How Facebook Forced Linkedin Not To Suck

I nodded my head when I saw this report yesterday, talking about the decline in social networking traffic in general with the exception of Linkedin which is soaring.

From my own personal experience, Linkedin was on the verge of stupidity right before Facebook exploded. Every time I wanted to do something useful like, link to someone I knew but didn't have the most recent email for, they asked me for money. Strangely similar to Club Penguin, who asked my daughter for money every time she wanted to do something useful too.

And then along came Facebook. With soaring usage, they actually let you link to people, the basic premise of the value to the user, barrier free. While it took Linkedin a while, they too eventually took their sad excuse for a Web monetization strategy, tossed it where the sun didn't shine (as they should have), and let me easily actually link to people. Ultimately, those links are where I see the value for ME. Not for them. Now if they want to monetize THAT....make money off job postings, head hunters, conferences, incremental services (as they do today) then I'm all for it. But to monetize the basic thing that would actually make their service useful and grow? I don't think so. And apparently, neither did the network.

So I just wanted to thank Facebook for helping Linkedin not suck. Now how we can help Facebook not to bore me to death? Different question for a different day.