Is LinkedIn the next business journalism powerhouse?

Shafqat Islam writes for Advertising Age about how LinkedIn could soon be a major player in business journalism.

Islam writes, “This past year LinkedIn rolled out a game-changing feature, the Influencer program, which has made it a go-to site that offers far more than just the world’s largest virtual Rolodex.

“The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and other top-tier business publishers should be worried. LinkedIn is arguably the world’s largest business publication (or any publication for that matter). With a registered audience of more than 230 million, LinkedIn has more than 50 times the number of registered users as the Financial Times. LinkedIn drives around 10 billion page views per month, compared to 133 million for The Wall Street Journal. LinkedIn had 116 million unique visitors last quarter, compared to 13 million average monthly uniques for The Journal.

“LinkedIn can drive traffic back to individual articles via the site’s Today’s News hub. However, that traffic to publishers pales in comparison to the enormous number of page views being driven to the original content that the site is now creating and distributing through its Influencers program.

“This program has allowed the company to position itself as curator of high-quality content, pushing out personalized content to a vast audience of global professionals.”

Read more here.