihozkiy was seen by many as the heart of LinkedIn's culture, and have taken his departure hard. Even so, LinkedIn's marketers continue to exploit Welihozkiy's image: He appears prominently on the company store's homepage, dressed as Clark Kent turning into Superman, with a link to his LinkedIn profile. He hasn't updated it.

Our tipster's account of life at LinkedIn as it nears an IPO drew some skeptics. One commenter, WagCurious, scoffed at the notion that LinkedIn had "an employee told by her manager that she needed to choose between her job and her family." Sources inside and outside the company confirm that this incident happened. The good news: The manager in question, engineering director Renzo Lazzarato, was fired for his behavior. "He's been known to shoot off his mouth," says a person familiar with Lazzarato. One might praise LinkedIn management for this family-friendly step, except that they were likely just seeking to avoid a lawsuit.

A tipster writes in with a first-person account of what's happening inside LinkedIn — and it's not pretty.

Everyone hates NotchUp's spammy invitations. So much so that they can't stop talking about their loathing for the pay-per-interview online job board. Proving that there's no such thing as bad publicity, the obnoxious startup is getting all kinds of attention from Sand Hill Road, founder Jim Ambras told BusinessWeek.