Looking into the world of social media, the main topics on everyone’s mind revolve around Twitter’s impressive IPO showing and Snapchat’s rejection of $3 billion. Not surprisingly, LinkedIn, the professional networking site, is usually left out of the conversation.

Although LinkedIn may not always be the social network of choice, it might be the most valuable social network in terms of financial potential and customer value.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, LinkedIn is not solely a news source or strictly for entertainment. It is a database of professional profiles of people and companies.

LinkedIn’s separation from other social networks has been a major strength for the company, especially as talks of a tech bubble have started to bounce around. People wonder how a company like Snapchat can turn down $3 billion when it does not have any revenue to date.

While sites like Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter reach massive audiences, and obviously have the potential to make money through advertising, what value are they really offering customers? Who’s to say that that these platforms are not simply a phase?

Unfortunately, at this point, no one can give a definite answer. However, with LinkedIn, it is hard to deny the value it is providing. Companies use it to find potential employees and many employees use it to find jobs they may be interested in applying for.

I know a number of my peers have been contacted by firms’ human resource departments to set up an interview solely because of their LinkedIn profiles.

The different value that LinkedIn is providing its customers is clearly evident in its revenue stream. Fifty-three percent of LinkedIn’s 2012 Q4 income is from recruitment accounts that companies purchase to improve their brand, search or talent acquisition offerings on LinkedIn, according to its quarterly reports. Another 20 percent of its income was from subscriptions.

Inversely, in the first quarter of 2012, 82 percent of Facebook’s revenue was from advertising, according to MSN Money.

As these big social networking sites continue to progress, while some question where sites like Facebook and Snapchat are going, LinkedIn’s vision is much more clear.

On Nov. 18, LinkedIn unleashed a new feature called showcase pages. These pages allow businesses to display different aspects of a company such as a product or brand. For example, Microsoft has made a showcase page solely for its Office suite product.

David Thacker, vice president of LinkedIn’s marketing solutions products, believes that showcase pages illustrate how LinkedIn is now more than just a recruiting and employment website, according to Tech Crunch. LinkedIn is now offering services that can be used for human resource and marketing purposes.

CEO Jeff Weiner has gone further in the effort to diversify LinkedIn’s significance by announcing that he will use the recent addition of LinkedIn today, LinkedIn’s new social news reading component, to act as a content marketing platform and sell sponsored posts, similar to BuzzFeed.

Ultimately, LinkedIn has used its unique professional employment database, marketing abilities and social news-reading platform to show that it is a social networking site that can offer more value than simply reaching a large audience.

Furthermore, it has been one of the only social networking sites to make most of its money from something other than advertising revenue.

In business terms, LinkedIn has made itself a competitive advantage. While news sites seem only to be interested with Snapchat’s recent story, Wall Street, which always seems to know first, has certainly taken notice of LinkedIn.

Wall Street is currently enjoying a stock price hovering at about $224 as Facebook and Twitter are still below the $50 line.

Perhaps this huge gap in stock price can be attributed to the fact that unlike other social media platforms, LinkedIn has clearly shown the public a viable business model with a sustainable future.

Bram Berkowitz is a senior advertising and entrepreneurship and emerging enterprises major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at [email protected].

Published on December 5, 2013 at 1:39 am