LinkedIn Sticks To Business, And That's Good For Marketers

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LinkedIn last week further cemented its go-to position for professionals by acquiring professional content sharing platform SlideShare for $119 million in cash and stock.

Chief Executive Officer Jeff Weiner is pushing mobile technology to woo more professionals to its subscription services: Also to attract advertisers who want to reach the growing user base.

LinkedIn is working hard to stay business-like while going more social. "The company has in recent years done quite a few amazing things to its portal including allowing for twitter feeds to be sent via LinkedIn and that itself has brought about a lot of discussion amongst professionals," said Audrey William, Head of ICT Research for Frost & Sullivan Australia & New Zealand.

What About BranchOut On Facebook?

BranchOut is a rising professional-networking site, built on the Facebook platform. BranchOut in March announced a $25 million led by the Mayfield Fund, who joined such venture capital luminaries as Norwest Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures for a total of $49 million in capital.

Perhaps: But some recent findings by NetPop revealed that among social networks, LinkedIn is offering a special edition of its LinkedIn Today social news curator geared toward professional women. Knowing that, LinkedIn on April 30 launched the Connect Professional Women’s Network, sponsored by Citi, which is a branded discussion board to which members can post and comment on articles. And as AdWeek reported last week, LinkedIn is offering a special edition of its LinkedIn Today social news curator geared toward professional women.

(He named cashiers as a group in the Forbes story.) But Frost & Sullivan expects that LinkedIn's revenue model via various areas such as premium membership, recruitment fees, and advertising, will make it an attractive platform for advertising and recruitment: "The 'Facebook' of the professional networking world," as William described.

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In mid April, it launched its self-service ad platform, LinkedIn Ads, with which marketers can target audiences based on job title, job function, industry, geography, age, gender, company name, company size, or LinkedIn Group, via a tool called Targeted Updates.

The SlideShare acquisition may appear incidental to advertisers, but it will drives traffic to LinkedIn as surely as social gaming does to Facebook. Users expect to enjoy themselves on Facebook, they expect to work (or find work) on LinkedIn. The uptake is that LinkedIn appears to understand that it is in the business of business.