Will LinkedIn be tweeted on?
Announcement posted by MasterGraphics Pty Ltd 02 Jan 2023
Will LinkedIn be tweeted on? The genius of Elon Musk may reshape social media.
In the late 1990s I wrote a post-grad assignment conceiving a webpage on my Australian university’s site where students would post a profile for employers to view and make contact. I did well in the assignment, even though the lecturer came up to me afterwards to say she didn’t quite understand the technology. Most people didn’t. In under a decade, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter launched.
Facebook grew out of Harvard as a way for guys to rate girls on campus, while LinkedIn’s first intentions were based on bridging the degrees of separation between people to find new contacts. Twitter then flopped around like a bird with a broken wing trying to find relevance. At that time, I had moved from Australia to London, where I would work for a couple of years. There I became aware of, and joined, LinkedIn.
Twenty years on and LinkedIn has evolved, as most businesses do to survive, into a site for people to post and share articles. It has also found its commercial mojo as a site for people to post their resumes to be found by recruiters. LinkedIn is now a mature business that is owned by Microsoft. LinkedIn has some impressive statistics in terms of user and revenue growth: www.businessofapps.com/data/linkedin-statistics/
Today, I find myself asking whether anyone thinks that the postings on LinkedIn differentiate it from Twitter or Facebook? On LinkedIn, most posts appear to be re-posts or commented posts that clutter up the user experience. The platform isn’t being by most users to demonstrate any proficiencies, which should differentiate LinkedIn from recreational postings on Facebook and tweets on whatever on Twitter. But who cares?
In the week before Christmas, Twitter announced a ban on recycling content on other social media platforms. At first, I thought this might be a response to the threats of Apple and Google not to list the Twitter app on their platforms. I am now thinking it is to do what billionaire owners do best, and that is focus. However, on reflection, it looks like its new owner wanting to declutter the platform and refocus it on users’ original content.
Elon Musk has received a lot of negative media comment since taking control of recent months. While rightly perceived for throwing his weight around by sacking 70% of the platform’s staff and rewriting its policies, he is being underestimated for his ability to force a refocus of other platforms on what they do. I can’t help but think LinkedIn will be forced to follow Twitter’s lead.
Professionals, who are described in some circles as educated elites, are said to be abandoning Twitter. It makes sense for LinkedIn to modify their platform and clearly differentiate itself from Twitter and Facebook. Already, cost blowouts have forced Facebook’s parent company, Meta, to scale back its intentions to create an unwanted metaverse. Facebook may well be cornered into refocusing on recreational social content.
As a refocused platform, LinkedIn might better serve its core constituency of professionals. Corporate recruiters use LinkedIn to locate professionals whose career history fits the recruitment template. It makes little sense, financially, for recruiters to sell the risk of untested candidates. Of late, however, recruiters are saying that LinkedIn and dedicated job boards are facing an uphill battle in attracting candidates. When they do, the candidate is often bested with better pay and conditions by their existing employer. Employees don’t want to risk being ‘last-in-first-out’ should there be a recession in 2023.
If Elon Musk focuses on making Twitter an open ‘town square’ of public opinion, it makes sense that small-and-medium-size (SME) employers in the town square will want to run affordable job ads. The needs of SMEs often differ to those of large corporates. It is unlikely that it will move into the online CV space as that would draw comparisons to LinkedIn, leaving a gap in the SME recruitment market that a recent start-up intends closing.
I am the founder of that start-up - www.workerstohire.com.au Workers to Hire aims to fill the gap for people who are outside of the corporate search template used by recruiters on LinkedIn. Workers to Hire enables candidates to post an online description of the work that they are seeking and a CV for employers to evaluate and contact them, as opposed to candidates employing for advertised jobs.
Those in the gap include entry-level young candidates, parents returning to post-covid work environments, mature workers seeking to unretire, artisan and tradespeople wanting out of ‘gig-economy’ employment, second-job seekers. Many of these people seek greater flexibility than most corporate jobs. Musk doesn’t get this space, famously telling his Tesla employees to return to the office or pretend to work elsewhere.
About the Author:
Michael Hargreaves is a successful entrepreneur and author who is academically qualified in the field of economics of industrial organisation. His latest venture, www.workerstohire.com.au flips the industrial-age recruitment model to favour candidates seeking greater career and post-career flexibility at a time of worker shortages.
Motto: 'Success celebrates the achievements of others.'
Author: Principals, Producers, & Planners.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mhargreaves/
Website: Workers to Hire.
Goal Setting App: www.wellthyness.app