Out of many recent social media IPOs one company that is bucking the downward trend is LinkedIn. LinkedIn has debuted at $45 per share, and as of close today it was at $111.18. Compare this to Facebook and Zynga's performance, you can see the difference. What's behind LinkedIn's success?
There are good reasons why LinkedIn has been doing much better than the other social media sites. It comes down to this.
LinkedIn has the most compelling content. And that content, in case you haven't noticed, is your profile.
It's been a little over three months since Twitter decided that it has outgrown LinkedIn as a federated network partner. If you recall, Twitter used to not only allow LinkedIn to post its status update to Twitter, but also tweets to appear as network update on LinkedIn. But on June 29th Twitter stopped its tweets showing up on LinkedIn.
Since then LinkedIn has been working on its counterstrike. Starting last week we are beginning to see how LinkedIn wants to fill the gap left by Twitter.
LinkedIn wants to be the network of business content and the means to promote the content. Last week LinkedIn launched its blogging service. It's available to famous influencers on each subject area, and not to everyone. The idea is to get these influential members to create original content within LinkedIn platform and allow them to promote them right on LinkedIn.
I wouldn't be surprise if these people were getting paid to produce original content. Source: www.linkedin.com
There are a few horror stories on developing apps on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn's public API. Among them Dalton Caldwell's recent experience dealing with Facebook has been making Hacker News headlines. Caldwell wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg and posted it on his blog after he has been advised to either join Facebook or stop using Facebook Open API. Caldwell created an app that looked similar to Facebook App Center using API, and he believed that Facebook changed their tactic from supporting his efforts to cutting his access off to his project unless he joins Facebook on acqui-hire term.
This story reminded me of the question that I posed to myself earlier: Will social network like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn federate to create network of social networks?
LinkedIn announced today that it will no longer display tweets in its home page. LinkedIn will continue to support posting its network updates to Twitter, however. On the surface this sounds like LinkedIn's decision to stop displaying tweets. But there is more happening here than meets the eyes.
Twitter is changing its dance partner; bye-bye LinkedIn, hello Facebook.
LinkedIn launched their new iPad app yesterday. I had a few minutes to play around with it, and I like it. LinkedIn has spent time thinking about how iPad users are using tablet, and what LinkedIn users are looking for when they open the iPad app.
From calendar with participants mapped to LinkedIn users to who viewed my profile, new LinkedIn iPad app has something for everyone.
When I use tablet, I am rarely in my upright sitting position. I pick up my iPad and go slouch on my couch or climb on to my bed leaning against headboard. Tablet is a preferred device for consuming content. It's a perfect reading and browsing device. And LinkedIn demonstrates that they understand how tablet is different from smartphone. Smartphone is for messaging. Tablet is for reading and browsing. Contrast that with Facebook iPad app, you'll see the difference in LinkedIn's approach.
There are some rough edges, however. Some characteristics of Version 1.0 product were sluggish response to scrolling when browsing list of connections with new positions and back button not working consistently. But these are something you would expect from newly released app. Considering it is completely redesigned application, it's quite understandable. I'm sure LinkedIn will release quick successive updates in coming weeks to improve their V1.0 product shortcomings.
As I find more interesting content from my LinkedIn News, this new LinkedIn iPad app has all the potential to become the app for my curated news source.
Reid Hoffman Has Been Working Behind The Scene
To Make LinkedIn IPO a Success
As you might have heard, LinkedIn is moving in full speed ahead to go public. With added PR surrounding first social network site to file for IPO, the professional social networking site has been steadily picking up new users along the way. Last time I wrote about LinkedIn back in early October 2010, user base was around 80 million. Now there are reports suggesting that user base has climbed to 90 million as of early January 2011.
All these growth means good thing for both LinkedIn users and those who earn paycheck thinking about how to harness the power of social networking sites. But I am a little circumspect in accepting the rapid growth as all good news.
As I discussed last week, last Wednesday Facebook announced their new Facebook Group feature along with other privacy enhancements (allowing Facebook data to be downloaded as archive file and dashboard to view history of authorized application access to personal data). While I was reading a few Facebook Group discussions on the web, there were many opinions as to whether this Facebook Group feature will catch on or not.
Now LinkedIn is trying to set the tone for how professionals to consume news in real-time social network environment. It is called LinkedIn Signal.
LinkedIn Signal: Red Marks How LinkedIn Is Adding Value
By Leveraging Company HR Info and Ranking News URLs
The idea behind LinkedIn Signal is rather straight forward. It is to provide filtering on status update by degree of separation, industry, company, time of update and region. If you are an active LinkedIn user, you would have connected Twitter account with LinkedIn and imported all LinkedIn users into Twitter. This means all of sudden there are lot more activities on LinkedIn status update because Twitter status updates are displayed as updates on LinkedIn home page. With increased volume of status update, LinkedIn is now offering a way to filter them using LinkedIn user data.
With Twitter aspiring to become Web 2.0 breaking news channel, LinkedIn is trying to carve a niche by filtering the raw Twitter news feed with LinkedIn user information. It is an interesting idea.
What is more interesting with LinkedIn Signal is summary of recurring links. Most tweets have shortened URL link to blog or news article, and they are the ones that professional users are interested in, not people announcing their arrival at a cafe down the street. LinkedIn is ranking these tweeted shortened URL's original page, and ranking them by the frequency within the searched status updates.
This means you don't have to scroll through pages after pages of re-tweeted links and different shortened URLs to figure out whether it's story people are following. You can set up your Signal filter, and log on to LinkedIn each morning to go through top-ranking news URLs on Signal to get a snapshot of hot topics.
Combining these data with orgchart info that LinkedIn already possess, you can look at what news are being followed within your organization. As discussed in yesterday post, LinkedIn's strength is at understanding up-to-date company's human resources. This is a great example of leveraging their strength.
LinkedIn has not rolled out this new feature to everyone yet. As they let users in, it will be interesting to see how it will be received by active LinkedIn users. Look for Signal link on your LinkedIn home page in next few weeks, and let us know what you think.
If you were in job market during past several years, chances are you've used LinkedIn to reconnect with your ex-colleagues to find out about opportunities.
LinkedIn has about 80 million members as of September (Jeff Weiner CEO of LinkedIn mentioned 70 million back in July), and they have been around since 2003. In the crowded field of social networking, how does LinkedIn differentiate with ever-growing Facebook, and at the same time compete with Monster or Dice for job posting?
Jeff Wiener CEO of LinkedIn Interview With TechCrunch:
Skip The Fluff, Watch From 5 Mins Into It
Jeff Wiener had an interview with TechCrunch back in July to talk a bit about LinkedIn's vision and how it plans to differentiate with Facebook and Monster. His main selling point of LinkedIn was twofold: Business context and connecting people with opportunities.
1. Business Context
Jeff's betting on the fact that people need business network separate from their personal network. He mentions the example of people wanting to behave differently in business context. When people come home, they have different persona, and people don't necessarily want to mix their business life with personal one. Analogy here is your business card. It doesn't have your home phone number or personal email address.
2. Connecting People with Opportunities
In addition, because LinkedIn is for business networking, it can maintain and connect your work history with your coworker's. Analogy here is Rolodex of business cards. LinkedIn is keeping track of business card Rolodex and connecting them with your coworker's. Since people often look for candidate within the circle of trusted network, LinkedIn believes that it can connect opportunities with right talents.
Jeff stops here during his interview, and moves on to talk about building brand images as any good marketer should. But I think there is another point helping LinkedIn further their success.
3. Valuable Organization Information
LinkedIn is squarely focused on business networking, and has up-to-date organization chart of large companies as their database. This affords LinkedIn a huge opportunity. This opportunity was validated by Salesforce acquiring jigsaw.com earlier this year. Not only LinkedIn can make business out of connecting talents with opportunities, it can make use of organization's HR history to map out where companies are really investing.
2008 Financial Crisis Was A Boon For LinkedIn
As People Looked For Opportunities
Would these be enough differentiator to sustain LinkedIn's business among fast-growing Facebook and other job posting sites like Monster?
So far it has been. 2008 financial crisis and high unemployment rate among skilled professionals helped LinkedIn become more valuable to shifting work force. With rise of Facebook, LinkedIn is also benefiting as cleaner and more professional alternative to Facebook.
Challenge for LinkedIn is to remain as that: clean and professional. Protecting users from email spam of bogus network invitation and fake identities need to be first priority to LinkedIn as they continue to expand. As long as LinkedIn executes on those priorities, I see a bright future for LinkedIn.
And of course, Yes, I agree with Jeff: finding right talent will continue to be the building blocks of successful business.
