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What Would A Better LinkedIn Look Like?

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This article is more than 7 years old.

Disclaimer: I am the CEO of Node, a stealth company that doesn't believe they are competing with LinkedIn but could potentially be viewed as competitive. 

This June, Microsoft purchased the languishing company for $26.2 billion, making it the largest acquisition in Microsoft history. The deal, unfortunately for LinkedIn, also represents the lowest user valuation in its company history.

Mo’ Users; Mo’ Problems

Like many social platforms, LinkedIn pursued active users. On the surface, that’s a solid strategy: More users equals more data equals more influence and a higher valuation.

But what LinkedIn couldn’t see is how the tactic may have in some cases undercut its value for users. Unlike social sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn connections have a purpose beyond swapping cat photos or Netflix recommendations: They’re meant to encourage real-world, professional connections.

So when LinkedIn began pushing its 433 million users to connect indiscriminately, the everyone-and-anyone strategy made users’ true networks indecipherable. Paradoxically, the more connections everyone made, the less powerful the platform became.

These networks, originally intended to help data miners strike it rich, cost the “professional Facebook” its chance to monetize for the long term. Now, somebody’s LinkedIn connections might be colleagues, but they also could be classmates from a psychology 101 lecture or the user’s neighbors from across the street.

The LinkedIn of Tomorrow

Here’s what a professional social network needs to prevent a Myspace-level meltdown:

1. Personalized Content Recommendations

A professional social network should understand your interests well enough to provide content that helps you grow and learn.

Imagine a daily feed of fascinating articles curated on the basis of your industry, skills and interests, and professional network. Now imagine you didn’t have to set a million personal preferences to build this useful feed of content and connections. That’s what companies like LinkedIn should be chasing down. Ivan Shcheklein, co-founder of The Tweeted Times and Senior Node.io Engineer built a personalized content recommendation system using Twitter's insights and data to drive news recommendations. Shcheklein mentions, "there is immense opportunity to build a knowledge graph not just utilizing social network data, but utilizing web data and transforming these relationships into personalized insights that empower users with the information they need, at the right time." Yandex, known as Russia's Google acquired the company.

This personal CRM doesn’t exist today. Many have tried, but none has offered the seamless, log-on-and-love-it content experience that’s needed.

Content recommendations aren’t just needed for office downtime, either. If you’re about to meet with a potential investor, research shouldn’t stop at your last Google search. Any breaking news concerning the investor should arrive at your fingertips, helping you to make up-to-the-minute decisions about the investment.

2. The Ability to Go Beyond the Brag

Understandably, everyone on LinkedIn puts his best foot forward with professional headshots and loaded résumés. But coupled with how rarely users access LinkedIn, this makes it difficult for recruiters to actually determine who is a good fit for the position and whether they’re still job-hunting.

When users hold the keys to honest data, they lock away valuable insights that recruiters and investors direly need to know.

Tomorrow’s LinkedIn won’t rely on user-submitted data. It’ll know when that data scientist leaves his job, even if he doesn’t mention it on social media, and it’ll give jobseekers and companies alike a much clearer image of the other.

3. Networking Without the Work

Intent-based search is incredibly useful when you know what you’re looking for, but professional life isn’t that simple: Neither recruiters nor jobseekers know exactly where their next opportunities lie.

LinkedIn, in particular, should have enough information about who you are and what you want to recommend whom you should hire or sell to. We’re in the age of self-driving cars; network recommendations and lead prescriptions aren’t that far-fetched.

Instead of inviting you to do your own research, tomorrow’s professional social network should give you the information needed to take the next step. It might recommend that I, for instance, meet with somebody who has also worked at Google and is looking for an adviser for her AI startup.

Just as avoiding the doctor doesn’t cure cancer, LinkedIn must admit it has a usability problem before it can begin crafting a more proactive platform. A bigger network isn’t the answer; a better network is.

Falon Fatemi is founder and CEO of Node, a stealth startup of ex-Googlers backed by NEA, Mark Cuban, Avalon Ventures, Canaan Partners, and more. Falon has spent the past five years as a business development executive doing strategy consulting for startups and VCs and advising a variety of companies on everything from infrastructure to drones. Previously, Falon spent six years at Google starting at age 19. As one of the youngest employees in the company, Falon worked on sales strategy and operations focusing on global expansion, Google.org, and business development for YouTube.