You can watch an online interview with Kevin Eyres, managing director at LinkedIn Europe, at the AOP site.
He is talking to them ahead of next Wednesday’s AOP Digital Publishing Summit in London, where he will talk about LinkedIn’s existing and future partnerships with publishers.
“We feel very strongly that communities are gonna be part of the publishers’ future,” he said.
Eyres says that the professional network site, on average, attracts one member every two seconds.
But most publications have a website with some community elements already, do they not? It is not often you come across a news site these days that doesn’t encourage comment from readers, just like I am doing now.
The more LinkedIn develops, the more it seems to be appealing to contacts within the largest enterprises (company pages with stock and news updates) who already have large networks and distancing itself from the SMB market. Small business owners have entirely different needs: they aren’t interested in reconnecting with former staff, but ARE interested in real tools to broker valuable NEW relationships that might/will bring business. While LinkedIn advises you don’t connect with people you don’t know, it remains irrelevant to many business people.
Ian Hendry
WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz