Skip to main content



Once a Running Joke, LinkedIn Is Suddenly A Hot Social Network – Here’s What Changed.

At the end of 2016, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for $26 billion, which was a move that surprised many in the industry. It had seemed that LinkedIn might be going downhill, but since then, LinkedIn has become more than just a place for professionals to connect. It has expanded into a place where marketers can connect their products to a more professional audience. It’s been called the “Facebook for business-to-business marketers,” where companies can connect to each other. Additionally, it collects a lot of data, including normal resume information, comments, blog posts, and more. It can know about professional and educational history, as well as interests. The article also discusses how people are more careful about what they post on LinkedIn, as what they say and post can be seen by a more professional audience, leading the site to gain more business periodicals who use LinkedIn to publish. As such, user engagement has increased to 5 to 6 million a month. Overall, LinkedIn has started a push towards more engagement on the newsfeed, versus endorsements and notifications in the past. Additionally, the Influencer program allows for top leaders in industry to publish content. LinkedIn becomes a platform where spam and troll content rarely occurs because of its professional nature, allowing for companies and users to target the exact audience they want.

 

LinkedIn is an interesting platform – as students, we originally connect with people we’re already connected to on Facebook: friends, club members, acquaintances, other students from the same school. However, LinkedIn grows to become a place to connect with students with similar professional interests such as recruiters and employees working in the industry. Content on LinkedIn differs a lot from a casual social network, becoming much less about personal lives, but about professional interests or perhaps lessons learned from a person’s time at X company. The push for engagement makes LinkedIn a less formal space, but at the same time still maintains its professional atmosphere, just in a more open and inviting manner.

 

In class, we discussed social networks and how people are connected in real life through friendship circles and such. It’s interesting to see this maintained online through sites like LinkedIn; these may lean more towards a more work-heavy network, but allows for people to reach outside of their inner circle and connect with other circles. By adding engagement and features like blog posts, individual “nodes” in the network can gain that connection to other “nodes” completely unrelated to them. This further unites the network to create a more connected global professional network. However, many of these new ties would be more weak than strong, as they’re created through likes, comments, follows, and posts. Professional ties tend to stray away from becoming a personal tie, which would have allowed the link to be a strong one; however, unless there’s daily communication and contact between two “nodes”, even increased engagement through LinkedIn can’t really make a weak connection strong – instead, a personal connection would be necessary.

 

Link: http://www.adweek.com/digital/once-a-running-joke-linkedin-is-suddenly-a-hot-social-network-heres-what-changed/

Comments

Leave a Reply

Blogging Calendar

September 2017
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  

Archives