There was a time when Linkedin was cool. Well, maybe “cool” is too strong of a word for this early social networking site. Let’s just say that Linkedin was *the* place to network as a business professional.

You sign up for Linkedin, you make connections with people you work with, you ask for a recommendation, you’re golden. One thing for sure, you made yourself search friendly to headhunters.

But that was yesterday. Today, the cool place to network socially and professionally is arguable Facebook. With an active member community of 500 million and growing compared to 50 million and shrinking at Linkedin, Facebook is the place to link up and link in.

So does Linkedin provide any value in a world dominated by Facebook? I think so.

Whereas Facebook is the Goliath, Linkedin is a niche site. They cater to white-collar professionals who are individual contributors or first level supervisors. These are the “actives” in the workforce. In other words, these are the people who do the actual work in a company. As such, they are prized for their technical skills. So Linkedin is the perfect place to advertise their skills.

Which leads me to how companies use social media to advertise nowadays. Advertising works best when it comes with social proof. By this, I mean testimonials and feedback from actual users of the advertised product or service. Yelp built an entire business model on social proof. Facebook is doing the same with their Business Page where you can “Like” it.

Now Linkedin Company Page allows you to do the same by showcasing “recommendations” from Linkedin members. The demographics of the Linkedin community would be the actual users of a product or service.

It’s not a new concept. Review sites have been around for years. Linkedin is playing catch up here. But it works, so more power to them.

Here is an example of HP’s Linkedin Company Page:

Example of Linkedin Company Page