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Thinking about this in terms of a "direct competitor" is the wrong way to frame a potential business and nearly impossible at this point, I think. LinkedIn is
by askafriend 10y ago
Thinking about this in terms of a "direct competitor" is the wrong way to frame a potential business and nearly impossible at this point, I think.
LinkedIn is fantastic at being LinkedIn.
The only way to bring them down would be to approach a part of the problem they solve in a completely different way and in a compelling enough way that would make a piece of LinkedIn irrelevant.
You can only compete by making LinkedIn irrelevant, not by building a better LinkedIn.
- kilimchoi 10y agoI totally agree with you on this point. I think to make Linkedin irrelevant, you gotta be solving the user acquisition problem from a different angle. I think stackoverflow is doing a good job of doing that with developers. Dribble is doing that with designers. And there are bunch of other niche-based communities that attract people and formed a business model around recruitment which is a major source of Linkedin's revenue.
- askafriend 10y agoExactly! If Github offered better community discussion features and a professional portfolio/resume product for developers, then Github could become more relevant than LinkedIn for the developer community. If Dribbble doubled down on those types of things too, then Dribbble could be more relevant than LinkedIn in the Design community. etc, etc. and it's possible that people have various skillsets for which they have various types of professional personas. There's a lot of angles here, and it's not like they're not being explored, but these things take a long time. It's easy to forget.