LinkedIn or LockedOut?

LinkedIn recently hit 100M users. If you were in charge at LinkedIn, what would be your strategic goals for the next several years? How would you achieve them?

At the time of the case, Social (SNS) and Professional Networks (PNS) was a fast growing, internet phenomenon. However, in this increasingly crowded and fluid space, PNS sites faced a strategic question of adopting social "features" or remaining in a "Walled Garden" mode as LinkedIn was very much adherent to. Should LinkedIn mimic popular social value propositions or should it kept it's value in the fact that it was a differentiated network?

LinkedIn was a site for "professionals" - limited use on the weekends, better demographics than WSJ, Forbes and BusinessWeek. More importantly, only 2% of FaceBook users had LinkedIn accounts (as opposed to 41% of LinkedIn users with FB accounts) Clearly, if LinkedIn opens up its model it risks: 1. dumbing down it's user base demographics and 2. making it YASN

It's important to note that a "significant" portion of the revenue is from their ads. Marketers pay top dollar for high-end demographics. A walled garden model to broad ad revenue did not prove successful. Facebooks' ad model was so poor it was only 2% of Googles' click rate.

LinkedIn should try and maintain itself as "different" from simple entertainment/SNS. This is it's core value proposition. Changing it would require significant change in culture. Given the lack of urgency in the organization to address this problem, any radical change in direction would offer limited chances for success.

The bottom line is that being in a "wall-garden" isn't necessarily being completely "LockedOut" Walled gardens were successful elsewhere (Apple) though the product/service quite different. The near-term strategic goal should be to maintain the focus on growing the current demographic. Longer-Term LinkedIn should continue to look for ways to keep its value different from the oncoming competition from (mainly) SNS.

The best way to achieve this would be to try and incorporate the vertical PNS (MedicalMingle, CIOZone) They could tightly control the process of platform integration by being very selective on which other PNS could join their ecosystem. Each additional PNS signed up would generate positive network effects.They were already dabbling in "opening" their platform and had the infrastructure in place to change the mission of only a small part of the organization devoted to exploring new platforms. This gives them avenues for future growth, represents only an incremental change to the processes, and most importantly consolidates the PNS market.

What LinkedIn should really do is LockOut the competition.