[Dongeul Dongeul] Tired Twitter, Reels-Only Instagram, Rising LinkedIn

LinkedIn Sees 41% Increase in Content Shares
Last Year's Revenue Up 33% Year-on-Year
Establishes Itself as an Insight-Sharing SNS
Attracts Users Seeking Self-Branding

Recently, news has emerged that Threads, Instagram's ambitious challenger to X (formerly Twitter), has seen a significant drop in users just one month after its launch. Threads is a short-form conversational social networking service (SNS) similar to X. Analysts suggest that the lack of direct messaging (DM) functionality and content has failed to capture users' interest.

X has also experienced many ups and downs since being acquired by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Although the number of users doubled compared to the previous year as of June, members have shown negative reactions to paid services like 'Twitter Blue.' Advertisers have also been leaving one after another, causing Twitter's advertising revenue to be halved since October.

Amid this, there is one SNS that is thriving alone. It is LinkedIn, known as a job recruitment platform. With an increase in content sharing, it is emerging as an SNS comparable to X and Instagram. Why is LinkedIn gaining attention as a major SNS beyond its original function as a job platform?

LinkedIn, from Job Recruitment Platform to a Space for Insights

Bloomberg reported that in the first half of this year, the number of times LinkedIn users shared content increased by 41% compared to 2021. This is the highest growth rate LinkedIn has recorded since its founding.

LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman

LinkedIn's popularity is also reflected in its revenue trends. In the 2022 fiscal year (October 1, 2021 ? September 30, 2022), LinkedIn's revenue was $13.8 billion, a 33.9% increase from the previous year ($10.3 billion). Compared to five years ago in 2017 ($2.3 billion), this is a staggering 500% increase.

The reason behind LinkedIn's great popularity lies in the supply of high-quality content.

LinkedIn is an SNS that connects job seekers and employers. It was newly launched in 2002 by Reid Hoffman, a former PayPal chief operating officer. At the time, Hoffman hypothesized that if six acquaintances were gathered, networks would ripple out to connect people worldwide, which led to the creation of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn differentiates itself from other SNSs by combining job recruitment functions with social networking features. Users can post their resumes on the platform for job seeking, and headhunters can view these and make job offers.

It also functions as an SNS. Members can establish connections such as first-degree relationships based on their closeness with acquaintances and post article links and posts. The ability to comment on others' posts gives it a feel similar to a platform that adds job recruitment features to X.

However, above all, LinkedIn's greatest advantage is that it provides higher-quality information in the business field compared to other platforms. Unlike X and Instagram, LinkedIn is an SNS connected through business-related networks, fostering an atmosphere that discourages provocative content and encourages the sharing of quality information. With this environment in place, more CEOs have begun freely sharing opinions on industry trends and business visions on LinkedIn. Among office workers, LinkedIn has transformed into a repository of insights.

Meanwhile, Instagram has focused on short-form content 'Reels' to prevent losing users to China's TikTok, concentrating solely on maximizing advertising revenue.

Selena Rezvani, a LinkedIn influencer with 100,000 subscribers, criticized, "X has turned into a service that benefits those who post memes or pay billionaire (Musk) $8." She said LinkedIn remains the only SNS where one can brand their own existence.

LinkedIn has recognized this trend and is focusing on nurturing knowledge-based content and related curation services to enable users to share higher-quality opinions. This contrasts with Meta and X, which have shown reluctance in article-sharing services.

LinkedIn's ingenuity is evident in how it has identified user dissatisfaction on other platforms and highlighted this as a point of differentiation. Will LinkedIn continue to maintain its distinction from X and Instagram and establish itself as a dominant force in the SNS world?

What do you think?