How would you like to have a 323% increase in site traffic over the past year only to have TechCrunch question the future of your business? That’s exactly the situation LinkedIn faced yesterday when Duncan Riley asked, “Is it enough?”
Is this growth high enough given the rising popularity of Facebook as the social networking destination of choice?
LinkedIn provides a more focused business networking product and it works fairly well for that purpose, but people flock where other people are going and nearly everyone who takes their social networking seriously (ie: adults) are joining Facebook.
What is this, high school all over again? Because Facebook is the popular kid today, LinkedIn is in danger? There’s something wrong with this analysis.
When you join Facebook, they don’t even ask you if you’re purpose on the site is business networking. For the great majority, Facebook is about hooking up, just like MySpace. Perhaps the technorati have created must-join networks on Facebook, but the everyday business person is more inclined to join LinkedIn.
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I think you’re reading this one wrong David.
It’s not cool kid vs. uncool.
It’s adults vs. kids.
People who’ve reached a certain stage in life could care less about social networking sites/tools like Facebook and Twitter.
But LinkedIn, which is all about business, is very useful to people who choose to keep their business and personal lives separate.
About the only thing it’s lacking is some of the bells and whistles of MySpace or Facebook and I suspect LI’s users don’t particularly miss those.
Apples and oranges.
What TechCrunch and others are saying is that Facebook is becoming the new business network, on top of serving their core student audience. So, it was apples and oranges, but now it’s fruit salad.