Linkedin Surveys

Not content with raising $22.7 million in venture capital, Linkedin today unvelieved Linkedin surveys.

Linkedin surveys aims to capture value from the 30 million Linkedin user base with an average age of 41 and an average income of $110,000 by means of providing access to it to companies that want to target either a specific group of professionals or the whole community.

I think this move has two interesting facets. On one side is a significant departure from the ad based indirect model of monetization that Social Networks commonly use and on the other side is a first attempt to capture the insights and knowledge in this community.

I hope that Linkedin is thinking on both aspects and not only the first, because even if the first is clearly a more direct way to immediately increase revenue providing sustainability to the site, the one that is really worth to pursue is the second one.

We all know that one of the mechanisms that drive peer production of any information good is reputation. Reputation is not the solely mechanism but is an important one, especially for the ones that contribute more, the ones that are responsible for at least half of the contributions. In fact, Linkedin is probably the best positioned site to extensively use this mechanism, an attempt has been Linkedin answers, honestly not a very successful one …

Please keep trying!