Question

As a senior executive of LinkedIn, you have been asked to create an external assessment report as to the threat posed by Facebook, and some steps that your company can take to survive this social media giant in the next 5 years. Consider options whether LinkedIn will remain relevant in a few years, or should it be sold to Facebook while it is still being used, or consider the other alternative Also consider the following: Will Facebook become irrelevant in a few years, like 'MySPACE' of past and something else will replace the brand, like Snapchat or Instagram, or maybe the whole social media platforms will look completely different 5 years from now

Answer 1

The usage of Linkedin will continue to evolve and it will remain relevant and establish a different identity from Facebook. While Facebook has and will remain a go-to choice to share updates, photos, and status with friends and possibly family, it is not and probably never evolve to become a professional networking forum. That's where the importance of Linkedin comes in and in times to come, it is expected to become more important as far as the career lifecycle is concerned. In the future, strategic positioning of Linkedin would involve it being seen as a) Recruitment platform b) Training platform c) Integration with the intranet of companies to host a career development portal d) Retain the social aspect of it being a professional networking platform.

So Linkedin should in the future look to augment its capabilities to have a tight-knit with the companies internal career management portal to have a strategic differentiator. Moreover, it should also reorient itself to garner a bigger pie of the training market.