LinkedIn Vs. Twitter: Battle of Corporate Social Networks

There is Facebook for your friends, family, and former high school classmates. There is Pinterest for all your crafting, dreaming, and cooking ideas. And then finally Twitter for all the updates or opinions you have on line. But now there is a new social media giant coming to town called LinkedIn. This networking community has been active since 2003 and now boasts over 150 million subscribers that use the website to network, post resumes, and look at new job opportunities. 

The More Serious Networking Site

A recent Washington Post article talked to the young entrepreneurs/CEOs about how their companies have used social media websites to better their business. The founder of Beat the GMAT stated this about LinkedIn, 

"We consider LinkedIn to be more of a serious, professional social network.  Thus, we tend to have a more formal style of writing updates on this service.  Generally, we don’t think that LinkedIn members come to the site for social purposes — they want to receive updates that are meaningful for their careers and/or education.  So keeping this in mind, we try to frame our updates in ways that are relevant to careers and education."

Socialmedialandscape.com

The founder goes on to comments how this companies use other websites such as Facebook or Twitter for more " irreverent,  fun, or controversial." So it seems answer the question that their is a social media website for every corporations' message or needs. I found this interesting in the fact as it agrees with the idea raised in the textbook about social shaping theory. Baym points out on page 45 that social shaping is "interrelated nodes in constantly changing sociotechnnical networks, which constitute the forms and uses of technology differently in different times ans places for different groups." LinkedIn has made its the serious networking career website because that is its users' purpose for it. They have shaped LinkedIn. 

Entrepreneurs of Ourselves

LinkedIn co-founder, Reid Hoffman,  in a CBS interview said that we all must begin to realize the potential these social media websites can do not only for our corporations but our own personal brands/image. 

He also said, ""One of the things I realized after some number of years of doing LinkedIn was that the world has changed in a way that we all need to be the entrepreneurs of ourselves, the CEO of ourselves. That's because of globalization, that's because of acceleration. That's because of competition, change by technology and industries. So the question is how do you adapt to the modern world? And the key people who adapt are entrepreneurs. So, we all need to be the entrepreneurs of ourselves."

So whether you like Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, or want try something new like LinkedIn; the message is the same all social media is making an impact on corporations' messaging and our own personal entrepreneurship.