Key to LinkedIn + Microsoft success

Microsoft and LinkedIn definitely are buzz words right now (powered by Google trend). A lot of articles take about why Microsoft bought LinkedIn, how LinkedIn’s data will be used in MS’s software. No one mentioned what are the actions to maintain and acquire users. As a data scientist, I agree data are valuable. Those valuable data come from, no surprise, users. Up-to-date data is the key for any actionable machine learning (AI) insights. But for LinkedIn I am concerned about this (how to acquire and maintain active users)

As naive as I am, I did not see a high technical bar to replicate LinkedIn. Users can easily transfer to other site and get found.

As naive as I am, I did not see high user loyalty.

As naive as I am, I am really curious to know the ‘quality’ of the 25% MAU? Are they all students looking for their first job? Are they early professionals trying to catch the trend of their industries? It must be very interesting to have a look at some correlation plot between professional experience and activity.

Please, think hard on how to bring benefits to users. Otherwise, the moment ‘new‘ featured Office/Outlook/Skype are launched, hundreds of millions users will switch to a new similar platform.

Behind story: Since I am working on predictive modeling, I have been dealing with historical data and historical human judgment. It is hard to dig into data; it is even harder (impossible) to dig into historical thoughts. Documenting some of my thoughts and reasons for future fun is not a bad idea.