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For the past five years I have chosen to invest my professional online social networking efforts in using LinkedIn. Currently, I have over 1,000 contacts, belong to a dozen different groups, have been recommended by over 50 people, and am an active user of the answers and recently released application sections. I also spend much of my time conducting “best practices” consulting, training and coaching on effective use of LinkedIn for senior executives and front line staff.
With over 30 million LinkedIn users, less than 10 percent actually know how to get the most from this platform. The goal of this article is to serve as a wake up call as much as a future foretold. I believe there are five fundamental reasons as to why the demise of LinkedIn is imminent if there are not critical improvements:
1. Equilibrium - In any social networking exchange there must be equilibrium between producers and consumers. Think of eBay, Amazon.com or any other site where there is a producer and a consumer. Imagine if on eBay or Amazon.com the only active users/visitors were sellers of products and no one bought anything, would those organizations actually be able to post annual revenues of $7.6B and $14.8B respectively?
Philosophically, we are all sellers; we sell ourselves, our expertise and our perceived value add. However, in the process there is typically a consumer, someone who needs or wants what we have to sell. Many executives have told me that most of the individuals they have found on LinkedIn are other service providers, not consumers, thus questioning the value-add of the site. This perceived inequality reduces the effective social networking investment rate of return and thus the consistent involvement of the current and future value producers.
2. Visual - We are very much a visual society, yet little to no information is represented graphically on LinkedIn. One school of thought is the time graphics take to download could bog down the system and make it less user friendly. However, with the increasing availability of wider bandwidth, and reduced graphic storage costs there should be no reason why LinkedIn could not integrate to a social networking map. If you look at SmartMoney.com’s “heat map” or the IntroNetworks “pin view” they are each very competent in visual representation of highly dispersed yet highly relevant data sets. Users would be considerably more engaged if they could see their social network on LinkedIn in a much more visibly appealing manner.
3. Diversity & Quality - One misnomer about LinkedIn is that the sheer size of your network is what matters most, yet when it comes to effective social networking, the single biggest asset is the diversity of your relationships. The more diverse your social network, the broader and more expansive your social networking footprint and thus your sphere of influence.
Another issue is the quality of relationships, and the idea that all relationships are not created equal. The Relationship Value Pyramid™ as mentioned in Relationship Economics (Wiley Sept. 2008), demonstrates this idea in considerable detail. Without a systematic approach to identify, categorize and invest in your most valuable relationships at different quality levels, how will a LinkedIn user ever improve their existing relationship bank? LinkedIn has yet to address this issue, there is no measurement tool or capabilities to track those investments in our most valuable relationships and as such realize a return on our relationship investment.
4. Mass collaboration - Social networking has the promise and potential to dramatically evolve business-to-business relationships. We have seen the evolution of many one-to-one relationship tools, and with advent of web 2.0 capabilities, I am mesmerized as to why LinkedIn is unable to provide an opportunity for real time many-to-many mass collaboration. Why can’t the answers section function more like a real time micro blog like Twitter? Why must we still type text versus use voice or video to interact or engage our social network? LinkedIn must evolve to conversation with more than just connections and recommendations to create real time dialogue. It must evolve into a platform of collaboration.
5. Cross-platform functionality - One of the most frustrating aspects of the current tools like Twitter, Facebook, Naymz, ZoomInfo, Spoke, and XING, is that none of these “communicate” with the other – it has become the social networking equivalent of the tower of babble. Why can’t I invite a list of contacts from Jigsaw to a LinkedIn group? Why can’t I embed my tweets into a user mash-up in LinkedIn? Until social networking sites realize co-opetition (competitors who can cooperate toward a greater cause or to fight a common enemy) their ability to create greater opportunities and expand visibility and revenue will be limited. Neither, LinkedIn or any other networking tool will truly evolve into a true social networking platform without cross-platform functionality.
Here is a bonus one for you - Mission Critical: The 1-9-90 phenomenon, states that in any social network, only one percent will be the high-value hubs. They are proactively engaged and influential and they bring high-value content. Nine percent will be moderately engaged and not only appreciate but interact in dialogue with the one percent, leaving the other 90 percent to the casual observers. Unless LinkedIn identifies and nurtures strategic relationships with the one percent high-value hubs and realizes the critical nature of the interaction between the one and the nine, it will struggle to sustain the perceived value-add beyond the initial intrigue.
What do you think?
Hi David,
thanks for sharing this.
What we see in our presentations and training courses is that many people are totally behind when it comes to web 2.0 tools and applications.
Especially people from 40 years and older.
Since in general they are the ones who have the most decision making power in companies, I don’t think it is that bad that LinkedIn doesn’t have too many bells and whistles when it comes to video, audio and mashups.
The more extra’s there are, the more overwhelmed many will be and the less they will use websites like LinkedIn.
That’s at least what we see and hear.
What is your experience?
Jan
Jan Vermeiren, founder of Networking Coach
David -
Some good feedback on improvement ideas for LinkedIn, but I think predictions of imminent demise may be a little premature. (I hope so at least, give the accumulated time many of us have spent building our LinkedIn networks.)
Re: Equilibrium — while on a sheer numbers basis, the number of consumers may be dwarved by the legions of suppliers, service providers and lurkers, I think the quality of people in a consuming and learning mode is quite good. I have made several relationships which have translated into new business for my company and have made multiple relationships with service providers and candidates which created value for my company. I think any voluntary participation, free admission marketplace is likely to experience similar disproportionate membership demographics.
Not sure I want more graphics (not sure what they would be to add value), but I do agree that the user interface could be more customizable and efficient.
I think the Answers in the Q&A are certainly more useful and insightful than the help you can get in a 140 character Tweet, but I feel that this functionality is somehow underleveraged on LinkedIn. Too difficult to really parse the content to get the answers you need.
I think your point 5 is the big one. All of the social networking platform vendors think that their solution is THE solution. They seem to operate under the illusion that we only use THEIR solution. Common knowledge would indicate that the people that effectively use the social networking platforms are very active on 3 - 5 networking platforms at a minimum. Most networking platform vendors make it very easy to IMPORT your contacts from their competition, but none that I am aware of offer to let you EXPORT from their platform to their competitors. Why the paranoia? I would love to see someone come up with an industry standard NTIP (Networking Transfer Interchange Protocol)to dramatically simplify the interoperatbility of all of these systems. I think it would drive growth of ALL the platforms.
Just a thought.
Best,
JJD
I came to Your Linkedin page via collective Emory Alums. However, after reading this article, I am not so sure. Are you saying that Linkedin is on its way out. You write: “Many executives have told me that most of the individuals they have found on LinkedIn are other service providers, not consumers, thus questioning the value-add of the site.” Noor, 5 Reasons for the Demise of LinkedIn, Nov. 23, 2008. Are you saying that LinkedIn has become of site of Hawkers of Wares with no Consumers of Wares? By contrast Ebay probably has more consumers (purchasers) visiting than selling (I have no empirical data to support that). Or, are you saying (perhaps both) that any online system that does not allow some from of crosspollination from other business/social networking sites is eventually doomed?
Very interesting proposition.
Hugh Wood, Lawyer. Atlanta, GA
Jan – I’m not sure I agree with reduced “bells & whistles” is a good thing for LinkedIn®. The 1-9-90 phenomenon has proven that the 1% who are the “high-value-hubs” – people like you, me and Jeff (comment above) is the lifeline of any social networking platform. We create the “high-value-content” interaction with the 9% who are moderately engaged; the remaining 90% (some of the 40+ managers) will continue to be casual observers. Don’t get me wrong – we need them engaged and for any platform to survive, you need the buzz and the viral adoption that LinkedIn has enjoyed.
As such, why not create a modular format where the basic functionality is the standard for all users, but those who are more active, knowledgeable, etc. can turn on additional breadth & depth.
Applications, expanded Group functionality, the new enhanced search GUI are all good starts – I just think much of LinkedIn is still version 1.0 in what can be done now. I wish I knew the execs better to get a 1st hand perspective on where their head is out.
Bottom line prediction – they’ll be acquired in 12-18 months!
Jeffrey – although “demise” may in fact be a bit strong, and I do believe LinkedIn® is making some good progress with the Applications alliances and expanded Group functionality, I’m not getting a lot of arguments with my actual points.
Re: Equilibrium — no argument in creating new relationships (that’s what I call a handshake) and even capitalizing on some of those relationships with new business – both you and I are both service providers. What’s the incentive for a CEO of a Fortune 500 to get on LinkedIn at the moment – to find resources; you don’t think there are enough service providers calling on the guy right now?
Don’t take me wrong, I’m a strong LinkedIn believer – I just think they really need to raise the bar on their value proposition and beyond the initial euphoria of signing up, what’s their game plan for getting people to come back and revisit, engage deeper and wider in the application and really make it practical, functional, and a “must-have” vs. “nice to have.”
RE: Graphics – I disagree; I think a more compelling / visual UI would make their system considerably more user friendly. I spent some time at Business Objects and Broadbase and all of the decision support systems (DSS) players – Cognos, Microstrategy, even Crystal knew that the visual representation of the raw data is extremely powerful. If you get a chance, spend some time on IntroNetworks. Mark Sylvester and team over there have done some really cool things that I think LinkedIn should license or outright buy.
RE: Answers is simply not promoted as a highly decentralized knowledge management system; again – not that visually appealing to navigate, “top expert” section doesn’t really tell you much, not linked to other sources of content aggregation, i.e. ZoomInfo, Hoovers, OneSource, CEOExpress, etc. – and you’re exactly right – too difficult to really parse the content to get the answers you need.
RE: Interoperability is a frustrating point – they really do think that their solution is THE ONLY solution and there is a very real point of diminishing return when a) I invite the same trusted friends to a multitude of social networking sites, and b) I have to go create and subsequently update the exact same profile on 30+ sites!! No idea where the interoperability paranoia is coming from – I don’t think I’d use LinkedIn less if they would allow me to export my group members into a Second Life meeting!! LOVE your NTIP (Networking Transfer Interchange Protocol) standard idea to simplify the interoperability
How can we make that happen?
Hugh – thanks for visiting the blog and your comments above.
Don’t fret – I’m not quite abandoning five years of investment (time, effort, resources, capital) into LinkedIn® just yet. I wrote the article to gain their attention that they have to move beyond the simple connections to a deeper, more meaningful and impactful application of social networking (which by the way has little to do with technology – it’s been at MIT Labs since the ‘30s and ‘40s and it’s focused on the study of patterns in human interaction).
LinkedIn is by far the most prevalent social networking application for business professionals. There is however a disproportionate number of service providers on the site – just do a search for attorneys, accountants, and consultants! I get hundreds of thousands in my network alone! Valuable for me to network with these other service providers absolutely; could they refer me business – possibly; are they the actual executives / prospective economic buyers of my social networking strategy consulting, speaking and training services – probably not. And there lies my comment about the need for equilibrium between producers (people like me) and consumer of that value-add.
LinkedIn needs to create a stronger compelling reason for senior execs to not only visit, but get engaged. They also need to get over their interoperability paranoia and lead the development of a standard with other sites that most of us use (I have researched well over 300 social networking sites and am active on 30+, NONE of which talk to each other)!
Hope you’re coming to Emory on Dec. 11th where I’m doing a town hall meeting on social networking best practices. Best, David
David,
I agree with you on the 1-9-90 principle.
And also on the basic-advanced version. That might help the heavy users to be satisfied, but don’t scare away the “newbies”.
Only question is where to draw the line and how to promote that. But there are enough smart people at LinkedIn to solve that out. Or they can hire you as a consultant
Have a great networking day !
Jan