End user perspective on LinkedIn

LinkedIn took a beating on wall street today as it gave a weak market guidance. As a frequent user of LinkedIn, I get a lot of professional news and information on the site and have grown to like it. I was a bit surprised initially. But if I put my experience in perspective, maybe it is not that surprising.

LinkedIn listed several reasons for weak guidance for 2016. It is shutting down its Lead Acceleration, weak currency in growing economies and weak market for premium ads among others. First two are either strategic or microeconomic factors. But if the premium ad revenue is down, then LinkedIn has fundamental problems. Google, has built a $66B business on ads and shows no sign of slowing down. Facebook has shown strong growth in ad revenue as well.

Coming back to LinkedIn, I recently switched back from a paid premium account to a free account and have no plans of going back for two reasons.

1. I didn’t find enough value in paying $29.99/m (or $360/yr) and the price is kind of steep. Compare that to $99/yr Amazon prime, which gives a lot more value at a fraction of cost. I am not even sure what LinkedIn offers for $360/yr.
2. It is extremely difficult to unsubscribe from LinkedIn paid program. There is no direct or easy navigation to remove paid membership. It feels as though they want to extract money hoping you don’t notice. Eventually when my credit card expired, the payment stopped. I have never been more relieved of an expired credit card. I am sure LinkedIn never wanted to evoke this sentiment but I can’t be the only one who felt beguiled.

If LinkedIn fails to provide value to its end users, it probably delivers poor value to its advertisers as well. I really hope the company goes back to its basics and first focuses on the millions of end users on top of which their $2B business is built. There is so much potential in the company; there is no credible competition to LinkedIn.