by Angela Guess
A new article takes a look at headline-making LinkedIn and one of the major factors of its success: Big Data. The article states, “LinkedIn is valued at $8.79 billion after its first day as a public company. Founder and chairman Reid Hoffman and friends are drinking champagne tonight, that is for sure. It is the highest valuation after an IPO of a tech company since Google astonished the world in 2004. It is mildly amazing for a social network that has never been profitable and never made more than $250 million in a year. What are investors seeing that the rest of us cannot? In a word … Jobs. This is what Job Board 2.0 has become — data rich and interactive across a social graph.”
The article continues, “It may seem like it, but the word “social” and a couple talented engineers do not a $9 billion company make. LinkedIn is valuable for the same reason that Facebook is valuable – it has oodles of data. Where LinkedIn’s assets lay are in the specificity of its data. Jobs are what power a capitalist economy and when it comes to employment hunting, there are not many places on the Internet that have more data than LinkedIn.”
It goes on, “Data is like the gasoline of the Internet. Data comes from users. The Internet has matured to a point in the Western world where companies are now seeing huge growth in a short period of time in terms of users. LinkedIn has 100 million users that at one point or another have uploaded their basic employment information to the site. Most have uploaded full resumes, teaming with data like phone numbers and addresses, employment and education history. LinkedIn’s primary revenue comes from its hiring solutions and premium accounts, both of which are steps to uncover more data on the service. LinkedIn’s growth and that of other social networks is not just a matter of having user data for the sake of having data. Numbers without context are useless. What LinkedIn has is personally identifiable data. Corporations and investors want to be able to track the consumer market as closely as possible to signal trends that will inform their next product launches. LinkedIn is a trove of data not just about people, but how people are making their money and what industries they are working in and how they connect to each other.”
photo credit: LinkedIn
