The Future Of LinkedIn
Patrick and I met the founder of LinkedIn once in Paris. We talked about our need for funding at the time for a while but he wasn’t really interested. The meeting felt awkward and inconvenient for all of us. Then Patrick mentioned that he was a very loyal LinkedIn member and Reid Hoffman suddenly looked very interested. I pitched in and told him it was the only serious social network we actually used. He loved it and started asking more questions. We ended up not doing any business together but he did give us feedback and we had fun discussing his ideas about LinkedIn.
A few days ago we had a meeting with Hanneke Vos who now works at Ruigrok/Netpanel. She wrote a paper on social networking and Hyves in particular. Marja Ruigrok then told us she had a profile on several social networks, including Hyves and LinkedIn, but didn’t really use them except to be ‘findable’.
Patrick then told her that that is exactely the ultimate goal of LinkedIn, which Reid Hoffman also recently explained in Paris during Le Web 3. LinkedIn is supposed to become the Google for People. If you are looking for a person you will want to use LinkedIn, not Google. Or maybe you WILL use Google but it will give you just LinkedIn results.
Next to being a Social Network and a way to search for people LinkedIn also serves as a Curriculum Vitae for some people. I sure use it like that. And not because I’m looking for a job but because it is convenient to have one place with a record of what I have done in the past.
Tessa, my girlfriend, has just started updating her LinkedIn profile this week. She didn’t use it seriously before but she looked at my profile and at the profiles of several of her co-workers and decided that she couldn’t stay behind. That is a sign that a service is about to breakthrough! If people look at something and think “I need to join or I will be left out” that means that something is happening.
Hyves, at least in the Netherlands, works the same for me and most of my friends. If they meet someone one of the first things they do is ‘Hyve’ them to see what kind of person it actually is. Not ‘Google’ them but ‘Hyve’ them!
Maybe the future of Social Networking isn’t so much in the actual social networking itself. After all, this becomes boring after a few days/weeks, and people stop adding many people once they reach a certain number of contacts.
My guess is the social networking aspect is mostly a viral growth engine that will stop growing once a certain critical mass is reached. After that the networking itself will slow down significantly and the main purpose of these networks will be offering extended personal pages with which people will be able to represent themselves.
Filed under Business, Business Theory, Developing, Innovation, Inspiration, Money, Programming |
8 Responses to “The Future Of LinkedIn”
Leave a Reply
Subscribe to my Feed!
Powered by
Always great to be quoted, thanx Boris. I thougt let’s update my profile on your blog and was really amazed by all the categories I could choose to make my profile. A list of more than 30 identities online, my god. It’s a long way to become a techno chick!
Deleting a Hyve profile is not possible. It really annoys me. I deleted everything except the friends. All mail from hyves goes directly with a rule into the trash.
Somehow Hyves has become a place where people hang around that look like they also could be paintshop pro users (you know the photoshop alternative with crappy filters.) I think it has no value anymore. The buzz is over.
LinkedIn has the same problem. Its hard to completely delete a profile. What annoys me of some of the social network users is that some of them have a lot of connections and I mean a lot. Those people just connect away. They use you to get a better rank in the social network sphere. Contacts trough real life are much better even if you work for and on the internet.
I must say I use LinkedIn to get a good rank in Google… and it works! Google my name and linkedIn shows on top.
Michiel it IS possible to delete your account at Hyves. It is just difficult. I’ll ask Patrick (who found out how to do it) to tell you how…
To delete your hyves account you have to send an email (yes it is not easy) to suzanneke@hyves.nl and to be sure cc it to nine@hyves.nl mention your login name and send it from the email address you’ve registered. There is no possibility to delete your account from your personal page.
for linkedin I don’t know how to erase your account, but I do know how to erase contacts (you know if you like to erase your ex girlfriend as a contact because she left with your inherited watch!). go to: http://www.linkedin.com/connec.....k=%2Econ_1
hope this will do
I thohgt Tessa was an actress??
zoominfo also competes with Linkedin in the namesearch domain, but so far linkedin gets higher google relevancy.
Linkedin are building slowly a host of vertical services for biz community, relying on their major significant asset - Trust.
Their initial emphasis in security and privacy (which Reid explained in many articles) ranked them with precious trust from users, preparing the ground for their job search, consultation, q&a and future services for the biz sector. They also launch them in low profile & softly - to avoid unnecessary shakes.
Linkedin strategy should be learned by anyone who launched a social service.
I won’t be surprised if later we’ll see:
- conference & events data - something I blogged about (Confabb should be avail in linkedin)
- Travel & flight search
- Digital store for biz documents, research papers etc.
- Mobile application for biz people (mobile 2.0 social biz network)
- 2nd life presence?
It si not easy, that is true, but it is in fact easier than sending emails to suzanneke and nine. You can delete your Hyves account here http://www.hyves.nl/index.php?l1=ut&l2=da
thanks for the info patrick. I’ll look into it.