In this case, the suppliers are the professionals themselves as they are creating the global network which LinkedIn is leveraging in its business. While it might seem that LinkedIn has a high dependency on this network, it was more so in its initial years. Now that the critical mass has been attained, this dependency doesn’t exist anymore. Professionals have realized that it is in their own interest to build and grow their network on LinkedIn. This long term career interest of the professionals is driving the growth of the network at such a rapid pace. Employees in multinational companies are connecting on LinkedIn with their colleagues in the other parts of the world as it is increasingly considered to be the …show more content…
This is what LinkedIn was intended for, professionals connecting up to further each other’s careers.
The reason why LinkedIn became a master in the professional environment is the capability of providing a diversified service to its customers, which is able to create a complete an efficient network ecosystem.
This is why we can say the company’s competitive advantage is the differentiation. If we assume that differentiation is providing something unique that is valuable to the buyer beyond simply offering a low price, according to Porter’s definition, we know that this is linked with creating something valuable and different for the customer. Linkedin is a professional social network, then it is clear that the company offers a intangible service to its customers, aiming to maximise the client’s perception it’s image, status, identity, embracing also the whole relationship between the company and the customer.
But how did LinkedIn achieved this result? Because LinkedIn created a successful mix between a social network and a research …show more content…
It’s a mutual relationship that allows each network to move the contents they want online.
LinkedIn indeed has another advantage: they have voluntarily tried to own people’s names as a SEO strategy. This is probably responsible for a huge fraction of their traffic. LinkedIn is trying to find people who are looking for other people in a professional context, and they are trying to make the firm the best way to do this, and this is why LinkedIn’s competitive advantages lean on network effects.
For these reasons, there is not a better place to find out about someone’s professional skills and reputation, and there’s no better place to upload your curriculum vitae.
At least, we can say that LinkedIn is a well-executed version of two of the big most important innovations and business models of the 21st century: search engines and social networking, but operating only in a niche of them, the professional social network. Moreover, there’s no way in the short-medium term from Microsoft, Google or other web companies could rebuild this professional data set obtained by Linkedin at this point, allowing the company not worry too much about potential competitors in this