Umair is right. I’ve been using LinkedIn since it’s inception but I’ve always felt it’s so limiting I can’t find many useful purposes for it. The only things I’ve ever heard are that people have found past co-workers they knew, or the occasional hire is found through it. That’s okay I guess, but is it good enough?
I’m a strong believer in simplicity, so I’m glad they don’t cram it with useless features, but at the same time there needs to be more freedom and useful features. Umair makes the comparison to Friendster and how it has struggled by being too limiting. On the flip side many think Myspace has done well because it allows much more control and interaction. Obviously LinkedIn’s audience is different and can’t spend their whole hour of lunch time during school customizing their profile, but I think Umair’s right in that there needs to be more interaction to truly make it useful to more people.
LinkedIn is positioned well for it since they have the userbase already, so will they execute or will a startup beat them to the punch?