LinkedIn Growth Engine: The Never Ending Viral Loop
growthhackers.com
growthhackers.com
Oh, and as a person no longer on LinkedIn I know this because I had to permanently place linkedin addresses in my spam filter so all my "friends" would stop sleep inviting me to linkedin. Including the ones that didn't even realize they had given linkedin my address. Oh, and a few well meaning individuals even asked linkedin to stop spamming me and others on their behalf and even though they said they would....linkedin failed to actually comply with their "clients" wishes.
And lets not get started on the crock trying to recruit on it has become. As an employer, all I wanted to do was post a position, that was all. Sigh, one can look back wistfully on the good ol' days when you could post your add in a few regional or provincial papers and expect a decent response.
Let LinkedIn be a lesson in how NOT to grow a company. What used to be a somewhat decent social network has devolved into a cheap mockery of its former self.
More than a few general users I've seen usually get pretty upset when they get random LinkedIn invitations from people they don't even know, because of the address book harvesting.
The fake referrals are insane - I'm surprised no one has outed them on that yet.
Couple all that with LinkedIn's constant use of dark patterns and general bad practices, I think I'm way better off without it.
Unfortunately they are in a position where a lot of people signed up and won't move to an alternative unless their contacts are there too, much like Facebook. It's embedded.
Since deleting my LinkedIn profile, I've mainly used twitter for networking. Within the development community it seems to be a great place for people to share all the stuff that people would share on LinkedIn anyway.
Here's my take, after researching them for so long. LinkedIn is definitely aggressive with their growth tactics. From the endorsements product, which has some questionable value, to the gimmicks like the "You're in the top 1% of profile views" emails, they definitely push the limits on growth and driving sustainable engagement. There's definitely an argument to be made that they cross the line too often for many people's tastes.
But what I think the most important takeaway from their success is that even after a decade they are constantly pushing the growth envelope. They are launching new products, new tests, new features, many focused on creating repeat visits and new growth, all the time. It doesn't stop.
To innovate on the growth engine for a decade straight? That's impressive. Sure they get things wrong, but they don't stop trying. Even as a public company. Even with 225 million users they keep trying new things.
I think that's a great lesson for companies to learn from, regardless of how hard you decide to personally push tactics for growth. So many companies lament their lack of growth, but what did they really try? What have they shipped that is actually focused on driving growth? PR, AdWords and a referral program does not make for a sustainable startup growth engine. I think the focus on the need to grow and the constant iteration and learning is something that has certainly given me a new perspective on how to think about startup growth.
I also think the product is in the middle of a massive pivot from referral network to network+content destination and that transition isn't quite done yet. It will be interesting to see what the next few years hold for them.
I am just curious why they have not pushed Q&A as another engagement channel, something similar to Quora. As most people in Linkedin use real identity, the Q&A should be relatively high quality with little spam. Thinking about it, maybe Linkedin should buy Quora or Stackoverflow :)
You point out that LinkedIn was able to prevent spam in the beginning through trusted referrals. I definitely receive unsolicited messages and see some clearly fake group members. Did you find any more recent examples where the company cracked down on spam even if it sacrificed growth?
One thing, that I mentioned in the follow up comment, is that much of the early growth was built by Josh Elman, Reid, Keith Rabois, and then later Adam Nash and Elliot Shmukler. All of those people are now gone.
As LinkedIn looks to continue its growth, it will be interesting to see how the company responds to a massive talent turnover on the growth team, and whether they can 1) keep it going, and 2) balance growth with user experience and value so that it doesn't continue to alienate users.
So instead of having a resume I can just suggest someone look at my linked in page. This is more for FOAFs (e.g. someone would like me to work with them; their colleagues can check out my LI page before they meet me to have some idea of who I am). I can see, to some degree, who has looked me up.
I use it the same way in reverse: when I want to check someone out I can look them up on LI and see whom we know in common, then just write to that person directly.
Unfortunately I can't send all LI mail straight to spam since some people who have lost my address use LI mail to get in touch. So I use some mail sieve rules to bin the obvious junk.
When it started it was a great way to catch up with old work colleagues. Now I link to people I've met, not just close colleagues, but I know which is which. In the case of professional contacts, The Strength of Weak Ties[0] really applies.
[0] http://www.immorlica.com/socNet/granstrengthweakties.pdf