This piece ties into the SeekingAlpha commentary:
The REAL Story Behind The LinkedIn IPO: The Battle For The Business Social Web
By Alex Chang, CEO of Roost.com
Business Insider
May 20, 2011, 2:22 PM
Most reaction swirling around yesterday's hot debut of LinkedIn takes one of two forms: A conversation of how this signals a healthy forecast for technology IPO comebacks, or a discussion of the hype around social networking.
Either of these may be true, but they’re missing the important story: the battle for the business social Web.
Facebook has already mapped the consumer social Web. It’s now the de facto identity broker that Microsoft Passport, Friendster and countless others had hoped to become. That game is over.
So what’s next? You guessed it, the battle to own the social fabric of the business world.
The players are big…
In one corner, a well-armed LinkedIn with $350mm+ in cash added to the war chest. And in the other? …Salesforce.com, for starters.
Just look how aggressively Salesforce has been in social in the last 12 months, working to lay claim as the platform for the business social Web. Granted, it’s an enterprise approach vs LinkedIn’s end-user one. But you don’t spend hundreds of millions on Radian6 and put so much organizational muscle behind Chatter if you’re not playing to win this game.
And there are plenty of other heavy hitters sharpening their swords. Hello VMWare. Hello old school enterprise incumbents…IBM, Oracle, SAP.
This opportunity is as big as the consumer social Web, if not bigger. People often talk about how the b2b advertising market at ~$30BN is 10% of the consumer ad market. That’s true, but b2b ad dollars are only the tip of the iceberg.
If you’re the platform where business professionals of all sizes & stripes communicate …both within an enterprise, and across enterprises…you have massive power. Power not just to run targeted ads. Power to control where purchase recommendations are made, deals are hunted, products evaluated…and multi-
hundred billion dollar market caps are born.
Alex Chang is a Bay Area based father of two young kids, a recovering golfer and in his spare time the CEO of Roost.com, a free Social Marketing Platform for small businesses and individual professionals. Roost is a leading tool for businesses and pros of all types to easily drive more business from the Social Web.
businessinsider.com |
