Ask HN: What would a LinkedIn alternative look like?
3 comments
A few companies seem to be trying it with different variations and targeting different personas - including hired, angelist/wellfound, peerlist, xing and lunchmeet. While LI is probably a broad network that does all things average, the new startups in this space are trying to go deeper into specific verticals and add more value there.
Network effect is really strong here. There are people I worked with years ago where LinkedIn is the only remaining contact point we have.
This is the moat.
I don't really want to use LinkedIn often, but it is helpful when I need to. I definitely don't want to rebuild my professional network on a new platform.
I don't really want to use LinkedIn often, but it is helpful when I need to. I definitely don't want to rebuild my professional network on a new platform.
I had launched a product around effective hiring recently and have been lucky to get some customer usage and feedback from the early community. One of the recurring feedbacks has been around in which direction should the product grow - as a SaaS, as a network or something in the middle.
Extrapolating many of the discussions has led to some kind of a “of the people, by the people, for the people” professional network to create an environment to help each other and grow professionally (likely the extrapolation got weighed seeing HN community grow! :)).
We have all seen LinkedIn change a lot in the last decade as well, from being a profile listing page to a social network with the same network dynamics and similar content as other social networks now. It’s still great as a profile listing page, but I personally don’t find it much useful - unless trying to sell something and send lots of messages to leads.
So my question is what would an alternative LinkedIn look like? Some thoughts I had are:
- make the connections much more richer which can be leveraged to get jobs, discuss opportunities, references (this is what my current product is trying to do) - make the network a bit self-governing and regulating to make it more useful for everyone (when LinkedIn/HN launched there were no tokens, now there are!). eg get paid to receive sales messages, credits for recommendations to roles, etc.. - remove peer pressure of adding people to network
Would love to discuss how an alternate professional network of 2023 should look like!