Will Facebook and Linkedin Collide?

Will Facebook and Linkedin Collide?

Many people say, “Facebook is for my personal network and LinkedIn is for my professional network”.  And yes, at the surface this makes sense. But if you look at how people use their networks, and how trust is built, I believe these two giants will collide.

The Tale of the Tape – Engagement Matters

Let’s first look at some comparative stats:

You could say comparing these two social networks is like comparing apples to oranges, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that Facebook has 30x more engagement than LinkedIn. That level of engagement is a pretty powerful “asset” to leverage for new products or services.

Now Jeff Weiner says that this metric is misleading because one of LinkedIn’s goals is to make you more productive, but 5 years after that interview, I see their content publishing play and app constellation strategy focused on generating more monthly engagement, not less.

Engagement matters, and 45 million small businesses are already using Facebook Pages as their digital storefronts. What’s to stop them from innovating to move upmarket and generate more business value for more complex companies and business professionals