The core problem that LinkedIn solves has nothing to do with all the "social media" style content that plagues the platform. It is a long-term rolodex to be able to talk to former co-workers, while also getting contacted by recruiters (double-edged sword that that is), and for that purpose works just fine, even allowing you to ignore the other warts.

So if you were going to build a competitor, you'd need to get everyone who has built a profile on linkedin and built a 20 year rolodex of their network to all migrate away.

I'm not saying it cannot happen, I'm saying it is not a tech problem, so building a new flavor of the same app and hoping it wins out is an even higher-risk bet than most startups, and therefore does not fall into most people's risk tolerances.

> The core problem that LinkedIn solves has nothing to do with all the "social media" style content that plagues the platform.

I feel like a broken record explaining this to people.

The feed that appears when you go to LinkedIn.com is a sideshow. Almost nobody posts to it. Very few people read it. You can (and should!) ignore it and not miss out on anything.

Make a profile. Update it occasionally when you're job searching. Forget about the site until you need it. Hit the unsubscribe button when they e-mail you suggestions.

The exception is people who simply cannot resist getting pulled into a feed and scrolling it. If that's you, I understand why you'd stay off of the website. For everyone else, it's a set it and forget it until you need it kind of website.

That's also why a second website isn't appealing to anyone. They've already gotten past the set-and-forget part. Why would they want to set up a second profile somewhere in a smaller, less useful network? There would have to be some real benefit, not an imagined talking point that disappoints.

To emphasize the dynamics: (1) No person will migrate until most of their connectors migrate, and their connectors cannot migrate until everyone does. It's deadlock, for every thread you care about. (2) Automation in job applications and a declining job market have both made networking more essential, so there's no tolerance for lost connections, so you'd also have to solve those problems too before all would switch. (3) Even if users don't like it and could surmount the coordination costs of switching, if companies continue to rely on it, switching would be a career-limiting move; and because companies cannot signal their recruitment strategies without triggering a stampede to game their system, companies tend to keep quiet, so no company would lead an exodus.

Still, no one (outside influencers) likes how work networking and recruitment happens today, so user might do both linkedin and some new system if one created a more effective networking and recruitment mode (e.g., for some well-defined, high-value subset, like recent Stanford MBA's, YC alumni, FinTech, ...).

You've literally described every pitch for every social media platform.

This was THE one and only value proposition of Facebook back in the Paleolithic

yeah. think you'd be most likely to get there by starting off with something else (e.g. collaboration platform for high value vertical that needs more structured comms than LinkedIn) that incidentally has profiles and connections and it just happening to become popular enough for people from adjacent industries to start joining just for the profile visibility and messages...

Making that a public Rolodex is the source of so many social engineering campaigns.

I mean yeah, it's the same problem any new social media site needs to solve