June 25, 2007

LinkedIn going the platform route in response to Facebook?

I think they're going to have to change the perception of what LinkedIn is quite dramatically to get away with this. LinkedIn isn't an online place the way that Facebook or Tribe or MySpace are. It's organized around part of your life which is offline : namely your CV, your job, the company you work for and your (ex) colleagues. Its strength is letting you keep track of these things, while otherwise staying out of sight and out of mind.

Simply opening up the LinkedIn API isn't really going to do much unless someone can dream up some widgets that somehow engage this offline life.

3 comments:

Dave Winer said...

Phil, I think the fact that it's not a place is an advantage. The Mac shipped with a couple of lame apps, that created space for developers to create real apps. Developers who build on LinkedIn can create the places. You can use LinkedIn to manage all those places. This is what the Internet needs, I don't think it needs another Facebook, I think it needs a PLATFORM for Facebooks. Dave Winer

Unknown said...

Also not sure that your characterisation of it not being a place is accurate either. Depends on the users.

For people whose job is network focussed - you're there all of the time. Also the Q&A section has made it more of a place recently too.

Composing said...

Thanks Dave, Adrian.

Maybe I'll have to go and look if it's more of a "place". My theory of LinkedIn is driven by the interesting (to me) observation that LinkedIn is the place where most of my non-online friends and acquaintances turn up.

I've come to believe that its "inertness" has been an attraction in some ways.

I'm not sure that's quite the same as being empty real-estate. Dave, what I'm curious about is, that given what you're saying about open social network platforms, you haven't brought up Marc Canter's People Aggregator.

That must be closer to the exploded social network platform you're thinking of than you may expect to get from Facebook or LinkedIn.