May 19 was a great day for social media enthusiasts as they watched the price of LinkedIn stock rocket. The commentators were almost breathless as they reported each extraordinary increase in price over the course of the day:
CNNMoney.com (@CNNMoney)
LinkedIn shares open at $83, an 84% premium over the IPO price of $45. http://CNNMoney.com
Thu May 19 14:03:04 2011
Breaking News (@BreakingNews)
Shares of LinkedIn Corp open more than 80 percent above their IPO price in public trading debut, continue rising http://bloom.bg/kS53YC
Thu May 19 14:15:57 2011
For CRM vendors, this may have been a slightly more challenging day. What do you say to businesses that have spent millions on your software to create internal electronic databases of customer contact information that require huge ongoing effort to keep current? What do you say when the alternative is having millions of customers and colleagues contributing their contact details and educational and work histories to a giant global database, especially when they do this voluntarily and without charge?
That’s the beauty of social media. People participating without compulsion and for their own reasons. Yet collectively creating something much bigger than the sum of its parts. Best of all, we’re only just beginning to see the potential in this type of collaboration. Perhaps it was the intuition of such potential that drove the stock price. Granted, once the initial euphoria dies down, the stock price will undoubtedly settle at what some consider to be a more realistic level. And LinkedIn will have to work hard to justify high stock prices over the long term. Regardless, the events of today were a nice validation for the folks at LinkedIn.
Can you imagine a comparable validation for the CRM system your firm uses?
I’m just sayin’…
[Photo Credit: ideagirlmedia]
Above and Beyond KM 