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LinkedIn CEO: There Will Be No Hamburger Slinging Here!
With all of the platforms launching these days (even our own), LinkedIn is taking the smart road and opening up their system to applications that expand their mission. LinkedIn is a business networking tool, period. And it should stay that way. While the Scobles of the world have left LinkedIn for Facebook, when I talk to business execs not in tech, LinkedIn is still their tool of choice.
Saul over at the NYT has an interview with LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye. In it Dan discusses how they will open the system, why they won’t allow "hamburgers to be slung" and thier plans for an IPO.
Some notes:
“We have no interest in doing it like Facebook with an open A.P.I. letting people do whatever they want,” Mr. Nye said. “We’re not going to have people sending electronic hamburgers to each other.”
“On many other Web sites, there is a lot of noise and a lot of interference,” he said. “When you go to LinkedIn, we want you to be confident you can accomplish your goals, be productive and move on with your day. We are not trying to get you to come back multiple times throughout the day.”
I am not sure I agree with Dan’s last comment. LinkedIn should become the business water cooler (not gossip) and to do that, you need return visitors daily. Maybe not 20x a day, but more than once. Top of mind fellas, top of mind.
LinkedIn has lost some of the popularity they had as many of the bloggers have moved their attention to Facebook and the upcoming platforms from other social networking tools. LinkedIn needs to get that blogger buzz back as it works on opening up. I would like to see a smarter LinkedIn as well.
Allen – as far as I can tell the exodus of LinkedIn members to Facebook is exaggerated, probably because those who make the move seem to be inclined to shout it out from the blogtops as a means of rationalizing their action.
I am a vanilla-bespectacled-silicon-valley-techie-entrepreneur registered on both sites. I check on Facebook once in a while primarily as a break from real work, glance at my home page, click on a couple of feed stories, yawn, scratch my ass, and shuffle off. I used LinkedIn heavily to get my startup funded, and continue to use it for constructive purposes such as finding employees, connecting to pootential business partners, and fending off recruiters who want to be my friend.
LinkedIn is my networking lubricant. Facebook is something else.
To the extent that LinkedIn can open up and enrich my ability to get my work done more conveniently, I’m all for it. Nye’s comments are a bit disingenuous since LinkedIn notifications force you to return to the site, but his gentle mockery does serve to direct attention away from the fact that LinkedIn was found flat-footed when Facebook announced their API.
I can understand where he’s coming from when he talks about the “once a day” thing. Business people are busy, and if the site REQUIRES them to check multiple times a day, lest they fall behind that could be a turn off.
For the foreseeable future I don’t see Facebook supplanting LinkedIn as my professional networking service of choice. Facebook is nice for informal stuff, but if I want to get introduced to a product manager at Microsoft or Google, I’m going to use my LI network 100%.
Good point Omar about "required" vs. "voluntary". Thing is that out of SV is all facebook, all the time – outside of SV, LinkedIn appears to still be the networking tool of choice.