Scobleizer posted yesterday about the potential rivalry between Facebook and LinkedIn and the growing sense of convergence (I’m paraphrasing) between the two. He cited stats posted on Valleywag which contrasted the relative levels of invitations on the two sites. Valleywag’s (where do we get these names from?) point was that Facebook’s on-the-face-of-it natural rival would be MySpace. In fact, they argue, it’s LinkedIn.
To me, this seems old news and it was an issue discussed at a conference graduate recruiters we ran recently where I was talking about my own explorations of the impact of social networking on future graduate recruitment practices (more interesting than it sounds!) Now LinkedIn is comparatively long in the tooth compared to the both MySpace and Facebook as dotcoms go and (anecdotally) doesn’t seem to have broken out very far from a hardcore base of media or technology focused users. Younger members of my team have registered and never gone back. Facebook, however, is all about the 19-24 demographic – you might see it as where MySpace users go when they grow up (I wonder if anyone has any figures on the way some users ‘migrate’ from MySpace to Facebook?)
Inevitably, some graduate recruiters have noticed this. Most haven’t, however. The biggest corporate presence is PWC which has user groups all over Facebook, many of them linking internship classes or globally distributed staff. They aren’t company sponsored (and one recruiter recalled a focus group where they were told that the best use they could make of Facebook, MySpace et al was to stay out of our playgrounds) but they’re definitely company tolerated, as in PWC have evidently decided that the benefits of encouraging this kind of informal but company focused networking clearly out weigh the disadvantages (mostly the name “PWC” being found next to Facebook groups with names like “Legolas and Aragorn Together” – Facebook is organised in groups and when you join a group, groups which other members of your groups belong to are automatically displayed. It can lead to some pretty weird juxtapositions).
What are the benefits? I can think of a couple.
- PWC retain connections with alumni who join their graduate scheme and leave
- New joiners form connections across the full range of global employees, shaving years of the crucial process of building effective networks within a big international consultancy benefits
- The sheer omnipresence of PWC across Facebook normalises their involvement.
Where does LinkedIn fit in with this? I’d say it’s down to the way the Facebook demographic is growing towards the LinkedIn age group. In the UK, Facebook went straight after the universities, leaving pretenders such as Univillage in the dust. Many of the initial registrants are already graduating. At this stage, LinkedIn feels like an established niche service. I don’t see it going away but I’m not sure that it’s going to attract people away from Facebook. At the same time, I don’t necessarily see the LinkedIn crowd wanting to spend much time signing up for “London’s Biggest Waterfight” or “[Name] is ugly”. The real nature of the rivalry between the two is that of LinkedIn’s arguably static audience versus Facebook’s exploding one. Facebook may well win out but it’ll be a Go style win where LinkedIn simply finds all the remaining spaces on the board are taken up.
Filed under: Facebook, LinkedIn, online graduate recruitment, social networking
