

If LinkedIn was actually useful then it would be worth 50 billion - hoodoof

There has been lots of discussion following LinkedIn's IPO about whether it is really worth 9 billion dollars.<p>The thing is that LinkedIn is the best and only true social network for professionals.<p>The problem is that basically LinkedIn is largely optional, largely an amusement, and for many people, just not necessary.<p>It's an absolute disgrace that LinkedIn has not worked out how to actually be useful.  It SHOULD be an absolutely critical, essential part of every professional persons working day.<p>Instead it's basically a resume storage site which doesn't do much more than say who has just connected to who.  Ho hum.  I am actively bored by being hit with a list of who has connected to who - I just don't care.<p>HOWEVER, if LinkedIn actually managed to work out how to stop being bloody useless then it would easily be comparable in value to Facebook.<p>The question is, can Reed Hoffman and his team manage to work out how to make the largest network of professionals into something more thana trumped up resume publication service with a dash of twitter on the side?<p>Problem is that there is NO SIGN that the people running this company have any idea of the value of what they are sitting on, nor to they seem to have ANY CLUE how to turn LinkedIn into something of value.<p>What a waste of a HUGE opportunity.  Reed's good idea was to connect professionals, but that's where his good ideas ended.<p>And yes, I DO think I could do better.  It just doesn't seem that hard.
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sradnidge
>And yes, I DO think I could do better. It just doesn't seem that hard.

So if you can do better and it's easy, how about you actually do something
about it other than whine on HN? And it's Reid.

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hoodoof
I meant I could do better if I actually was part of LinkedIn management.
Obviously I am not proposing I could rebuild the entire achievement to date,
that would be silly.

It's not whining, it's a reasonable comment - why the heck hasn't LinkedIn
built something useful instead of resumes that are only shown to a few people,
even though no-one actually seems to care if they are totally public.

LinkedIn has to be held to account for their failure to capitalize on owning
the biggest (only) professional network in the world - why have they not been
able to effectively capitalize/monetize it?

Answers please, not snippy comebacks.

