The added value of Social Media through LinkedIn

On: September 23, 2010
About Elias van Hees
Elias van Hees is currently a MA student of New Media, he studied at the University of Rotterdam and received his Bachelor Degree in Information Technology and Communication (2009). Elias is a self-employed web strategist, more information is available on www.eliasvanhees.nl. Interests: social media, research, politics, music, webdevelopment, seo, branding, concepting, user experience and usability.

Website
http://www.eliasvanhees.nl    

Working towards a fully connected professional world

Eugenie van Wiechen is the Dutch main director of LinkedIn, the largest professional networking site in the world with more than 55 million. Today on PICNIC10 she gave her vision on the growth of LinkedIn in the past few years especially in Holland. The critical question remains: “How to make sense of all the information nowadays without being overflowed?”

Relationships Matter

Connection creates advantage, advantage over people who aren’t connected. In fact, the people who are not connected, are losing. The coming of the participation-culture has also changed the way that businesses function, and van Wiechen states three current trends:

  1. Every individual is now a business itself
  2. Decision-making is distributed and faster than before
  3. Companies are becoming more open

Every individual is now a business itself

Two elements, the name and the reputation of an individual are a personal brand. And every individual tries to maximize its own Return on Investment (ROI). These new (individual) businesses use their networks for their Research & Development, sales and so on instead of only developing or producing by themselves.  Experience is the  competitive advantage nowadays and salary the revenue.

Decision-making is distributed and faster

Quick and also good decisions are becoming easier by the use of the network, through collective intelligence. Networks gather information for you and input from others in your network can be collected very fast, which increases the possibilities to give feedback and finally results in more, fast input and better decisions.

Foto: PICNIC Cross Media Week

Companies are becoming more open

Transparancy grows because of written reputation, written content online. Because a lot of marketing and communication is used online, companies are almost forced to write about their business. The employers are part of a company brand as well via social networks, blogs and reviews. It has to do with reputation, what is searchable and online says anything about the company.

LinkedIn wants to connect all the professionals in the world and to create value for personal lives (f.e. opportunities, jobs) and companies (visibility, potentials). The future will tell if LinkedIn will succeed in it’s goals, especially when it comes to phenomena like ‘defriending’ and ‘unfollowing’ which cost other social networks lots of members in the past. But maybe the professional value  will indeed keep LinkedIn unique and distinguished from other social networking sites?

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