I’ve been seriously following LinkedIn’s progress for a few years now but recently just learned about Ian McCarthy.  Not sure why it has taken me so long to figure out who he is, since he is the guy who drives the actual product.

I was reading up on the new changes on LinkedIn Groups (what do you think about those changes?) and saw this on TechCrunch:

LinkedIn’s principal product manager Ian McCarthy says that overall, Groups has been upgraded to be more engaging with users and a place where people can have conversations on the platform.

So, it really is Ian who’s behind all this stuff… !  I don’t know what their product management team looks like… but here’s some info about Ian (from his LinkedIn Profile):

• He’s in the San Francisco area (of course)
• He went to Stanford (leaving/graduating in 1991)
• He tweets here (not much, though… 164 followers and 52 tweets)
• Past titles include “VP, Product Marketing” (Orb Networks) and CEO (GoPix – probably funded by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman)
• His Profile could use some beefing up (check out my DVD!)

I’m not crazy about all the social stuff LinkedIn is doing, but I think they investors think they have to be more like Facebook/Twitter… LI’s value has been, and should be, in other places.  It will be interesting to see where Ian continues to take the features.

Monday (saturday) I wrote about following companies on LinkedIn.  Here’s a fun sidenote… TechCrunch has company profiles… here’s what they are reporting about LinkedIn:

Founded: May 1, 2003 (I remember they celebrate Cinco De Mayo (May 5th) as their anniversary… I’m not sure what the discrepency is.

Funding: $103M – they got a lot of cash!

Location: Mountain View, CA (that is Silicon Valley)

Users: 65M (from the blog post) – I think that number might be low, they should announce 70M any week now.  Also, the company profile on TC shows 45M, so perhaps other stats (like the funding amount) is different also.

Take that to your next network meeting – you’ll be sure to impress the masses :p

Cinco de Mayo is the big celebration day at the LinkedIn offices – I would love to celebrate it at their offices with them.

Here are some past blog posts from the LinkedIn blog about their yearly anniversary – some fun info pops up in these posts:

May 4, 2007: Moving Trucks and Birthday Cakes

May 5, 2008: Happy Cinco de Mayo de LinkedIn

May 13, 2009: Celebrating our 6th birthday with 40 million users!

Felicidades, LinkedIn!

Ever wonder how big LinkedIn is RIGHT NOW?  I just got an email (that I suspect might be slightly outdated) that said:

Over 63 million members. Our membership is growing. Target the 100,000 new professionals that join each week.

So they are 63M this week.

They grow at 100,000 each week.

There are 39 weeks left this year… that means 3,900,000 new signups through the rest of this year… which means LinkedIn should end the year with 66,900,000 signups.

I’m guessing that is low and will predict it’s over 75M.

(what do these numbers mean?  Read Fake Metrics for one perspective)

Update: 4/9 – just came across this list from a Scott Allen post: lots of LinkedIn people on Twitter.

Out of curiousity, and to wind down from finishing the recordings for the second edition of LinkedIn for Job Seekers (DVD), I thought I’d see who at LinkedIn is on Twitter, how active they are, and what they are doing.  Here is a brief summary…. who’d I miss?  (they have lots of employees, this is just a small percentage)

Reid Hoffman (@quixotic) – founder. Silicon Valley.  10,039 followers, 71 tweets (usually where he is located). He links back to his LI  Profile.

Adam Nash (@adamnash) – VP of Search and Platform Products.  Silicon Valley. 1,290 followers, 2,460 tweets. He links back to his personal blog.

Kay Luo (@kluo) – Sr. Director of Corporate Communications. Silicon Valley. 1,000 followers, 859 tweets. Links back to her LI Profile.

DJ Patil (@dpatil) – Chief Scientist & Sr. Director of Product Analytics.  Silicon Valley. 708 followers, 1080 tweets.  Links back to his LI Profile.

Krista Canfield (@kristacanfield) – Senior PR Manager. Silicon Valley.  686 followers, 1079 tweets. Links back to her LI Profile.

Sam Mandolfo (@mandolfo) – Enterprise Account Executive, Omaha. 293 followers, 201 tweets. Links back to his LI Profile.

Mario Sundar (@mariosundar) – Community Evangelist (I think he’s in charge of the Official LinkedIn Blog), San Fransisco. 3,719 followers, 7,134 tweets. He links back to his personal blog.

Brandon Salom (@bsalom) – Technology Sales & Business Development Associate. San Fransisco. 167 followers, 546 tweets. He links back to his LI Profile.

WHO KNOWS (@LinkedIn) – not sure who is behind this account… I’m guessing Mario and/or Kay. 30,267 followers, 1,647 tweets.  Links back to the LinkedIn blog.

Steve Patrizi (@spatrizi) – VP, Marketing Solutons. San Fransisco. 507 followers, 559 tweets. He links back to his LI Profile.

Does this tell you anything interesting?

One other thing I found was most of those people had over 500 LI connections but very few recommendations.

For a few years I had owned LinkedInHelp.com and LinkedInHelp.net.

Today I finished transferring them to LinkedIn, the company.  If you want LinkedIn help you’ll have to go to their help resources.  I hope that someone there jumps on it and redirects the link instead of letting it drop (especially since it’s been live for a while and some people might have been using it).

I didn’t transfer them because I wanted to… I did it because (a) it was the right thing to do, and (b) they sent me a nasty, cold letter (email) telling me I better transfer it to them or else.

I don’t care for “or else,” so I transferred it.

In the course of transferring and communicating with them I actually got a real communication from a real LinkedIn employee – so I took advantage of the opportunity and asked “what’s with being a “relationship company” but sending that really cold, impersonal, and even threatening email to me?”

I’m nobody special to them, but I do think I’ve helped them increase visibility and credibility.  Not a reason to give me special treatment, but man, that letter was disturbing.

This was not-a-fun process, but it ended nicely since I got to spend some time on the phone with the LinkedIn guy – I asked him why it was such a cold letter and he said “let’s get on the phone and talk about this.”

Very classy… thank you Mr. ____ from LinkedIn, for making that a pleasant experience.

To read the letter, and some very passionate thoughts (on both sides of the fence) on this issue, you can read LinkedStrategies.com post titled: LinkedIn: Are You Crazy! referring to LinkedIn dude Sean Nelson. Luckily mine didn’t end like that

TechCrunch has a post on The Top Ten IPO Candidates For 2010.  LinkedIn is one of the suggestions (it is #3 on the list, although I’m not sure that the list is in any order).

Erick Schonfeld (@erickschonfeld) writes:

>> The other social network,

Very interesting that this is “the other one.”  There are hundreds of thousands of social networks, if you count all the Ning sites.  But I agree, when I think of social networks I’m interested in, LinkedIn and Facebook are the two most important.

>> LinkedIn is like the enterprise version of Facebook.

Interesting description.  Makes it sounds more important and more boring at the same time.   But “enterprise” means MONEY.  Not sexy, fun, flashy, college money, but corporate bucks.  Not a bad positioning.

>> It is where business gets done

YES, YES, YES.  Too many people assume LinkedIn is just a big job seeker and recruiter environment.  I know that it is much more than that.  If it isn’t more than that for you, you aren’t using it right.

>> and people find jobs.

Definitely true.  Have you ordered my LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD yet?

>> LAst year alone it raised about $75 million at a $1 billion valuation.

It says the total raised is $103 million.  And their staff has really grown in the last 2 years!

>> And in the Founder Reid Hoffman has spoken repeatedly about LinkedIn’s ability  to IPO.  Earlier this year, he recruited former Yahoo exec Jeff Weiner to be CEO and is spending more time himself as a venture capitalist, which has always been his sideline.

Interesting, huh?

Well, so much for rumors.  Sarah Lacy asks Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) some really good questions, including what’s up with the LinkedIn acquiring Xing rumor.

Reid says NO.  It’s before minute two in the video… you can see the whole thing at the Tech Crunch post: TC50 Backstage: Reid Hoffman on a LinkedIn IPO and What Startups May Beat Him Out, or just click PLAY below:

I blogged about Xing (LinkedIn vs. Xing) last November… and when I was in Turkey I met someone from Xing (that was cool, considering I’ve never met anyone from Xing).

Admittedly, I don’t know anything about Xing from a user perspective, but they do seem to have a great hold on the professional social networking marketing in Europe.

The rumors (or should that be rumours?) come from TechCrunch… it looks like things are happening at Xing and people are speculating that LinkedIn is behind the rumors… I think this would be a SOLID acquisition with regard to market share.  I have no idea how good this could be with regard to technology or management…. but LinkedIn’s Market + Xing’s Market = POWERFUL.

The TechCrunch post says:

Such a deal would consolidate its position in Europe, making it basically unassailable in business networks.

I agree… this would be pretty significant.  And I think it could be beneficial to users on both side of the pond…

Or, it could be a big fat mess if technology, management and the user cultures don’t line up just right!

Still speculation, though,  no official word (yet).

How do you like that – I came up with a tre-clever title! Killer… stab… ah, I crack myself up :p

Seriously, let’s talk about the notion of a LinkedIn Killer.  On TechCrunch Michael Arrington writs about the WSJ Connect.  Interesting article, which talks about the first attempt the WSJ had in this space.  And now they are reviving their interest and doing it better and more seriously… you can read about it at Wall Street Journal Creating New “LinkedIn Killer” Called WSJ Connect.  The comments (in general) are revealing and very good.

What do I think about ANY LinkedIn Killer?  I think there are one of two things that could, might, maybe lead to a site/service that becomes the LinkedIn Killer.

First: Technology.

Having written the book on LinkedIn, I am asked regularly to check out someone’s site or idea that is “better than LinkedIn.“  LinkedIn was developed a long time ago.  Facebook came out around the same time but it had sexier, cooler, flashier technology.  Facebook has led the social space with a lot of things, including F8, FB Connect, etc.  It’s just freaking cool (however, the fine print in their ToS’s really negate all of the cool stuff they do, imho).

LinkedIn has been slow to adopt stuff.  Heck, they took forever before they allowed you to put a Profile Picture up!  They don’t have a real open API (they have a few partners who they let in with their API, as opposed to FB’s F8).

Their design hasn’t changed a whole lot (I think), and the site might look a little dated compared to the newer sites and technologies out there.

However, I completely discount that any site is going to out-technology LinkedIn.  They have built a critical mass and have the momentum that any wannabe-competitor is going to have a hard time trying to get close to, regardless of cooler technology.

TECHNOLOGY ALONE WILL NOT LEAD TO LINKEDIN’s DEMISE.

(unless LinkedIn does not keep up with certain technologies, and their own technology gets too outdated – which many complain of but I don’t think it’s been critical to LI’s site/health)

Second: Signups and Users.

This is the real issue, I think.  This is the reason why no new startup is going to catch up with LinkedIn – I mentioned “critical mass” earlier.  Another phrase that comes to mind is “first to market.”

Think about the difference between Amazon.com and BN.com.  Do you even know what/who BN.com is?  Perhaps.  Why the heck did Barnes and Noble sit around waiting for Amazon to prove themselves (and the Internet and ecommerce) before they did something about it.  By the time Amazon became powerful, BN had a TON of catching up to do.  And they are still doing the catchup.  Look at this graph from Compete.com (Amazon is the blue line, BN.com is the green line):

There are a handful of sites who have the type of user base that could even seriously think about wanting to be compete in the same arena as LinkedIn.  I *think* the WSJ is one of them – they have a very strong brand, they have readership, they are well-respected, etc.

The question is, can they actually get the people who go there to read the sage writing to actually do social networking stuff – even if it’s highly professional social networking?  Perhaps… but check out this comment from Amit Jain (Amit Jain on Twitter):

I just had a look at the new community launched by WSJ and I completely disagree that it can beat LinkedIn with its current design, flow & content. WSJ is trying to sell its products – news, blogs, videos, etc – more from it than enabling the business community interact. I tried to register on it and I was verified in 2 steps. Its too much work. Well, my point is that WSJ has still got to do much work to outbeat LinkedIn. The current version won’t work.

If the mindset of WSJ’s social networking play is the same as the WSJ monetazation play (”sell its products”) then I think it’s going to be an uphill battle.

I’d like to see this become a successful service, but I have a hard time believing that it will be a LinkedIn Killer … I should note that they are not the first big property that has tried to do this… but I bet you haven’t heard of the others.

Two final notes:

1. If the WSJ is serious I seriuosly recommend they engage Scott Allen as a consultant in this space.  Perhaps even Shally (no-last-name-required) and Harry Joiner.
2. Apparently they themselves called it the “LinkedIn Killer.”  Hm… that sounds interesting.  Hyping up the team internally?  They really drew a line in the sand with that one.