All Three Social Media giants, LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) posted their 3Q earnings report last week. Though, Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) beat the 3Q revenue estimates, the slower user growth worries the investors and the share prices plunged by more than 10% in after hours. On the contrary, LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) reported losses, but managed to beat streets estimates on revenues and EPS, which rose the stock price by more than 10% in afterhours. Bloomberg’s contributing editor, Paul Kedrosky and Bloomberg’s Cory Johnson talked on Bloomberg TV about the social media companies’ performances in the third quarter.
Johnson mentioned that he was blown away by LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD)’s earnings in the third quarter. He mentioned that LinkedIn has reported consistent growth in all aspects, be it user growth or the user engagement, which even the Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) failed to do.
“[…] Their (LinkedIn) strength in their business across every possible metrics, whether it’s accelerating user growth. Increasing engagement by its users. It’s users are using the site more and more, most of its growth three quarters of the members are added outside of the United States. […] United States still their strongest market with most growth, second most in China,” Johnson said.
Even the Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR)’s CEO, Rick Costolo mentioned that Twitter need to record more user growth compared to Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). But is Facebook the right comparison for Twitter, or should it be compared with LinkedIn?
Johnson thinks that LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) has very different business compared to Twitter and Facebook and he feels that Facebook and Twitter have same business model to compare. Kedrosky thinks that Twitter has a lesson to learn from LinkedIn.
“I think the lesson for Twitter from LinkedIn is that the people know what they are getting when they join the LinkedIn. […] When they join Twitter, may be most of those people have absolutely no idea what to expect and that’s still he problem for Twitter in terms of driving user growth,” Kedrosky said.
Kedrosky mentioned that LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) has figured that out, but Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) hasn’t figured it out yet. He mentioned that user experience in Twitter was not comparable to the other social media platforms. He feels that this has been Twitter’s problem even before Costolo has joined as CEO. He thinks that even though Twitter managed to add new user, but their platform doesn’t make it simple for the user to explore and find people and do many other stuffs as they do in Facebook or LinkedIn.
Kedrosky mentioned that Facebook could also learn a few things from LinkedIn, like being open enough to the world, which he thinks that Facebook tries to hide a lot of things from users, whereas LinkedIn is pretty much open in that perspective.
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