LinkedIn

LinkedIn
Summary
Professional network with content publishing and promotion features through organic posts and advertising.

Parent organisation: Microsoft
Type of organisation: Publicly-listed company (or group)
Market share: Market dominance

Pricing: Paid solutions for advertising, recruitment and sales at a range of price points.
Factors driving pricing: Additional features
Skills needed to set-up: Plug & play (any non-technical user can do it)
Skills needed to use: Plug & play (any non-technical user can do it)
Requires audience sign-in to use: Yes, sign-in compulsory
Pros
Open Source alternatives available
Releases new features regularly
Clear data policies
Allows data export
Allows data deletion
Has accessibility statement
Shares diversity data
Cons
Newsworthy business problems - Microsoft’s LinkedIn loses appeal over access to user profiles, LinkedIn accused of hosting spy profiles with AI-generated photos
Newsworthy technical issues - LinkedIn experiences nearly an hour of service issues, LinkedIn fixed a flaw that let someone post a job opening for Google’s CEO position

Full Product Data Collection

Data collected January-February 2020

Product nameLinkedIn
Product URLhttps://www.linkedin.com/
Parent organisationMicrosoft
Workflow categoryAudience engagement & monetisation
Date product founded2003
Product descriptionProfessional network with content publishing and promotion features through organic posts and advertising.
What type of company or organisation is the product owned by?Publicly-listed company (or group)
Is the company profit-making?Yes, profitable
How is this product funded?Advertising, Subscriptions
What market share does the tool have?Market dominance
Is there an Open Source alternative in this product space?Yes. Vutuv
When did the company last release new features?December 2019: New admin controls for groups.
Have they shared details of the product roadmap?No
Is there talk of the product raising further investment?No
Is there talk of the product being acquired?No
Have there been any newsworthy business issues or challenges in the last 12 months?Yes. Microsoft’s LinkedIn loses appeal over access to user profiles, LinkedIn accused of hosting spy profiles with AI-generated photos
Is there a pricing model listed on the website?Yes
How clear & transparent is this pricing model?Partly: some pricing listed; must speak to salesperson to confirm
What is the range of prices offered?Paid solutions for advertising, recruitment and sales at a range of price points.
What factors drive higher pricing?Additional features
What skills are needed to get this tool set up & usable?Plug & play (any non-technical user can do it)
What skills are needed to USE this tool day-to-day?Plug & play (any non-technical user can do it)
Does this tool use proprietary file formats for saving documents & outputs?Cannot tell
Is the product reliant on 3rd-party APIs or interoperability to function?No
Have there been any newsworthy technical issues in the last 3 years?Yes. LinkedIn experiences nearly an hour of service issues, LinkedIn fixed a flaw that let someone post a job opening for Google’s CEO position
How clear is the Terms of Service for users (i.e. publishing customers)?Technical, legalistic TOS
Does the product have a data collection & usage policy on its website? (Can be a GDPR statement)?Yes, comprehensive.
Is their data policy “GDPR everywhere”?Yes, GDPR compliant globally
Does the product require your audience to sign-in to use it?Yes, sign-in compulsory
IF SIGN IN REQUIRED: Does audience sign-in use 3rd party platforms?No 3rd party auth, just a user account
Does the public product website mention how to export or transfer your data to another service?Yes: Audience can data export, Yes: Export publisher metadata, Yes: Export/transfer publisher content
Does the public product website mention how to delete your data?Yes: for both publisher and audience data
Have there been any newsworthy security breaches with this product in the last 3 years?No
Does the company have an accessibility statement on its website?Yes
Does the company release information on the diversity of the workforce?Yes

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