Dan Wolchonok's Blog - Latest Comments

Re: LinkedIn beating Facebook at its own game

Saurabh — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 00:52:42 -0000

Oh man this is great. This just gave me an idea of how I can improve my client servicing model.

Re: LinkedIn beating Facebook at its own game

SJohnson — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 19:17:26 -0000

Daniel, thanks very much for the compliment. We, in the LinkedIn UED team, are working very hard to greatly improve overall engagement and usage through experiences like these, and many others throughout the site. As for the team that created and deployed this experience, I'll be sure to pass on the kind words. (Stay tuned, we have a lot more planned for 2011.)

Steve Johnson
Director of UED
LinkedIn

Re: LinkedIn beating Facebook at its own game

dwolchon — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 08:46:33 -0000

I agree that the connection graph is something that LinkedIn does really well, and that Facebook should look to integrate it into their site. Seems like it aligns with Facebook's strategy and I'm surprised they haven't built it in yet.

I disagree with you when you talk about the magnitude difference in their daily content. Because so much content is produced on Facebook, I think that reinforces my argument that you need a summary of the important stuff. Also, Facebook might have made the conscious decision to put their time and resources into the algorithm that picks and chooses which news feed articles are displayed to you rather than this or other features. I think they're missing a golden opportunity to pull people back in (maybe it's only sent to users who haven't been on the site for awhile).

On the other hand, maybe they think that a newsletter type feature will decrease their page views because people won't feel the urgency to see what their friends are doing, if they know they'll get a nice summary of all of the things they need to know about. They must have thought about doing this feature, right? I just can't believe that they have prioritized other things above it.

Re: LinkedIn beating Facebook at its own game

dwolchon — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 08:32:36 -0000

I'm sure those algorithms are going to get much better over time, and drive you to spend more time on the site. I would rather they spend time developing tools to make sure I see the important things, rather than algorithms that tell me which photos to look at for the second time.

Re: LinkedIn beating Facebook at its own game

Bromka — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 01:01:54 -0000

The idea of a Facebook newsletter, a recap for the week is really nice, and is in some ways inevitable. Digest versions of a robust stream of content is always appreciated. This would be a nice 3rd party application. You could subscribe to the type of digest that pleased you.

The thing about the relationship aggregation you described is that it's only one, arguably small and important, stream of the Fb content. Clearly it makes more sense for some content than other, i.e. relationship changes. I've always felt Fb not informing me friend's have gotten married until I see their name change was a clear miss.

But comparing Fb to LinkedIn is a false comparison because of the magnitude difference in their daily content. Fb is the most visited site on the the internet. LinkedIn keeps track of professional's resume's in a nicely searchable way. (Well, not that searchable, try searching your own name and see what other crap comes up.)

LinkedIn needs to come up with ways to drive people to their site. As it stands today even connecting with coworkers on their site often leads to misunderstandings "hey man, are you thinking of leaving?!" They need to start the conversation. Fb does not.

I've always wondered why Fb chooses not to show you how you're connected to someone you don't know. LinkedIn will go to enormous lengths to reveal how many degrees you are from someone you found but are not connected to. 2nd, 3rd, 4th tiers away. I assume people would LOVE to know how close they are to someone else on Fb. Today it will only tell you if you have direct friends in common. Why not 3rd tier?

I believe in the need for LinkedIn to exist, and they've gotten their design to the point that it's no longer notable, which is the point, but I will be interested to see how they stay interesting over time. As we all know, it's grow or die and I'm not clear what additional value I need from them.

Re: LinkedIn beating Facebook at its own game

AOK — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 00:24:35 -0000

You mention "Twitter was described to me as the place where you can learn what your friends are doing 'right now'". It seems like the Facebook newsfeed covers the "right now" part but not some of the more meaningful stuff that you bring up. I assume the challenge is building algorithms to figure out what's meaningful. For example, FB sometimes suggest checking out the old photo albums of friends as a way to reminisce. Sometimes it's great and it takes you back. Often the albums are totally irrelevant.