A new LinkedIn competitor can survive and it can even thrive. Off the top of my head, some of LinkedIn's competitors include the likes of: BranchOut Viadeo

A new LinkedIn competitor can survive and it can even thrive. Off the top of my head, some of LinkedIn's competitors include the likes of: BranchOut Viadeo Xing Bizily partnerup company.com Zerply If you're looking for what strategies can help to survive, then you should look at how those guys have grown (not only the likes of Viadeo/Xing but how BranchOut have done leveraging the Facebook Platform). Likewise, you should look at how you can make it "better" in a way that will entice users to join - Zerply mainly tries to do this via better looking profiles. This feature may involve something related to recruiters - maybe even giving them a seperate profile - where they can still find people to recruit for their clients but also so people can use the service for what its for networking. Infact, you shouldn't limit yourself to looking at how LinkedIn and its competitors have grown - you should also look at other Social Networks and how they've grown as well e.g. Instagram, Badoo, Tagged etc Similarly, if you're planning on "going viral" and a "great product" then it isn't enough! You need to have a great distribution strategy above anything else. And if you want to create a "LinkedIn Killer" then it has to be significantly different like how Facebook was to Myspace and for LinkedIn to not notice it (you have to appear different enough from LinkedIn so they simply don't copy the features), in order for you to stay under-the-radar for long enough where you hit a tipping point where, everyone joins your service and you completely take over the market