LinkedIn says it has reached the significant marker of a million members in the UK, with more than two thousand British professionals signing up on any given day. The firm is celebrating with some member events in London (full, alas), Birmingham and Manchester. To celebrate, LinkedIn suggests we all go “out for a pint and all that.” Geez, with that kind of cultural localisation, it really is amazing to think they made it this far.
Meanwhile, Facebook is undoubtedly putting on many more members than that daily and is already the biggest social network in the UK. What’s the betting a hefty proportion of those members are professionals?
What’s the betting Facebook’s apps and other junk nag the professionals and they stop logging in?
Give me linkedin any day - thanks
Thanks for picking up on our blog post. We at LinkedIn did, actually, celebrate with a pint at the London event this evening, so didn’t want to discourage anyone who couldn’t join us from doing the same. We look forward to repeating the occasion in Birmingham & Manchester later this week. I might switch to Sauvignon Blanc, though. Hope you don’t expect me to change the blog post
And yes, Facebook is definitely signing up more users than is LinkedIn, and in that group are professionals, who make up 20% or 25% of the population and like to share photos and music (the most popular apps) as much as the next guy. Wouldn’t want to stop them. I, myself, have a particularly heated Scrabble game going on at the moment.
I have uses for both networks and suspect many would agree. Having a particular target demographic does mean that we as LinkedIn sign up fewer members than if we were trying to be all things to all people, but we find the focus on professionals invaluable, both for us as a company, and for our members.
I don’t think it’s a question of which one gets more users - LinkedIn or Facebook - as I can’t see the comparison.
I don’t use Facebook and LinkedIn the same way neither do I have the same contacts in my lists. (Updating my status to something that my boss would not like keeps me from adding business contacts to Facebook)
I wonder - why do we always seem to be looking for the ‘all around useful 100% of the time for every type of need’ app? Having different apps for different uses does have some positives - it allows the service to lock on to things that the users actually need and specialise in something instead of doing everything all the time.
Having said that, Google doing great with all kinds of stuff is ruining my argument.
That’s Harsh Mike
- It was a jolly good pint! Good on them - more companies should celebrate their success with the people who got them there!