News Corp looking to buy LinkedIn?

First of all, TechCrunch UK says “an unconfirmed rumour has reached me via a reliable source,” so take this with a grain of salt. But the thinking is News Corp. would buy the social networking site LinkedIn as a recruitment play. (LinkedIn’s best feature shows you jobs that you may be interested in from people who are connected to you. If you want to apply, just use your connections. Isn’t that how people get most jobs, anyway?) And, of course, LinkedIn is a different audience than News Corp’s MySpace.

I was attending a business event in Seattle last week when the speaker asked people in the crowd to raise their hands if they had profiles on LinkedIn. Two-thirds raised their hands. And from my perspective, that’s a problem. People have friends lists that are so long — everyone with your business card wants to be a friend these days — the usefulness factor is severely diluted. So I now spend almost all of my social time on Facebook. I do, however, like the social approach to recruiting on LinkedIn — if the price is right.

1 comment November 22nd, 2007