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Ask HN: Why isn't there competition to LinkedIn yet?

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Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there competition to LinkedIn yet?

#41

Post by zeroonetwothree »

wvenable wrote: post #31

> It seems there are many solutions for social media these days, but only one LinkedIn. I'm not sure that's actually true. We have a lot of different social media applications but they all mostly serve different purposes or different demographics. Where is the direct competition for Facebook? For Instagram? For Reddit? Maybe only Twitter has what could be considered real direct competition in purpose and demographic.

In a sense they all compete with each other. They are all designed as an addictive feed of shit to click on while they insert ads in between. The fact that the demographics are a bit different just shows that competition is working as they want to divide the market, it’s not typical that competitors exactly get the same demographics. For example, consider who shops at IKEA vs Pottery Barn.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there competition to LinkedIn yet?

#44

Post by pavel_lishin »

swyx wrote: post #30
Aurornis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The core problem that LinkedIn solves has nothing to do with all the "social media" style content that plagues the platform. I feel like a broken record explaining this to people. The feed that appears when you go to LinkedIn.com is a sideshow. Almost nobody posts to it. Very few people read it. You can (and should!) ignore it and not miss out on anything. Make a profile. Update it occasionally when you're job sear…

this is spoken from a permaemployee perspective. linkedin very much changes when you 1) become a hiring manager, 2) become a founder

Can you say how it changes?

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there competition to LinkedIn yet?

#45

Post by nirushiv »

swyx wrote: post #30
Aurornis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The core problem that LinkedIn solves has nothing to do with all the "social media" style content that plagues the platform. I feel like a broken record explaining this to people. The feed that appears when you go to LinkedIn.com is a sideshow. Almost nobody posts to it. Very few people read it. You can (and should!) ignore it and not miss out on anything. Make a profile. Update it occasionally when you're job sear…

this is spoken from a permaemployee perspective. linkedin very much changes when you 1) become a hiring manager, 2) become a founder

Can you elaborate please? Very curious to hear non-employee perspective

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there competition to LinkedIn yet?

#46

Post by slyall »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #28

OT but still about linkedin. I wonder if somebody could help me figure this out I have a new email account on my own domain. For the sake of this discussion lets pretend my domain is MYDOMAIN.com, but keep in mind my actual domain isn't some words put together that a human could conceivably guess. Just now I got two confirmation emails from linkedin. They read as usual: FIRSTNAME, your pin is XXXXXX. Please confirm y…

Have you checked to make sure your domain wasn't previously owned by somebody else?

There are sites where you can lookup previous ownership such as https://whois-history.whoisxmlapi.com/

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there competition to LinkedIn yet?

#47

Post by wvenable »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #41
wvenable wrote: post #31

> It seems there are many solutions for social media these days, but only one LinkedIn. I'm not sure that's actually true. We have a lot of different social media applications but they all mostly serve different purposes or different demographics. Where is the direct competition for Facebook? For Instagram? For Reddit? Maybe only Twitter has what could be considered real direct competition in purpose and demographic.

In a sense they all compete with each other. They are all designed as an addictive feed of shit to click on while they insert ads in between. The fact that the demographics are a bit different just shows that competition is working as they want to divide the market, it’s not typical that competitors exactly get the same demographics. For example, consider who shops at IKEA vs Pottery Barn.

It didn't just say demographics so I think that's a bit reductive. That's just like saying "all retailers sell you crap" so Ikea, Footlocker, and Barns and Noble are competitors to each other.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there competition to LinkedIn yet?

#48

Post by shadowtree »

It's a self-cleaning corporate rolodex.

It solved the long running problems of: a) keeping tabs on people across company moves b) a public, standardized CV

Its moat is the scale of its network. Very, very hard to replicate, massive cold start problem. It killed business cards!

Maybe some AI generated thingy can attack it, akin to Grokipedia vs Wikipedia, but man is that unproven. Zero incentive for users to switch.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there competition to LinkedIn yet?

#49

Post by theturtletalks »

Aurornis wrote: post #15
codingdave wrote: post #6

The core problem that LinkedIn solves has nothing to do with all the "social media" style content that plagues the platform. It is a long-term rolodex to be able to talk to former co-workers, while also getting contacted by recruiters (double-edged sword that that is), and for that purpose works just fine, even allowing you to ignore the other warts. So if you were going to build a competitor, you'd need to get every…

> The core problem that LinkedIn solves has nothing to do with all the "social media" style content that plagues the platform. I feel like a broken record explaining this to people. The feed that appears when you go to LinkedIn.com is a sideshow. Almost nobody posts to it. Very few people read it. You can (and should!) ignore it and not miss out on anything. Make a profile. Update it occasionally when you're job sear…

We need a better model. Platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram shouldn't own your content. They should just connect to your own personal website. I am building an open-source system where everyone hosts their own site and publishes everything there from short notes, long articles, photos, whatever you want. You can auto-cross-post to those big platforms to keep your reach (Buffer for personal sites), but your site stays the single source of truth.

Once enough people join, we can launch our own open feed that connects directly to the people you follow. No need for the big platforms at all. You pull updates straight from their sites in real time and move freely without losing your content or your audience. It reuses the network effects we already have while giving you true ownership and independence. This also helps people who want to escape feeds entirely: with a personal site, they can subscribe to a simple newsletter, delivered daily, weekly, or monthly with all the updates, so they stay connected without the endless scroll of social media.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there competition to LinkedIn yet?

#50

Post by ekjhgkejhgk »

slyall wrote: post #46
ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #28

OT but still about linkedin. I wonder if somebody could help me figure this out I have a new email account on my own domain. For the sake of this discussion lets pretend my domain is MYDOMAIN.com, but keep in mind my actual domain isn't some words put together that a human could conceivably guess. Just now I got two confirmation emails from linkedin. They read as usual: FIRSTNAME, your pin is XXXXXX. Please confirm y…

Have you checked to make sure your domain wasn't previously owned by somebody else? There are sites where you can lookup previous ownership such as https://whois-history.whoisxmlapi.com/

What are you suggesting? That someone owned the domain, lost it, and after losing it tries to create a linkedin account with it?
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