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Facebook Takes A Shot at LinkedIn

Posted by Nick O'Neill on October 18th, 2007 11:17 AM

New Networking feature screenshot

Last week I mentioned the new API update that enables users to select “Networking” next to “Looking for” in their profile. It was only an API change but it looks like the new feature launched today. This new option caters to Facebook’s rapidly aging demographic that has begun to use Facebook for business purposes. The next step? Facebook needs to update their options for selection how you know your contacts. Currently, the available options are limited to those that would be useful for college students.

I would assume that this is something that Facebook will be changing in the near future. The addition of the “Networking” feature is only a first move in their well calculated assault on LinkedIn. It will be interesting to see how this pans out but soon enough I think LinkedIn is going to be toast. Following Dan Nye’s statement that LinkedIn is not a social network, I have to say that LinkedIn is practically a sitting duck. LinkedIn has limited messaging features and is essentially a public extension of my Outlook contact list.

While there are many on the web that are more conservative and would prefer no to be as transparent as profiles on Facebook are, the overall movement is toward a more transparent society. If LinkedIn wants to play it smart they will cater to the movement rather than going against the grain. Do you agree that LinkedIn is going down?

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 11:17 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 9 Comments

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    I think it is a wrong move by Facebook. But FB is doing it just so to become the WALMART of social networking. In another words, they want be everything and anything on the website. The problem is, are they now going to allow you to contact anyone you dont know? Becuase that was the difference between FB and Myspace and if they allow that, that takes away one of the best thing about fb. Yes you can say, only those who select Networking will have their account opened but eventually everyone is going is select that.

    Also I still want facebook for social only. I want to go to specific site that focuses on professional networking where i am surrounded by professional individual and recruiters. Facebook is not setup for that. It is like buying suits at a clothing store as opposed to a suit store. I am not saying Linkedin is a suit store, they are horrible. But as a student, I will trust and prefer to go to a site that is solely dedicated to professional networking only.
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    Weird: When I go to the Relationships section of Edit My Profile, "Random Play" and "Whatever I can get" aren't on the list of options anymore. Is that a glitch, or does Facebook want to get rid of those as part of "growing up?"

    (I still see those options on the Advanced Search, though.)
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    It still shows up in mine so I'm not sure why that is.
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    it shows up on mine too. But it seems somewhat pointless becuase when you click on it, it displays everyone within your network only. So basically we are restricted to networking within our network. If my network is in Kansas, i can't network with people out of Kansas which defeats the whole purpose of online networking.
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    I don't think LinkedIn is 'going down.' I think there site is a very valuable tool to accomplish what it was built to do - store contacts in a format in a dynamic way. I would (personally) disagree that 'public extension of my Outlook contact list.' My outlook contact box doesn't allow me to connect to others via degrees of separation...and doesn't give near the amount of information that is stored and viewable on a LinkedIn account. I find value in LinkedIn that I am not currently realizing w. my FB account...
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    Oh well, I guess the missing boxes are my personal glitch. (It wouldn't be the first time something nonsensical happened to my account -- there were a couple of weeks last month where all of my Past Events disappeared.)

    Getting back on topic: Adding a "Networking" purpose and friend-grouping won't by themselves, make Facebook a competitor for LinkedIn. Like the "Dating" purpose, "Networking" is mostly an announcement that the user is OK with a certain level of unsolicited e-mail. LinkedIn still has business features, like industry categorizations and degrees of separation that Facebook doesn't.

    In fact, LinkedIn's version of purpose is much more nuanced, letting users announce whether they're accepting "job inquires," "consulting offers," "business inquiries," etc. For power users who actually use LinkedIn to network with associates-of-associates, Facebook has nothing equivalent.

    Creating the "Networking" purpose (and the future plans for friend-grouping) are only part of what it would take to compete with LinkedIn's feature set. Facebook, at the very least, needs to add detail to the "Work" section of user profiles (industry/institution types), let business networkers fine-tune their contact preferences (this would probably require senders flagging messages by purpose, a feature Facebook barely has now), and figure out a way to encourage communication between indirect contacts that doesn't infringe on the degrees-of-separation patent LinkedIn benefits from.

    Which are all features I wouldn't use anyway (I only joined LinkedIn because I was helping my brother pump up his network), but they seem to be things that the LinkedIn power users love.
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    Hey, wait -- it isn't my personal glitch. The trackback link in message 8 includes a screenshot of the same problem: no "Random Play" and "Whatever I can get." See, there is something wrong!

    (Or maybe I'm just not considered cool enough for "Random Play." Come on, Facebook -- I can be just as shallow as the next guy, I swear!)
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    I'm the only one still following this discussion aren't I?

    Anyway, I received an e-mail from Facebook customer support this afternoon that says "Facebook recently changed these settings to provide non-college users with a more mature set of options."

    So my missing 2 boxes aren't a bug. Facebook just thinks I'm more mature than the rest of you. Go figure.

    Now I'm wondering how Facebook defines "non-college users." I'm actually a member of two university networks, but not a student, and neither network is my primary. Would I be allowed to look for "Whatever I can get" if I reprioritized my networks? Do I have to be a student? Does this mean that Facebook users who never go to college can't look for "Random play?" (I would feel bad for any 19-year olds denied to their right to have low standards just because they didn't go to college.)

    This strikes me as very weird place (in the user interface) for Facebook to get prudish about its users' social lives.

    I e-mailed some questions back to Customer Support. Let's see if they answer.
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    I am a college student whose primary network is my university. However, the options for "Whatever I Can Get" and "Random Play" are not available on my "Looking For" section of my profile. I do not have "Networking" checked, and I never have. I was updating other things, and noticed those two were missing, did a Google search to try to find out when and why, and I came here. Unless they've since removed them from everyone's profile (given the last comment here was in October), I don't know why those two options would be missing from mine. Oh well, I never had those checked anyhow.

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