LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner spoke about his company’s future, and his vision is absolutely huge in the scope of its ambition.
“Our longer-term vision is … to build the world’s first economic graph … to visualize every economic opportunity in the world, every skill required to obtain those opportunities,” Weiner said at TechCrunch Disrupt 2013.
Eventually, Weiner said, his company hopes to have a profile for every one of the world’s three billion working people and its entire store of companies and higher education institutions.
“We’re already down that path,” he continued. “This isn’t science fiction.”
Referring to LinkedIn’s plans for the future, he said, “Every dimension of that is up and running. We’re fast approaching a quarter of a billion members.”
Also, LinkedIn is making big strides with colleges and universities with a new product launch for higher education institutions that showcases hard numbers on professions and results for specific degree programs.
With regard to potential competitors like BranchOut and big networks like Facebook, Weiner said, “There’s other social networks that operate with a much larger horizontal focus … we’re going to continue to be only a professional network.”
Over the past year or two, the company has pushed beyond its traditional definition of “digital Rolodex” to become a big contender in the world of content and aggregated news.
“The goal is to be the ultimate professional publishing platform … for our membership to tap that intelligence to be the best at their jobs,” said Weiner. Editorial curation, viral dynamics, and data algorithms will continue to drive the content that appears for different LinkedIn users, he continued.
LinkedIn is also expanding its reach around the web with the support of third-party developers. “We’re approaching 100,000 developers that use the APIs,” said Weiner. “There’s a half million unique domains on the Internet right now that offer LinkedIn features.”
For the future workforce, Weiner talked a bit about job creation and better education opportunities including vocational training, and immigration reform.
“Forty percent of the Fortune 500 was founded by immigrants,” he said, emphasizing the need for more and better visas for immigrant employees.
via LinkedIn CEO: We’re aiming for 3B profiles and a map of the world’s economy | VentureBeat.
LinkedIn CEO: We’re aiming for 3B profiles and a map of the world’s economy
