It appears, “business-oriented social network”, LinkedIn has unceremoniously “retired” Labs, a peripheral site that was introduced in October 2010. There was no mention of the closure, on the company blog, or in any press release.
I found it while trying to use one of the “experiments” on Labs, called Resume Builder. It works by pulling all the information on your LinkedIn profile, and arranging it like a resume. The design/structure depends on the template you choose. You then had the option, of printing your new resume as a PDF document.
“We’re so sorry for any inconvenience you’ve experienced. We’ve recently retired the LinkedIn Labs functionalities.”, Chelsea McNew, a LinkedIn forum moderator said. “LinkedIn Labs were initially created to be low maintenance experiments that were not maintained, or supported by our product teams, but rather used to gather feedback. We will share your comments regarding the usefulness of this feature for you with our team here.”
Once a month, the company celebrates “InDay”, and during the event, employee teams are given 5 minutes each, to demo cool features they’ve been working on in their spare time. The most compelling demonstrations made it to the LinkedIn Labs site, for users to try them out, and give feedback.
LinkedIn’s MAU (monthly active user) numbers are pretty stagnant, when compared to other social networks. Their stock price has been on a steady decline, in the past 3 months. Only a few days ago, they had $11 billion shaved off their market value (44% off their stock price, from $192 to $107), because they missed financial performance projections. Sophocles Sophocleous, a Chartered Financial Analyst, values LinkedIn stock at $75, meaning they may lose another $9 billion in value.
When you put this Labs development against the backdrop of their stock market woes, it starts to looks like LinkedIn is entering survival mode – cutting off all excesses.
It’s a shame though, that they aren’t devoting any more resources to maintaining LinkedIn Labs. Because for me, Labs was the most interesting part of the entire site. I don’t think much of their core service, and I’m certainly not alone; Facebook and Twitter still boast higher use, than LinkedIn, among tech job seekers.
But if some of these other features were brought to the forefront of their service, it may help set them apart from the crowd, and grow their user base.
Photo Credit: Sylvain Kalache via Compfight cc
