Photo Credit: by Antigo Coletivo Mambembe via flickr
I think I pissed off The Wall Street Journal Technology Team. Last night, I unsuccessfully published a comment to Deepa Seetharaman‘s great article, LinkedIn Gets Boost From Mobile, Overseas Users.
Google Chrome issues continue rearing its ugly head whenever I comment on blog posts or articles in The WSJ, LinkedIn, or Medium. Great. Now, I’m blacklisted as a spammer for multiple publishing attempts.
Here’s the comment I intended to post at The Wall Street Journal. The following quote contains modifications because I’m exceeding the 1000 character limit in WSJ’s commenting system:
Deepa, great synopsis of LinkedIn’s progress in mobile. It’s great Weiner and team are hustling here. They’ve lagged their counterparts in mobile capability but are ramping up quickly because consumers demand a one-screen world experience — increasingly through their smartphones.
If LinkedIn wants Facebook’s mobile utilization, (aka 1.19 billion monthly billion mobile users as of January 2015 according to TechCrunch), besides pure membership numbers, it needs to enable personalized LinkedIn Connection Requests in the Project Voyager Mobile App. The ability to personalize LinkedIn Connection Requests remains missing within the mobile app.
Your article does a great job describing LinkedIn’s B2B competitive positioning. 40K+ enterprise clients. Apple would kill for those numbers in their IBM alliance.
By “following the money,” it’s a clear signal why Project Voyager still doesn’t solve the personalized invite shortcoming (or maybe it’s a subtle one). Enterprises (which are now driving significant LinkedIn revenues) don’t value personalization or individualization.
Enterprises value conformity and efficiency. Enterprises value mass.
That’s what the LinkedIn Connection Request Template represents: a mass-friendly shot-on-goal versus an important first step in building trust in a personal or business relationship.
This quiet and subtle shift in LinkedIn’s priorities from its original, individual member, user-centric roots is unfortunate.
40,000+ Reasons Why LinkedIn Prioritizes The Enterprise Over The Individual Member
Here’s a key quote from Deepa’s article influencing my thinking:
LinkedIn draws about 60% of its revenue from its largest division, Talent Solutions, a platform for recruiters to search for candidates. LinkedIn says it now has nearly 40,000 enterprise contracts under contract. That sets LinkedIn apart from other social media companies that draw most of their revenue from advertising.
Note: I added the formatting added to the original article quote for emphasis.
LinkedIn Is The Exact Opposite of Other Social Networks In Business Model and Target Audience. I’ve written before about LinkedIn’s importance in the B2B Buyer/Consumer Journey. LinkedIn is considered the most important social network for B2B marketers. For now.
The aforementioned hyperlink’s source, Business Insider, says Facebook is rapidly closing the gap on LinkedIn’s B2B dominance.
More importantly, Deepa’s article reinforces how LinkedIn generates revenues via subscription models and B2B services not advertising (the preferred B2C revenue generation model). The chart at the bottom of the LinkedIn About Page tells the Q3 2015 revenue stream story:
I Can’t Fault LinkedIn For Pivoting to and Prioritizing A B2B Audience
It’s Smart Business. The firm disrupted itself. It didn’t fall victim to The Innovator’s Dilemma. LinkedIn quietly tailored its revenue streams and offerings over for B2B buyers. This strategy+business article, Smart Customization: Profitable Growth Through Tailored Business Streams, explains this phenomenon better than I can in three (3) quick points (direct quote from the article):
Smart customizers:
- Understand the sources of value that customization provides their customers.
- Evolve toward “virtuous variety” — the ever-changing point at which customization adds value to both company and clientele
- Tailor their business streams, aligning them to customer need, to provide value at the lowest cost.
Competitor Imitation Is The Sincerest Form of Flattery. This Indeed.com commercial confirms a similar B2B buyer persona play and reinforces LinkedIn’s focus on mobile-enabled audiences:
- Individual job seekers’ smartphones are the Number 1 communications platform for initiating this digitized consumer decision journey
- Enterprises want job seekers to easily find their listings via a smartphone app search
- Enterprises value teams. Their objective is to assemble entire teams and understand how each employee candidate aligns within specific team outcomes
Follow Deepa Seetharaman’s Work at The Wall Street Journal
Deepa’s Wall Street Journal Article Inspired This Post. Setting aside my Google Chrome issues and LinkedIn mini-rant, I want readers to leave with this: follow Deepa Seethharaman‘s work. Her articles will keep you informed of important Silicon Valley tech news involving Facebook, LinkedIn, and other companies covered by The WSJD Team:
Deepa is part of my Twitter List for my favorite Wall Street Journal technologists. If you’re on Twitter, it’s a free, public list displaying Deepa’s and her WSJD colleagues’ real-time tweets.
Theranos founder-CEO Elizabeth Holmes: Feminist icon? https://t.co/wZwSIvFyWz
— Christopher Mims (@mims) October 29, 2015
@mims She was by default. Few other options. — Deepa Seetharaman (@dseetharaman) October 30, 2015
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