Shel Israel used the nifty LinkedIn Q&A feature today to ask that question of others in the community. Some responses he’s gotten so far:
Ron Vos, CEO of Fan2Band:
There will soon be too many social networking site choices for marketers to try and deal with as a whole.. at some point, marketers will want to consolidate their efforts and information via wigets based systems .. CRM / FRM (Fan Relatiohship Management) to provide strategic organized efforts.
N. Cody McKibben, student:
I think Myspace has actually maxed out its growth potential for now (at least in the US; they’re concentrating internationally right now), unless they introduce something new and innovative. But since News Corp picked them up there has not been much interest in adding innovative new features, only in optimizing the advertizing. I think it’s been around long enough few people care anymore — still the same tweeny demographic.
It’s fitting that Shel posted the question on LinkedIn, since that service is clearly on the rise — a classic case of the network effect finally kicking in. LinkedIn was founded WAY back in 2003 — before YouTube, before Facebook, even before MySpace — but now is arguably hotter than any of those services.
Why? Because in an environment where most popular social networking sites are geared for personal use, LinkedIn is a business tool. As the others scramble to identify business applications, LinkedIn is already there.
Oh, and as if to prove my point: when I went to the Wikipedia entry on LinkedIn to find the year the company was founded, it wasn’t there. And because of Wikipedia’s “conflict of interest” policy, if someone from LinkedIn decided to add this info, Wikipedia would strike it out. Can any system be more business-unfriendly than that?
Of course, Wikipedia is still the place to go to find out every detail imaginable about your favorite video game or porn star.
Check out the discussion here.
Linked in is definitely getting hot, so is Facebook and I am really digging Pownce (pun intended). It’ll be interesting to see how an IPO-induced influx of cash will affect Linked-In.
Unlike Pownce and Facebook, LinkedIn is accessible through my firewall at work.
Guess which one is getting more attention?
(Twitter is available at the office too – and that could reap big dividends this disaster season…)
Hi Scott, thanks for the mention! Don’t miss what I said about Facebook though, it’s the hot network right now(!):
“Facebook is really hot right now because they recently opened it up to participation from anyone (not just college students), so a lot of self-promoters and business owners are seeing success with it. Also they just opened their API, called F8 Platform, to outside developers, so Applications are a very hot topic right now — since companies can build their own programs that run within the Facebook community. A contact of mine, Rodney Rumford, writes a good blog about FB and is very knowledgable about social media.”
Check out Rodney’s site FaceReviews.com if you’re interested in Facebook apps. Thanks again Scott, great blog
I think LinkedIn is definitely on the rise, but they’re going to have to beat the rap of being a place that works best for job-seekers, so that more professionals will get on board and not be afraid that if their boss finds out they’re in LinkedIn, they might be looking for a job. There are so many recruiters and HR blogs out there talking right now about using LinkedIn to find candidates. It’s sort of a double-edged sword. I think LinkedIn is making strides, but most places I see their banners are blogs of people who work for themselves and don’t have that concern or those that are wanting a job.
Just browsing the internet, very interesting blog.