It has been a wonderful week so far with my lectures on Platform Business Models at the University of Rome Tor Vergata over the past two days. In one of the discussions, there was a discussion about network mobilisation, and a perceptive participant quipped about how successful Facebook can be in a variety of businesses. I have been maintaining that Facebook and LinkedIn are in independent markets, with their own unique needs, and therefore would never end up competing. However, this discussion on what Facebook can do with the big, small and thick data it has about users – ads, shopping, or even jobs set me thinking.
Winner takes all markets
One of the most common discussions on platform and networked businesses is the prevalence of monopolies, in what we call as “winner-takes-all” markets. There are three conditions for these markets to satisfy to qualify as “winner-takes-all” markets – multi-homing costs should be very high; network effects should be strong and positive; and users usually do not have any special preferences (read more about it here). Social networking (with peers, friends, and family) is a winner-takes-all business by all counts – it is difficult to affiliate yourself with multiple platforms; network effects are strong and positive; and Facebook is used for pretty much everything – no special preferences.
Professional networking space, on the other hand, would have different economics. Multi-homing costs are sure high, but not so high. Especially when people have multiple identities … for instance a CEO by the day and a triathlon by the evening; or a professor of law and counsel at the same time. And they could possibly have separate professional networks, right for each of their interests, right. On top of this, online media provide us with our own masks, that enable us to insulate the two worlds when we choose to or integrate when it suits us. A sort of maskenfrieheit, a German word that translates to “masks provided to us by the power of anonymity”. Most of us surely live in multiple worlds, leveraging our own maskenfreiheits. Network effects are sure strong and positive, and in addition to social networking, professional networking business also has a significant extent of cross-side network effects (from potential employers and followers). There are special preferences in professional networking – there are those wo write for others to follow; some others just read and follow and minimally engage (a occasional like here and a share there); and there are few INfluencers (as LinkedIn calls them). So, it makes logical sense that a professional networking business is not a winner-takes-all business, and should be prepared to be attacked by a variety of competitors.
LinkedIn, for its part has done it bit, I would say. It has significantly expanded its reach to college students; allowed for writing (competing with blogs); jobs (competing with focused recruitment sites); shares, likes, and comments (competing with social networking, including micro-blogging). And its merger with Microsoft recently would hopefully provide it more teeth to bite in.
Facebook enters the jobs market
But, how does LinkedIn compete when the ubiquitous Facebook decides to enter the jobs market? I recently read this report on TechCrunch (read it here) on how Facebook is entering the jobs market. With its size of members’ network at more than thrice that of LinkedIn, Facebook can unearth more and more passive job seekers. Those of you who are not actively seeking a job, but would be interested in testing something out, if is offers great roles, salaries, titles, locations, or just more fun that your current role. In fact, the value proposition of LinkedIn was just that – one keeps building a stack of endorsements and a network that will then actively seek you out, rather than the job seeker reaching out. Facebook seems to have imitated just that – its profile tags is much the same as LinkedIn endorsements. Everyone sees the similarity … read the Fortune Business report of July 2015 here.
Is the professional networking space contestable?
Firms competing across business lines can also be explained using the theory of contestable markets. The simplest definition and explanation of contestable markets I could find online is on this page. These markets are characterised by low barriers to entry (like no economies of scale) and low barriers to exit (like no sunk costs), and therefore allow for new entrants to adopt a hit and run strategy. Incumbents typically protect their turf using asymmetric information (some specific information/ competence) that the new entrants do not possess. If we were to look at professional networking space as a contestable market, then LinkedIn had it all covered as an incumbent. Facebook anyway had a variety of small and medium businesses maintaining pages to connect with its customers; and all it had to do was to extend the same feature to job applicants connecting with the firms. Much like how a firm would announce a new product or a discount offer, it could advertise jobs on its Facebook page. Just that Facebook is trying to overcome the asymmetric information bit with its Profile Tags feature to quickly imitate LinkedIn’s endorsements (it is not available in all countries, yet). Without that Facebook would not be able to customise the feed to its readers – you would get only “relevant” job offers on your Facebook timeline, now that it would have your Profile Tags.
Facebook jobs, anyone?
So, would you apply for jobs using Facebook? I for one know a lot of active seekers and college students invest in building their LinkedIn profiles, rather than “wasting time” on Facebook. Facebook is for casual chit-chat with friends and family, sharing selfies, religious views, political statements, and even late-night party stories. Not the place where I would imagine a lot of people would apply for jobs. Will you let your maskenfreiheit down?
But hang on, what about those who do not have a LinkedIn profile? What about those who are logged on to Facebook for ever on their smart phones? What about those who use Facebook to gather information about jobs and then apply for the same using traditional job sites, just email, or through their LinkedIn profiles? Small and Medium businesses might be able to attract a lot of undifferentiated talent (I’m not talking about blue collared workers only) through Facebook, if this succeeds. And what do dedicated job sites like Monster.com do?
Facebook surely has big data, small data (or thick data) and even the right data (after my posts of the last two weeks, this HBR post on right data appeared online!). Exciting times ahead.
Cheers.
(c) 2016. Srinivasan R.
Platform Business Firms 
Well I feel frustrated by LinkedIn and often therefore don’t login to it for days on end. All sorts of people send you requests and you have to spend a good amount of time figuring out if you should accept or reject their requests. A lot of material of LinkedIn is random posts and it is only those from a few credible people (like you) you feel worth reading. To top it all, people post jokes, politics and all sorts of strange forwards on LinkedIn so the difference with Facebook becomes vague. And then you have various levels of “profile engineering” (just invented the phrase 🙂 ) on LinkedIn – from outright false to different shades of grey. I would rather believe a FB profile in some cases in fact.
Actually some of the serious stuff I follow nowadays is on FB – posts from some eminet academicians like Yann Le Cunn/Yoshua Bengio, MIT Technology Review, National Geographic and a few others. The quality of articles I read therefore there is much better and enriching. I rarely get such stimulating material on LinkedIn.
As for applying for jobs in Facebook, job ads can be placed on FB and you need not apply with your FB profile but given you spend more time there likely to bring in more attention. If I am actively looking for a job I would not mind starting on FB though I will not apply with my FB profile information for it has my personal photos and posts.
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Post your fun and insightful session with us here in university of Nürnberg 🙂 , I had come accross a viral post in facebook that declared its CEO Mark Zuckerberg dead (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37957593?ocid=socialflow_facebook&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=facebook ) , as I further tried to read a bit more I came accross this article (http://ktla.com/2016/11/11/facebook-declares-many-users-dead-including-ceo-mark-zuckerberg/) which stated about more such viral posts . Infact there have been a lot of concern among people using facebook regarding their data privacy . Just profile tagging itself does not sound convincing enough for people to shun linkedin or Monster to jump to facebook jobs . On one hand an important factor is the nature of jobs , while IT enthusiasts or jobs in creative industry , facebook jobs might sound a lucrative option , on the other hand a banker , a lawyer would be apprehensive . So as you mentioned interesting times ahead 🙂 , it would be interesting to watch how they solve their penguin problem by finding the right set of data .
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