Cashing in Stage 3
LinkedIn’s network effect is the product: you stay because employers and peers are there. The feed has leaned engagement and ads; Premium and recruiter products harvest professional intent. Stage 3 extraction: still useful, increasingly optimized for monetization over calm browsing.
- Since
- 2003
- Function
- Social
- VC-backed
- Yes
- Public
- Since 2011 (NYSE: LNKD)
- Acquired by
- Microsoft (2016)
News signals
More in Social
-
Discord
2 Hard to leaveStrong real-time product for communities, but your social graph and server history are deeply embedded—switching means rebuilding social capital elsewhere.
-
Mastodon (fediverse)
1 Plenty for usersFederated microblogging with no single owner; rough edges, but user surplus and exit to other instances is real.
-
Reddit
3 Cashing inMature platform shifting value toward advertisers, mods as unpaid labor, and product changes that prioritize engagement over quality.
-
X (Twitter)
3 Cashing inAPI paywalls, algorithmic feeds, verification products, and ad load shift surplus toward the operator and advertisers—classic extraction on a still-central public square.
