It’s latest ploy: LinkedIn Contacts, a new service that aggregates your various email accounts and address books into a cohesive whole that organizes by name, tag, company, title, and even location. Here’s a worldwide look at my network of 1,000-plus contacts:
Sources: LinkedIn and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) Maps.
Impressive? Pathetic? I suppose that depends on your point of view.
Either way, LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) is hardly the first to dabble with building a better address book. salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) came to be largely as a result of needing a globally accessible contact database whereby salespeople in different territories would get access to the notes and details of every prospect and account.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) also has a customizable address book attached to Gmail, while Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has Outlook. But these are self-contained apps that are only as good as the data you feed into them, and maintaining a large database of contacts gets exhausting fast.
Aggregating existing data seemed like the best approach for me, and in years past I tried 37signals’ Highrise (great, but too expensive for a solopreneur) and Cobook (also good, but too slow).
LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) Contacts comes just short of the richness of Highrise but adds private messaging between LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) members, a built-in social network for sharing information, groups, and a curated news platform:
Introducing the New LinkedIn Contacts from LinkedIn.
Far as I can tell, LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) isn’t yet including Contacts among the premium add-ons it asks subscribers to pay for. Yet I suspect it could: Revenue from premium subscriptions soared 79% in the fourth quarter.
Therein lies the difference between LinkedIn and its peers, I think. Whereas Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Twitter are working on ways to create value for advertisers, LinkedIn is working on ways to create value for its members. Contacts is the latest try, and it’s a good one.
Do you agree? Disagree? Let us know what you think of LinkedIn’s premium services and whether you’d buy, sell, or short LinkedIn stock right now.
The article LinkedIn Just Became My Go-To Social Network originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Tim Beyers.
Fool contributor Tim Beyers is a member of the Motley Fool Rule Breakers stock-picking team and the Motley Fool Supernova Odyssey I mission. He owned shares of Google and Salesforce.com at the time of publication. Check out Tim’s web home and portfolio holdings or connect with him on Google+, Tumblr, or Twitter, where he goes by @milehighfool. You can also get his insights delivered directly to your RSS reader.The Motley Fool recommends Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Salesforce. The Motley Fool owns shares of Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Microsoft.
Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
