LinkedIn: The Workplace Favourite

LinkedIn is a social media tool that was launched in 2002 and is currently owned by Microsoft. It is commonly used by several workplaces, from schools to hospitals. With over 550 million professional profiles, LinkedIn is one of the most popular sites for job advertising and personal professional profiling.

Users as young as 16 can create a LinkedIn Profile.

Main Tools

The main tools LinkedIn has that can be used by users include:

• The use of the ‘Connections’ tab that allows you to see possible organisations that you can apply at, organisations that have visited your profile.
•  The ability for recruiters to find target employees using the LeadFuse tool.
• The ability for companies to purchase followers of high-quality profiles in order to look more appealing to users, using the tool named Buy Followers Guide.
• The eLink pro tool which allows companies to buy automatic visits to profiles so that profiles are more likely to visit their company profile.
• Various other tools are present, that allows more reach by companies through advertising, and more opportunities displayed to users. Click here to see a full list of tools that may help your company or future.

Competitors

There are numerous competitors to LinkedIn, some of which include Facebook and CareerBuilder. Overtime, though Facebook is a more social platform, companies have used Facebook to view recruits’ profiles and social background. However, due to its lack of concrete detail on professional background, LinkedIn is the preferred platform by companies.

When comparing LinkedIn to CareerBuilder and other business-oriented social media platforms, LinkedIn’s tools of video livestreaming services for businesses and ‘Ask Me Anything’ events (often streamed) gives a deeper insight to users seeking a job, making it a better choice of media than other contenders. The tool of allowing voice messaging between users and companies, and the ability for companies to view their visiting profiles has created a strong and smoothly integrated advertising network in LinkedIn, being a strong competitor to platforms like CareerBuilder which is often cluttered with ads, decreasing user satisfaction.

Further, LinkedIn can be used on phones, being readily accessible to users, while platforms like CareerBuilder cannot. Further, LinkedIn’s accessibility has increased as this Microsoft-owned company has now been integrated into Microsoft Dynamics 365, accessible on phones. While both CareerBuilder, LinkedIn and many other business platforms are simple to use, the exclusive features of LinkedIn make it a business and user favourite, and an important and at times inevitable part of one’s professional life.

Security and Privacy

Posting professional and personal information on LinkedIn has raised various privacy and security concerns. Some include the presence of fraudulent companies, phishing campaigns and the need to upload highly personal information in order to have full advantage in the advertising network whilst decreasing security safety. Whilst many methods are available in order to increase security and privacy, including two-factor authentication and the ability to report possible fraudulent companies and phishing campaigns, users are still encouraged to use LinkedIn with caution, and not upload personal phone numbers, email addresses or home addresses. 

Some Redemption for TripAdvisor

The $1.022 trillion business, online travel agencies, has been the ‘go-to’ agencies when seeking travel needs, and comfort too for that matter. Through reviews, recommendations and links to go to best-offers for hotels, restaurants and attractions, viewers achieve what is, or at least what they believe is, the best offer when planning those once-in-a-while, I-really-need-this vacations. But for this, the site they use can be a point of dilemma. The most popular, Booking.com, is a fierce competitor to Expedia, also competing with our personal favorite, TripAdvisor the notorious travel agency that incites so much discussion. However, despite it notoriety, recent study finds that TripAdvisor may not all be worthy of being the third-most popular amongst these 3 agencies.

Recent opinion has suggested that TripAdvisor and Booking.com seriously outdo Expedia. Certain aspects that make TripAdvisor likeable include that though it is a small company, to keep up with competition it has moved to supplying tools that allow users to book for novel attractions, such as cruises, museums, etc, along with supplying the ability for instant booking. It also has one of the highest amounts of reviews across all attractions (661 million and counting), with many active members (456 million monthly users and counting!), creating a database that provides a general certainty amongst many users despite the prevalence of fake reviews. This database is especially one of the qualities that Expedia lacks.

Similarly, Booking.com has received acclamation due to its policy of making revenue by charging commission to hotels, with relatively less littering of adverts. Further, it has been recently initiating actions to increase exposure to Asian markets, something Expedia should consider.

In total, TripAdvisor and Booking.com may be your best hope when planning your vacation. Searching through all sites is helpful, but these two are worthy of being set apart. Our astonisher here, TripAdvisor, has elevated some of the recent controversy it has incited, but despite all, users must realise that any travel agency is rarely perfect. In saying that, giving a just amount of credit, I suppose, can’t do too much harm.

To see a full report on the performances of these three companies, visit a full article here: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4214232-expedia-booking-and-tripadvisor-compared

TripAdvisor: Can we Really Trust the Reviews?

Called the ‘Google of the travel world’, Tripadvisor.com is an online social media platform that allows users to book, review and view information about hotels, restaurants, flights, cruises and other prominent attractions in various countries. TripAdvisor was established by Steve Kaufer, Carter Nicholas and Langley Steinert in 2000, headquartering in Needham Massachusetts, USA.

When planning a vacation or a trip, people often find themselves in the inevitable situation of browsing through TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor has become one of the most popular internet-based travel company worldwide, attaining about 730 million reviews on 8 million different accommodations and attractions in 2018 alone, generating $1.62 billion USD in revenue.

However, despite its popularity, and despite the company claiming to check over illegitimate or offensive reviews, the ease of creating fake reviews on the website has been proven time and time again. The limit of writing fake reviews was tested by VICE reporter and professional writer Oobah Butler, who managed to make a non-existent restaurant named The Shed the #1 rated restaurant in the whole of London on TripAdvisor just by writing reviews of it on Tripadvisor. Butler displayed the ease of a) Making TripAdvisor think you have a real restaurant, and b) Making you seem better than a Michelin star winning restaurant through reviews. 

Since then, Tripadvisor has denied such claims, saying that fake reviews could not sway the rating of a real restaurant. In all, TripAdvisor can be arguably a useful tool to see the overall view of an attraction, but viewing other websites and information pages on the same attraction is a must. It is recommended to take everything you see on TripAdvisor with a general serving of salt.

A conversation that may be more 

realistic than we expect.