May 02, 2015

Episode 63. LinkedIn Shares Tumble after Q1 Results

39 minutes

News

The LinkedIn advertising hack that gained a company $100,000 funding for a penny!

LinkedIn Announce their Q1 results. Financial analysts are OK with the results but hate the revised prediction for Q2 and shares plummet!

Sponsored update advertising grows by 40% and the number page views grows at impressive rate again.

LinkedIn hints that the Lynda.com acquisition will result in 'cross selling models and integration'. What exactly will this mean?

So this is why LinkedIn bought all those copies of Reid Hoffman's new book

Commentary

LinkedIn published posts desperately need a 'read it later' feature. We all lead busy lives so the chances of having the time to read a long form post when we see it are limited. Perhaps a feature similar to Twitter's 'favorite' link would be the easiest option. At the moment I suspect we are kidding ourselves if we believe the 'read' numbers as people who have actually read the post. What do you think? Drop me a line at [email protected].

Question.

This week's question comes from Carl, it's more of a point/commentary than a question but a really interesting one;

Hiya Mark,I was just thinking about LI buying Lynda, and the imminent arrival ofFacebook at Work.If LI wanted to go mega they'd be tackling this by looking at systemslike Slack https://slack.com. This would really get them into companiesby becoming an actual part of the employees daily workflow, which iswhat I'm betting the FB at work thing will aim for. Right now, LI isstill broadly seen as the thing you use when changing jobs (rightly orwrongly).We all know how big mobile is now, and how it's just getting bigger eachday.Slack has massive take up and is really well respected. The need for LIto get a better collaboration tool will come soon anyway, 4G is here nowwith rich services growing daily. We're about to be hit by the wave of"realtime videoisation" - all apps will be able to use it (its in thenext Android SDK) - think Twitters Periscope, which I know you love, butfor any app. And obviously phone/video calls. Right now, how can a LIuser call another LI user? Use their phone number. That's 3G and earlier- old style GSM. This next IP-only system allows username to usernamecalls within a closed system, such as LI, FB etc - and its much morethan a traditional phone call.

ANS = I totally agree with this. LinkedIn challenge is to combine moving with the times and giving users a really valuable tool with protecting members from spam - unwanted messages and calls. To be honest though I suspect this is way beyond their capabilities at the moment. I have unofficially heard that they are already really struggling with mobile as it is so this seems a bit of a stretch for them! Perhaps this is inevitable outcome of rejecting partnerships with 3rd party developers? Opening up the API provides so much opportunity for innovation but LinkedIn are closing down their API and trying to do everything themselves.

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