The prescreening of the new LinkedIn movie, “The Online Rolodex,” opened to crowds in the tens at some cinema in Palo Alto or Menlo Park or somewhere.
The movie opens with a corporate meeting of middle-aged men in business suits. They discuss what sounds like a solid business plan, and over the course of the next 104 minutes, they implement it.
The movie climaxes when the LinkedIn executives decide to open an office in Dublin as part of their expanding global business strategy. At one point, the middle-aged men who run LinkedIn all get moderately sized performance bonuses based on meeting their numbers.
There are no sexual exploits to speak of in the movie, although many of the lead characters are happily married. Sometimes, they drink alcohol, but they tend to get sleepy after a second glass of wine.
One of the actors in “The Online Rolodex”, the lead singer of 98 Degrees, Nick Lachey, plays the part of a former colleague of LinkedIn’s founder. At one pivotal point early in the movie, Lachey’s character tells LinkedIn’s founders, “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” The phrase stuck, and the rest is history.
