

Ask HN: why is there no competition for LinkedIn? - petervandijck

They have the valuable business graph, but their execution (and vision perhaps) often seems to stumble. Why aren't there competitors trying to eat their lunch? Surely this must be a valuable space worth getting into?<p>Trying to understand, I don't feel LinkedIn has this space locked up the way Facebook has social locked up (plus Facebook's vision and execution seem much stronger). So why no competition?
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derrida
Because the extent of user interaction is the sign-up process?

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JonathanWCurd
I would agree with this wholeheartedly. They may have a big user base but the
engagement per user is very small and most of those users rarely visit.

If you compare average time spent on site in both:

Visits per user per month. Average time spent on site.

vs say a facebook, these numbers are not even close.

No doubt there is some value here and maybe linkedin hasn't figured out how to
engage the users to unlock it, so if you have a great idea on how to do this
you could probably move into the space and capture users (and billions).

But, the lack of direct competition would suggest nobody really has a great
idea on how to do this and coupling that with the lack of hype lnkedin gets
the me too clones in the space have not arrived yet ( a la groupon and the
army of social buying clones ).

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flignats
Everyone has competition.

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petervandijck
Yes, I would think so, but then where is it? I just don't see it.

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Chirag
Main reason i think Linkedin doesn't have other exact clones. _1) Lengthy
account creation process - What is the motivation, again?_ 2) They got first
and got the Industry respected people(Bill Gates...) *3) There in no
stickability - you don't share stuff, you don't update status..it's just
there(now they have integrated some twitter like non-sense)

As for competition anyone who can create a profile page will do, FB, Twitter,
I am sure there are very many.

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flignats
You're mistaken, Linked.in has a ton of competition. Where don't you see
competition? It does compete with facebook. There are also applications
developed for FB that deliver similar information and features that linked.in
does - although not to the extent. Just today they launched a product in
direct competition with the WSJ - pretty much. They compete with other
professional networks in the same space .. there is a big list.

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petervandijck
Do you have any pointers? I don't think they compete directly with Facebook,
and I haven't found/seen any other professional social networks.

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gauravgupta
[http://venturebeatprofiles.com/company/profile/linkedin/comp...](http://venturebeatprofiles.com/company/profile/linkedin/competitors)

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petervandijck
Not a very good list though, Plaxo, Bebo and Facebook aren't really LinkedIn
competitors imo.

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trin_
at least in germany XING.com is very big.

