> turns a profit from ads and recruitment services I spent a lot of time working on a startup in a related space, and came to realize that the real customers o

> turns a profit from ads and recruitment services I spent a lot of time working on a startup in a related space, and came to realize that the real customers of LinkedIn are the recruiters. As long as they can get you to enter your details, they can get thousands of dollars a year from individual recruiters for access to your information. Look at their site as a service for recruiters which happens to require consumer input. They want you to be promiscuous in your connections, since weak-but-wide links are more effective for recruiting than strong-but-narrow 'true friendships'. They don't have much incentive to drive users to interact with the site, beyond keeping their details up-to-date. It sounds like they're interested in becoming more compelling to consumers, but I wonder how deep that commitment goes when there's no immediate revenue stream from it? Here's one older article that discusses LinkedIn's revenue model: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/technology/18linkedin.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/technology/18linkedin.html