I have been an active user of Linkedin for a decade now and a big fan of the journey they have been through (& continue to). What started as a professional networking site has now emerged in to a platform for employers to identify and recruit top talent from their 400 million active users (& growing) who have shared their entire professional histories, generating significant intelligence and insights.

With Acquisitions like Lynda.com and Slide share, Linkedin is not just a professional networking site for the 400 million users but emerging as a career development platform. Also with the inclusion of the Linkedin posts, a lot of professional content is being generated by their large user base which plays a key role in retention and growth of unique user visits globally. However, there is a bigBUT here…

When an individual looks to change jobs or wants to know about a potential employer’s culture, leadership, compensation, benefits etc., where do you think he/she goes to as the first resource other than personal connections ??

 No, not Linked-in. Glassdoor for sure!

With the valley and the street focusing on the Ubers and Airbnbs of the world, Glassdoor is making a revolution with their product and rumored an IPO thats expected to be more successful than its unicorn peers.

As of today, Linkedin and Glassdoor do differ in their offerings and are considered as two separate resources from a user standpoint but makes significant strategic sense for a complete professional platform to combine the offerings of both the organizations. I am sure it is a discussion the walls of both the board rooms are hearing as well, very often.

It’s hard to say from the side by side comparison as to which product has a better prospect to emerge on top in the long run. Glassdoor’s database of 10 million company reviews, salary info, interview process & culture insights is on a head-on collision with Linkedin’s 400 million user base who have provided end to end insights in to their career history.

The key to long term dominance of one of these players will depend on each one of their ability to replicate the missing piece of their product from the other and succeed in that. Will Linkedin be able to generate the amount of intelligence Glassdoor has on organizations or will Glassdoor be able to convince their growing user base to accept them as an end to end professional networking site?

Linkedin has the upper hand in terms of the user base and the ability to invest significantly without having to sweat. As of now, Glassdoor is no where near Linkedin’s financial books. But at the same time, Glassdoor’s database of insights and intelligence into organizations is not an easy one to replicate for Linkedin.

Definitely, an interesting and exciting segment to keep a close watch on. Whatever is going to be the outcome, the user will be the winner for sure.

About the Author: For more information, contact Balakarthik Venkataramanan at vbkarthik123@yahoo.com. LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/balakarthikv.