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LinkedIn @ 20
May 03, 2023
We live in a data-driven world. Whether it is work, rest or play, every aspect of our lives is captured online as we travel through a multiverse of social platforms, apps and websites.
At the turn of this century, however, few could have predicted how the internet would develop. But undoubtedly there were some futurists who only saw the opportunity.
The handful of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and technologists behind LinkedIn were such a group and, perhaps unbelievably, LI turns 20 on May 5th this year.
The impact of this on the working environment and how we understand business has resulted in employment never being the same again.
Over two decades there is no question it has changed, but how?
Perhaps more importantly, how has it changed us? How did the pandemic aid and assist the growth for LinkedIn and has this been for the better?
And can LinkedIn, with its 930m members sustain this level of growth as it reaches £13.6bn in revenue, 30+ offices and more than 19,000 employees worldwide?
A new age of working
Mention this LinkedIn ‘coming-of-age’ 20th anniversary to people who started their careers before the Millennium, and you can see a look of confusion and even shock at how it could be true.
On the other hand, there are many in the workforce who have never known a professional world without it.
But, despite it being the first social platform, it is often overlooked in favour of consumer-facing Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the ubiquitous TikTok.
Today, there is no question it is has grown to be the de facto platform for business professionals across the world.
The origin story famously begins with Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly and Jean-Luc Vaillant. After the first month the platform had 4,500 members with a mission statement to connect professionals across the globe, making them more productive and successful.
It was a gamble that paid off. By 2004, it is recorded that LinkedIn had 1,217,647 members.
The interconnectedness of the build, enabling people to upload address books, invite colleagues and create groups, was central to the ease and access of being part of a bigger professional picture.
By 2005, job subscriptions and paid options were integrated – scaling to over 4m members. LinkedIn went international in the late 2000s, opening an office first in the UK in 2008 and introducing Spanish and French language versions the same year.
In 2016 Microsoft’s acquisition moved the platform forward again and on the Forbes 2021 list of the world's billionaires, Hoffman alone was credited with a net worth of US$2.4 billion.
All about the data
The information now stored about the world’s population is Orwellian in its scope – and with the rise of AI fully emerging we can see the benefits and, naturally, some concerns.
LinkedIn has played a significant part in developing this new landscape. This is a now not just a fundamental shaping of the future of work or how we use the internet but a major shift in human interconnectedness on a global scale.
According to the cloud platform Kinsta, LinkedIn users who are frequently engaging with the platform, 40% access it on a daily basis clocking up more than 1billion interactions every month.
However, this data also shows that LinkedIn is used sparingly compared to other social media. Users only spend about 17 minutes on LinkedIn a month – demonstrating you only have to use it a little to make an impact.
This means the amount and variation of data available is now captured by social companies and, especially validated data, is increasingly more valuable than the platform itself.
It is, of course, the monetisation of this data – for all social platforms – that creates the gold at the end of the rainbow.
In its acquisition, Microsoft offered LinkedIn new routes to market and commercial opportunities for the data. The market forces driving this deal also compelled IBM to acquire The Weather Company and many competitors to partner with Facebook.
Paradoxically using the information in this way is also the biggest risk in maintaining goodwill among LinkedIn members.
So long as members see the value of engagement, they will return, contribute and participate with others.
But the opposite can be just as true.
Some members already feel they are being without a personal return or being sold to as businesses increase marketing efforts to directly reach decision-makers.
Conduct a sweep of sentiment across LinkedIn and it is clear some feel that, due to a critical mass of use and overpopulation of ‘boring’ corporate content, people are now seeking more personal content.
A reason for this is because, as it has been said, LinkedIn had a “good” pandemic. This saw conversations on the platform rise 43% and content-sharing almost 30%.
The obvious shift in how people engaged with each other from home means content became more personal and has driven many people to since leave comments such as ‘this belongs on Facebook’.
The future of work
As we approach a quarter of the first century of this Millennia, we stand at the forefront of another huge shift in technological advancement with Industry 4.0 well and truly upon us.
LinkedIn continues to grow at scale and research has shown that Gen Z is as interested in using LinkedIn as your average Millennial.
TikTok and Instagram may be the drivers of culture and Facebook, while admittedly struggling with perception, still has the most active users.
But, according to reports, LinkedIn is attracting 200 new users a minute and official LinkedIn stats showing the site handles 4,500 job ads every minute – with claims that six people get a new job every minute also.
LinkedIn is only just marginally more popular with men, who comprise 56% of its user's base. And millennials make up over 59% of LinkedIn’s user base, with 11 million of the 87 million millennials in decision-making positions.
And, as it feels like we are constantly being informed that Gen Z wants a very different relationship with the world of work, LinkedIn has ‘upskilled’ itself to attract young professionals.
Pivoting toward video and consistently adding and removing features, which keeps the experience delivering for the users, paid and free, and it has become the default look up for all serious business professionals.
This points to the fact, Gen X and Millennials, who make up most of today’s workforce, may need to look at creating different types of content than they are used to, or even comfortable with, if they are to raise their profiles effectively.
What we do know is that the increasingly famous ‘LinkedIn Algorithm’ is consistently working in the background and changing the game.
In 2023, there are two factors that the LI algorithm takes into account when deciding what you see in your feed and – of course – when people see your content on theirs.
These are your Social Selling Index combined with ‘dwell time’, ie: how much time you spend looking at the content.
Continued growth
Perhaps the real story of LinkedIn at 20 is recognition of the unwavering truth that the advancement of technology will continue to shape our – and almost every other – industry at a fundamental level.
We can clearly see how LinkedIn has revolutionised the way executive search works, providing a platform that allows us to source potential candidates more efficiently and effectively.
We have ever-increasing access to a much larger pool of candidates and, thereby, dramatically expanding the impact individuals can have on a business.
It has transitioned the hiring process from a network-focused approach to a more customised research and assessment-based approach. This has allowed us to be a true adviser to our clients throughout most hiring processes.
But it is also true that the future of these platforms remains uncertain. Experts predict that within the next five years we will see a significant shift towards Web3 and AI. The ethics and uses of such areas are currently seeing a resurgence in social debate.
Despite this uncertainty, LinkedIn's continued growth and progress over the past decade is a testament to the value of taking a slow and steady approach to building a dominant market force.
Adapting to new technologies will be essential for staying ahead of the curve and meeting the evolving needs of both our clients and our own professional futures.
'Life on the edge’
And there is good reason to look at the link between the two social giants LinkedIn and Facebook.
The 2016 Microsoft acquisition saw a much closer alignment with how LI operates and the famous Facebook ‘social graph’.
LinkedIn’s adoption of the “professional social graph” and then ‘the plot’ that has enabled LinkedIn users to manage the platform most effectively.
The plot categorises a network into a hierarchical structure — network, companies in my network and positions in those companies. The size of each tile indicates how many people belong to that group.
So, the larger the company tile, the larger the percentage of a network it occupies.
This a similar breakdown to what Facebook calls ‘the edge’ – the collation of myriad information we all volunteer every single time we make any kind of interaction on the platform.
This is a specific chain reaction of all the likes, dislikes, comments, follows (the list goes on) that creates your graph or plot – although think of this as a data web with you in the middle, rather than something you’d see in maths class.
Your Social Selling Index
The company calls this your Social Selling Index (SSI) and it’s there because it believes you’re either there to raise your profile and promote your experience or you are part of the content consumption machine.
It is one of the strange tech areas that are both hidden and not hidden on social platforms – and, in fact, but simply clicking on this link here you can find out your score.
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT YOUR SSI: https://www.linkedin.com/sales/ssi
Of course, the way it works is that the more ‘popular’ you become, the more airtime you’re likely to get because you’re moving into an ‘authority’ position.
Proof once more that content is pivotal in shaping not just your profile but also what you see in your own feeds – which in turn has huge power to influence your own decision making.
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