LinkedIn, The Media Company?

Quick, what’s LinkedIn? If you’re like me, the first thing that comes to mind is “a professional social network.” Perhaps “a place to get a job, or find someone to fill a job.” Or maybe “the place my professional resume lives.” And certainly “a very successful Internet IPO.”

But over the two years or so, LinkedIn has quietly built itself into a significant media business. It’s added a newsfeed, status updates, and “top stories today” features. Late last month, it added “following”  as well. And I’ve begun to notice the LinkedIn share button popping up all over the web – it isn’t quite the attention engine that Twitter has become, but its power is rising. (Yep, I’ve got one on this site too).

All those media bells and whistles combine to create a robust advertising business, complete with a Facebook-like self service platform driven by your social graph. That business has been scaling right along with its core recruitment and jobs posting revenue, accounting for about a third of the company’s topline.  Given that LinkedIn added more members last year than in the prior 6 – about 60 million, for a global total of 150 million, I predict it won’t be long before LinkedIn becomes a “must buy” for any marketer who targets professionals. And that’s a lot of marketers.

It doesn’t hurt that the business has been killing it – beating Wall Street expectations and outperforming most recent Internet IPOs.

The man steering LinkedIn, CEO Jeff Weiner, will join me onstage next week at our Signal San Francisco show. We’ll have one of our trademark conversations, and I’m inviting you to help me interview him. Given Signal focuses on the media and marketing business, we’ll certainly cover off on that part of Weiner’s purview.  But what else might you want to hear from Weiner? He’s always a fun interview, and usually shares very candid opinions of other players in the Internet ecosystem (he was a top executive at Yahoo and Warner Brothers prior to joining LinkedIn).

Join us at Signal to hear Jeff, along with a killer lineup that includes Adam Bain, President of Global Revenue at Twitter, Tom Bedecarre, CEO of AKQA, Michele DiLorenzo, CEO of Jumptime, Konrad Feldman, CEO of Quantcast, Ross Levinsohn, EVP Yahoo, Alison Pincus, CEO of One Kings Lane, Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instagram, Tina Sharkey, CEO of BabyCenter, and many, many others. It’s a wonderful group, so register now!