Social Fireworks Alert: LinkedIn vs. ‘Loud Mouth McClure’?
Facebook: Adult playground or professional tool?
The Facebook vs. LinkedIn for business battle is one of the juciest online AND the social fireworks may very well move offline next week when Dave McClure’s “Graphing Social Patterns” conference kicks off.
Kay Luo, LinkedIn’s chief of corporate communciations, may have dubbed Dave the “Loud Mouth McClure” at his blog in August when he cheered Facebook for business, but Luo’s chief at LinkedIn is keynoting at McCloud’s the “business (and technology) of Facebook” get together.
And the plot thickens: Reid Hoffman is a Facebook “angel” and an investor in the newly formed fbFund for Facebook Apps.
I recently asked the LinkedIn founder if his Facebook shareholder status poses a conflict of interest. Hoffman told me Facebook had approached him for the investment and it was mutually determined that as the two networking platforms operate in sufficiently different spheres, competing business development initiatives are not a risk.
What was NOT foreseen, apparently though, by either Hoffman or Mark Zuckerberg, is the intense Facebooker evangelism that surfaced from tech early adopters this summer—such as Jeff Pulver, Robert Scoble and Dave McClure–AT THE EXPENSE OF LINKEDIN.
I have frequently underscored here at Insider Chatter that fervent Facebook tech love has been accompanied by a fervent anti-LinkedIn evangelism. For example, in response to Pulver’s “Confessions of a LinkedIn Dropout” BusinessWeek endorsement of Facebook, I wrote: Facebook Fans Trash Talk LinkedIn: Will Reid Hoffman Fight Back?
I underscored, it is time for LinkedIn to step up to the LinkedIn vs. Facebook plate:
A definitive assessment from LinkedIn founder and chairman CEO Reid Hofffman on how LinkedIn trumps Facebook for business would ubdoubtedly give pause to fervent “who needs LinkedIn, we have Facebook” fanatics.
I subsequently interviewed Hoffman and obtained that very definitive assessment.
READ MY EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Reid Hoffman On How LinkedIn Beats Facebook for Business
Nevertheless, LinkedIn remains conspicuously wary of engaging in a LinkedIn trumps Facebook for business debate publicly.
Mario Sundar, LinkedIn “community evangelist,” typically responds to blogosphere beatings of LinkedIn by merely sharing that he “personally prefers” to keep his social and business networks separate; In other Linkedin words, we can all get along (music undoubetdly to LinkedIn AND Facebook shareholder Hoffman’s ears).
Given LinkedIn’s generally low key stance in the Facebook for business debate, it is surprising then that the top LinkedIn PR person, Kay Luo, called out Dave McClure as a ”loudmouth” at his blog in response to his “Facebook for business? Damn straight” post in August:
Loud Mouth McClure…
I think the reason you are able to mingle your social and business networks is because you are one of the few people I know who will say whatever the [expletive] is on your mind regardless of the situation. People who choose to do business with you get this and love you for it. However, the rest of us repressed folks have different professional and social personas. Conventional wisdom says you should keep these separate.
-Kay Disclosure: I used to work with Dave at Simply Hired where I tried to get him to curse less in public forums. I now work at LinkedIn.
Very well, but that very LinkedIn is a prime draw at “loudmouth” McClure’s conference set for tomorrow.
Social fireworks, anyone?
ALSO SEE: Facebook Cold Shower: Zuckerberg NOT Killing Anything, 2% Internet Share
PLUS EXCLUSIVE: Facebook vs. LinkedIn: Who has the Women? and MSNBC Buys Newsvine: Will Davidson ‘Code of Honor’ Rule?