LinkedIn爆炸性增长，首席执行官畅谈愿景
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上周四下午，LinkedIn宣布其收入为1.21亿美元，每股收益4美分，超出分析人士预期。该网站会员数为1.158亿人，比一年前大增61%，可谓风头正劲。这家在线职业社交网站首度发布其季度财报后不久，首席执行官杰夫•维勒即接受《财富》杂志（Fortune）独家专访，畅谈他对该公司未来的计划。 《财富》：这个季度有哪些亮点？你们为何能超出分析师的预期？ 维勒：亮点不少——在这个季度，我们推出的一些新产品开始上线，同时在会员方面和营收方面对现有产品进行了一些优化。其结果就是，我们的累计会员数、独立用户数以及页面浏览量等关键参与指标都创下历史新高。 营收方面，我们的收入在继续加速增长。在第一季度，我们较之去年同期增长110%，而在第二季度，我们同比增长了120%。 《财富》：在下一个季度里，你们的首要任务是哪些？ 维勒：我们将继续投资于我们的产品。例如简介、搜索、主页以及群组等核心产品领域。我们还将继续投资于移动领域。这是我们目前增长最快的消费服务，同比年增长率达到了400%。此外，我们将继续投资于开放平台。最近我们推出了“用LinkedIn申请”（“Apply with LinkedIn”），我们认为它将推动我们在招聘解决方案领域持续增长。这是我们最大、增长也最快的营收来源。 《财富》：今后，你们三个营收来源——招聘解决方案、营销解决方案（广告销售）以及付费订阅，哪个对LinkedIn最重要？ 维勒：三个领域各有千秋。招聘解决方案一直势头强劲，而在（广告销售）领域，我们的增速大大高于整个行业……我们将继续投资于广告销售团队，提升我们的营销解决方案产品的广告市场认可度（share of mind）。 而由于平台（会员数）的整体提升以及现有产品组合持续优化，付费订阅也势头强劲。 《财富》：你们已经推出的新产品中，哪些最重要？ 维勒：有一些，比如说我们为职场人士提供的社交新闻服务今日Linkedin（Linkedin Today）就开局良好。一个证据就是现在有10，000家内容发布商在其网站上设有“分享到LinkedIn上”（"Share on LinkedIn"）按键。一些商业新闻内容发布商纷纷向我们表示，经由LinkedIn.com路径访问他们网站的数量正创下纪录。 我们的群组产品也在加速增长。这在一定程度上是因为我们开放了群组产品，使群组管理员能吸引更多的“听众”，而人们能与更多专业人士分享信息和知识。我们继续在“你可能认识的人” （people you may know）这个产品上获得进展，该产品使人们能更容易与自己的关系网络连接。这样一来，将提高他们的连接密度（connection density）。用户连接的人越多，接触到的高质量内容也就越多，他们的参与度也会随之提高。 《财富》：全球经济不稳定性的增加有多大可能会影响贵公司？会造成何种影响？ 维勒：作为一个连接大量人才与就业机会的平台，我们能够帮助当前最需要帮助的人。显然，鉴于眼下的宏观经济形势，就业市场愁云密布，很多人失业，正在寻找新的工作。我们的愿景是为每位专业人才创造机会，参与职场竞争。 《财富》：今年早些时候，你投资于LinkedIn时曾预测未来可能出现亏损。我注意到修改后的第三季度预测显示你计划扭亏为盈。你的策略有什么改变吗？ 维勒：没有变化。我们将一如既往地致力于投资于这个平台，以便释放LinkedIn的全部潜力。主要是三个方面，一是继续投资于我们的产品，继续为我们的会员创造更大价值。二是在全球提升我们的技术平台。三是继续国际化扩张。我们现在有超过半数的会员来自于美国之外的地区。我们将继续投资于以多种语言本土化的LinkedIn，并在世界各地建立销售机构。 译者：项航 |
LinkedIn (LNKD) posted a better-than-expected net income of four cents per share on revenues of $121 million Thursday afternoon. With 115.8 million members, a jump of 61% from a year earlier, the company is on a tear. Shortly after the online professional networking service announced its first quarterly earnings, CEO Jeff Weiner talked with Fortune in an exclusive interview about his plans for the future of the business. Fortune: What were the highlights of the quarter? Why did you beat analysts' estimates? Weiner: A few things—going into the quarter we started to see some traction some new products we launched and some optimization of existing products on the member side and the monetization side. As a result, we saw record highs in our key engagement metrics: cumulative members, unique users and page views. On the monetization side, we saw a continuation in the acceleration of our topline. In Q1 we were up 110% year-over-year and in Q2 we were up 120% year-over-year. Fortune: What are your most important priorities in the coming quarter? Weiner: We're going to continue to invest in our products. Core product areas like the profile, search, the home page, and groups. You'll see us continue to invest in mobile. It's currently our fastest growing consumer service—we're up 400% year-over-year. And we're going to continue to invest in our open platform efforts. Most recently we launched "Apply with LinkedIn," which we think is going to continue the momentum on our hiring solutions front. It's our largest and fastest growing revenue stream. Fortune: Which of your three revenue streams—hiring solutions, marketing solutions (ad sales), and premium subscriptions—will be most important to the business going forward? Weiner: We're seeing strength across the board. While hiring solutions is showing continued momentum, we're growing significantly faster in [ad sales] than the overall industry and will continue to take share there…and we'll continue to invest in our ad sales team and generating more share of mind around our marketing solution products. We also saw good momentum with premium subscriptions as a result of the overall lift [of membership] on the platform and some continued optimization of the existing product portfolio. Fortune: So what are the most important of the new products you've launched? Weiner: There were a few: Linkedin Today, our social news effort for professionals is off to a good start. A proof point is the fact that we now have over 100,00 publishers with "Share on LinkedIn" buttons on their sites. We're hearing from a number of business news publishers they are seeing record levels of referrals coming from LinkedIn.com. We're also seeing accelerating growth for our groups offering. That's in part due to the fact we've opened up our groups product so that group moderators can attract larger audiences and people can share information and knowledge with more professionals than ever before. We continue to make inroads to our "people you may know" product, which enables people to connect more easily with their networks. When that happens, their connection density grows. The more people our members are connected to and the more access to high quality content they have, the more engaged they become. Fortune: What's the potential for growing global economic insecurities to impact your business and how? Weiner: As a platform that connects talent with opportunity at massive scale, we are in a position where we can help the people that most need it right now. Clearly given the macroeconomic conditions there's a lot of anxiety out there—people out of work and looking for work. This is where our vision to create economics opportunity for every professional comes in to play. Fortune: Earlier in the year, you forecast a potential future loss as you invested in the business. I noticed revised q3 estimates suggest you intend to turn a profit. Has there been any change to your strategy? Weiner: No. We're still focused on investing in the platform so we can realize the full potential of LinkedIn. That takes three forms. One is a continuation of investment in our products and creating more value for our members. The second is continuing to scale our technology platform on a global basis. And third is continuing to expand internationally. Well over half our membership now comes from overseas. We're going to continue to invest in localizing LinkedIn in multiple languages and building out our international footprint in terms of sales offices. |
