LinkedIn's New Survey Based Revenue Stream

Social media sites are all searching for ways to make a profit, especially in a stalled economy, and LinkedIn may have found an alternative to pegging their hopes on ad revenue: surveys. LinkedIn is opening up its network of affluent professionals as a sample audience for business-to-busi ness research, according to Ad Age.

Facebook also pays members to participate in surveys and profits from selling access to its successful audience, but LinkedIn is pinning more of its revenue hopes on survey-based business. Says Ad Age:

For LinkedIn, the survey route looks particularly promising, in part because of the network's ability to sort the sample according to specialized areas of expertise, experience, seniority and geography, said Dan Shapero, director of business services.

While their profitabilty may be uncertain, the popularity of social networks continues to grow. Last week, Forrester Research pronounced social networks to be "mainstream," with 75 percent of web users participating in some sort of social media.

LinkedIn did not say what percentage of revenue it hoped to gain from surveys, except that it would be a "substantial part" of their business model, which also includes advertising, subscription fees for services, job listings and "enterprise solutions."

Other social networks depend more fully on advertising for their revenue stream. While survey-based earnings don't seem like a complete business model in the making, capitalizing on the coveted audiences of social networks in this way may become more attractive, especially as competition for ad dollars online starts to get more intense. According to Ad Age:

Mr. Shapero said he believes the B-to-B survey market is "capacity constrained," which means much research never gets done because of sample shortages. That's why he thinks LinkedIn may be able to quickly establish a dominant market share as well as grow the market.