Social Networks - Facebook vs. LinkedIn ... more and more everyone wants to start a Social Network - or be part of one that someone else started. Increasingly, people are asking where is the best place to start a Social Network and the current consensus seems to be Facebook, over LinkedIn, for example, according to BusinessWeek's Fogeys Flock to Facebook article published this week.
"..But older users are behind the recent traffic surge at Facebook, which says it signs up 150,000 new users a day. In June, 11.5 million of the individual visitors to the site were 35 or older, more than double the number a year before, according to market researcher ComScore Media Metrix. The 35-and-up crowd now accounts for more than 41% of all Facebook visitors. Among the fogeys with profiles: Internet pioneer and Google executive Vinton Cerf, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, and Salesforce.com (CRM) CEO Marc Benioff. Jeff Pulver, a telecom entrepreneur and blogger, famously said in a recent post that he was forsaking LinkedIn for Facebook as his main professional hub (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/6/07, "Confessions of a LinkedIn Dropout").
Even Facebook's competitors acknowledge change is afoot. "Clearly, Facebook has lots of traffic and a lot of that traffic is from the same group of users as on LinkedIn," says David Cowan, a managing partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, a LinkedIn investor (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/29/07, "LinkedIn Reaches Out"). Yet during Facebook's most recent growth spurt—it has added 1.3 million visitors since May, according to ComScore—LinkedIn's audience hasn't declined, Cowan says. "
There's an overall debate that people are having also in my Social Media Committee of the Web Analytics Association as we try to determine what the best Social Network would be for the Web Analytics Association. In general, I'm seeing more people who have decided on Social Networks - the question is no longer if to do it or not, it's where best to do it.
And one of the things that has been Facebook's strength to date, is also it's weakness - it's seen by some as being too "unfocused". But the jury is out as to where the actual best place to build a social network is though right now, the wind seems to be blowing in Facebook's direction.
I like facebook but its all kids. Linkedin is a static archive of resumes and they charge you to contact people you dont know. If you want a site that you'll actually find useful and use it for networking. Try a site called congoo.com. To me, its way better then the other two.
Posted by: Peter Voinivich | August 8, 2007 8:05 PM | Permalink to Comment