By Jay Greene
SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Josh Frank spent nearly 11 years building
up a virtual Rolodex of more than 700 LinkedIn contacts.
But when he recently sought guidance on expanding his Detroit
online marketing consultancy, Mr. Frank turned to the e-commerce
groups he belongs to on Facebook and the messaging service Slack.
He visits LinkedIn about once a month, he says, mainly to research
potential clients.
"If I'm looking for honest feedback, I'm going to go to places
where the circles are tighter," Mr. Frank says.
For LinkedIn Corp. to justify the $27 billion that Microsoft
Corp. paid for it in 2016, the professional social network must
convince its 546 million members that it is more than a place to
find jobs or pitch customers.
Just 18% of LinkedIn members used the service daily in April
2016, according to Pew Research's most recent look at the service's
usage in November 2016, a month before Microsoft closed the deal.
That's down from 21% a year earlier.
What's more, more than half of members, 51%, used LinkedIn every
few weeks or less often, Pew found. By comparison, 76% of Facebook
Inc. members used the service at least daily, Pew found.
At the time of the deal, Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella
said one goal was to weave together the tools people use to get
their jobs done and professional networks that connect workers.
To achieve that end, LinkedIn needs members such as Mr. Frank to
engage more frequently, updating their job titles, contacts, career
achievements and more -- data crucial to Microsoft's plans to
integrate its expensive acquisition. Microsoft wants to pump that
data into artificial-intelligence offerings, business-software
services and even its Office productivity tools, such as its
Outlook email and calendar programs.
Artificial intelligence could help Microsoft's Dynamics business
play catch-up to Salesforce.com Inc. To that end, Microsoft is
using LinkedIn data to help sales representatives target fertile
prospects, critical in the so-called customer-relationship
management market that Gartner Inc. estimates hit $39.4 billion
last year.
Microsoft has started to infuse Office apps with LinkedIn data
about contacts, so meeting attendees learn about one another
directly from calendar invitations. The company hopes that level of
integration will give its venerable franchise a leg up against
Alphabet Inc.'s Gmail.
Applying artificial-intelligence algorithms to LinkedIn data
could create new revenue opportunities for Microsoft, said Goldman
Sachs & Co. analyst Heather Bellini. "This is a company that
has different ways to monetize than it used to," she said.
LinkedIn is about to roll out a passel of features aimed at
drawing people regularly. For the past year, its engineers have
worked on Project Agora, revamping everything from the site's news
feed to the service that lets members message one another.
This spring, LinkedIn will add an "interest panel" to members'
home pages that will include groups they've joined and hashtags
they've followed -- features intended to keep members coming back
to learn the latest on topics that matter to them. By summer,
LinkedIn will add content from groups into news feeds and notify
members of such posts. That way, members will see posts that are
related to their interests and won't be put off by posts from
connections with whom they have little in common.
Still, it is a steep challenge to get members to carve out more
time for the service, particularly if they turn to LinkedIn only
when looking for work or seeking out sales leads, said TJ Keitt, a
senior analyst at Forrester Research Inc.
"There are a ton of people that don't have an immediate need to
engage with it," Mr. Keitt said.
The goal of Project Agora, named after the public meeting spaces
in ancient Greece, is to convince members that LinkedIn is also a
place to hone professional skills, find mentors and share knowledge
to solve business problems.
"We need to make LinkedIn a place where people talk to one
another," said Kiran Prasad, vice president of LinkedIn Product,
who leads the project.
Mr. Prasad recognizes the challenge of changing people's
perceptions of LinkedIn as just a place to look for new job
opportunities. "I don't think we're under an illusion that it's
going to happen on day one," he said.
Recent efforts to boost engagement, such as adding videos to
help professionals learn new skills and editorially curated content
tailored in part to members' industries, are working, said Jeff
Weiner, LinkedIn's chief executive.
LinkedIn said "sessions," which track each time members use the
service more than 30 minutes after their prior activity, have grown
more than 20% for five consecutive quarters. LinkedIn declined to
give more specific data.
"Engagement has started to meaningfully accelerate for the first
time in a long time," Mr. Weiner said.
Write to Jay Greene at Jay.Greene@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 16, 2018 08:14 ET (12:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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