When you’re looking for technical, legal, financial or any other kind of business-related services how do you find the right provider? Generally, you turn to a trusted friend for a recommendation. Business networking firm LinkedIn wants to step into that role.
Known for its peer-to-business job search market, which created a network of 2.4 million users in just a few years, LinkedIn has added a referral-powered directory of business service providers.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company launched LinkedIn Services, a network designed to connect its growing cache of professionals and business owners with local service providers, such as lawyers, accountants and technology services.
LinkedIn Services organizes business services into eight categories: legal, financial, employment, creative, management consulting, technology, marketing, and architectural and construction services.
When members initiate a query, the search engine first returns recommendations from its users’ first tier of connections. Recommendations thereafter come from contacts further down the list. Only registered members of LinkedIn can post the reviews, Guericke said.
“When you’re looking for business service providers, you also look for recommendations,” said Konstantin Guericke, LinkedIn’s co-founder and vice president of marketing. “You’re not just looking for any recommendations, you’re looking for recommendations from people you know and trust.”
The move is part of a continued expansion of the firm’s networking plans, which began with the launch of LinkedIn Jobs in May 2003. The idea then was to create a site where job seekers could capitalize on their past experiences and build relationships with others who may help advance their careers, Guericke said.
The company claims it has already facilitated 600,000 referrals to date, helping professionals link with job candidates, industry experts and business partners.
Guericke said LinkedIn Services will further help business owners find trusted service providers while helping the providers get more leads for new businesses.
“It is interesting how networks are different than databases,” Guericke said.
“Databases tend to become commodities, but within a network, every person has a unique network.”
Unlike the yellow pages, LinkedIn Services’ recommendations are not anonymous, Guericke said.
Guericke said that more than 150,000 service providers have already registered and more than 94 percent of those come recommended by at least one of LinkedIn’s registered members.
For now the listings are free, but that’s likely to change in the next six months, probably to a business model resembling that of the yellow pages, Guericke said. As for LinkedIn Jobs, it currently charges $95 a month to list jobs on the site, but the site is free for job seekers.
Guericke said the company would probably add two more services within the next six months, but were not likely to keep adding more offerings.
“At the end of the day my guess is we won’t be spinning out five or six new services a year for the next five years,” he said.
Instead, he added, the company would focus on the applications it already offers.
Adapted from Internetnews.com.
| Do you have a comment or question about this article or other small business topics in general? Speak out in the SmallBusinessComputing.com Forums. Join the discussion today! |
