LinkedIn's Hollywood PR Offensive: Cashing In On Economy's Woes

Discussion Policy

Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

Rafat Ali

paidContent.org
Monday, August 25, 2008; 1:07 AM

LinkedIn is on a Hollywood PR offensive, and positioning itself as the place where out-of-work and freelance creative professionals: it started with LinkedIn Strike Survival Guide (ahead of the then-anticipated SAG strike), as "an ideal way to learn how to tap the greatest asset of your professional life: your network." Then a fawning LAT profile of founder Reid Hoffman. And then LinkedIn's entertainment marketing manager Rob Getzschman workshops at Los Angeles Film Festival.

Then a phone-in show on local public radio station KPCC, on the "Pat Morrison Show", which was an extended advertorial for the social network (no direct link to the segment, but go to this page and search for "LinkedIn), and finish up tonight with a short story in NYT. Both KPCC and NYT has the same example of how someone used Linkedin in Hollywood: Robert Margouleff, a producer of Stevie Wonder albums, who lost a big sound-mixing client, and then found work again through LinkedIn connections?

Brooke Barnes takes couple of major digs at the site in the story: "As LinkedIn struggles to remain relevant in an ever more socially networked world"; and "known to most people as the Web site they begrudgingly visit every few months to approve be-my-contact invitations." Ouch.

Considering that LinkedIn only recently started allowing users to add pics in their profiles, and no other ability to adds pics, audio or video (part and parcel of any creative professional's portfolio these days), it still has a long way to go....