About LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a social network for your professional relationships.
Description of user contribution system
Similar to other social networks (in that users create profiles, connect with others, and exchange messages), but with a focus on professional relationships. User profiles resemble resumes. Colleagues can recommend each other based on past experiences. Aside from the professional focus, LinkedIn differentiates itself from other social networks with its robust business model.
Benefits for the users
Eases job hunting, seeking introductions.
Benefits for the creators of the system
Advertising Revenue:
- Attractive demographics: average age 41, $109K average HH inc, 76% college educated, execs from all Fortune 500 companies on LinkedIn
- Better demographics than WSJ, Fortune, Forbes, etc.
- Advertisers like to advertise on LinkedIn because (1) attractive demographics, and (2) clean environment (don’t have to worry about obscene photos, lewd words, etc).
- Notable and happy advertisers: Southwest Airlines, Delta, Radisson, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Federal Express, UPS, AllState Insurance, Porsche, BMW, The Ladders
Subscription Revenue:
- Committed to having a great free experience, but people are interested in having access to more features (e.g;. reach out to people who are not in their network)
- Users pay $20 or $50 per month to upgrade their account for increased access (“Freemium”)
Job posting revenue
- Improving experience of people to network, reference check company / background, enhance candidacy, facilitate introductions (e.g. small business owner can post - $200)
Corporate sales – LinkedIn Recruiter tool:
- Designed for professional recruiters to search entire network. Job postings included as part of this subscription
- Enterprise-level SAAS – sell subscriptions / number of seats
- Very well received by recruiters (built on their specs): Can search for people with unique skills. Corporation owns the seat – recruiters can search the network, find folks to communicate with, send messages, save searches, take notes about the candidate, communicate with other internal recruiters (collaborative recruiting);
Research Network: Allows companies to find experts in any area, in any part of the world.
- LinkedIn facilitates the introduction (like GLG but better) (Intermediation in the research arena)
- Subscription service
- Experts are paid by company for their advice
History of the idea
What do you know about this UCS? Who started it? When did it start? Include what (if anything) you know about how it came to be. Feel free to link to articles about it if you are aware of any, or upload documents that you have permission to share.
Scale
- As of September 2008, 30M members.
- 361% growth in unique visistorsyear-over-year, according to Nielsen
- 48% of members are outside the US
More resources
See also on this wiki
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