Thank you for trying, but it may be too little too late.
Your mission has been commendable as in Facebook’s younger days it was purely a friends and social gathering site. The internet lacked a way to connect professionally and needed a place to go where you look your best that wasn’t clouded with tons of ridiculous applications.
To date this opening has virtually been fulfilled by LinkedIn. However, it has been slow to keep up when compared to other social media services and is likely to suffer for it.
Our Beefs:
- Technical laziness:
Login at a premium. Until recently, as it seems LinkedIn has just quietly been updated, you not only had to login every time you visit the site, but were pestered to upgrade to their “premium” service. These have not been issues for some time with other modern social networking sites. Did they finally figure out that only pain comes when you try to put the cat back in the bag and ask it to pay for the service?
Anemic app directory. Their Application Directory only has 10 apps. If there are more, we haven’t been able to find them. Plus, their Wordpress app is unpredictable when it comes to working with self-hosted blogs. LinkedIn’s currently policy only allows certain developers to add applications, with permission, of course. While we understand they don’t want all the noise open development brings, their tight controls have also constrained progress. Is there no happy-medium?
- Lack of socialization. Also, quietly changed as of late, you can now comment on status updates. Again, LinkedIn comes in far behind other sites. As it’s late to the game, people have already have other established places where they socialize (ahem Facebook). LinkedIn has long functioned mostly as a business directory, akin to sitting in a library. Lots of information, but not much in the way of interaction. They’re making an effort, but trail their competitors like Facebook, where everyone’s mother, grandmother, co-workers and bosses all seem to be. You can now make lists there to separate your worlds and have it all in one place with real time updates. Where is stodgy LinkedIn going to fit in this scenario? Only time will tell, but it could have something to do with Rupert Murdoch.
A Dark Horse Approaches
Enter the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Not exactly the most progressive and open-to-new-ideas kind of place, or so we thought. As with all newspapers these days, WSJ needs more revenue sources to remain relevant in a post-print era. Reported by TechCrunch, WSJ wants a piece of the professional social networking pie now solely dominated by Linkedin. They are putting their money where their mouth is and have hired outside guns to develop what will be called “WSJ Connect.”
Regardless of whether this venture is successful is beside the point. LinkedIn, even with the current updates, has become stagnant and if they don’t get moving someone is going to come along and be the Google to their Yahoo. There’s a lot of motivation out there to capitalize on the world’s hunger to connect at a professional level. Newspaper organizations remain community hubs and they absolutely have to find new revenue streams. Social networking done right could be their savior. Facebook has moved beyond the domain of bored college kids to entire families/networks. LinkedIn has functioned well because of the desire to keep personal and professional worlds separate. However, as work and leisure worlds collide and Facebook continues to improve, LinkedIn is going to be in trouble.
For the most part, LinkedIn is not a place where people go to be social and it’s getting lapped by its competitors. Once another site figures out how to let people be social and professional – LinkedIn will be doomed.
Bottom line: the writing’s on the wall, or rather the “Facebook Wall?”