Forget Replacing Facebook and Twitter, Let’s Build a LinkedIn Competitor On-Top of Hive

Have you noticed a recurring trend in blockchain where teams build dApps to replace Facebook and Twitter, but LinkedIn gets left out of the equation? I get it; LinkedIn is comparatively smaller than the two aforementioned social media platforms, but don't underestimate it.

It seems everyone wants to go for the highest and ripest fruit on the tree. I get it. But, sometimes, the low-hanging fruit can taste just as sweet.

Blockchain web 3 competitors are coming; even Jack Dorsey is working on one (it's a protocol, but it will have a Twitter-like app). If you look around, every man, woman and child is trying to build their own Twitter competitor right now. As Elon Musk pours fuel onto the dumpster fire over at Twitter HQ, the sharks smell blood and an opportunity.

A simple Google search does yield some results from others who have tried to build a web 3 LinkedIn competitor. One recently launched on DeSo called Entre. It looks promising, but I am partial to Hive more than other blockchains like DeSo because of the simplicity in which it lets you build without requiring much upfront capital to get started.

And if you look at the numbers for LinkedIn, it makes for a compelling business case.

LinkedIn has over 830 million users. While not over the billion figure like Instagram and others, it's still a sizeable user base for a professional social network. Eight people are hired every minute and 101 applications every minute through LinkedIn.

While it is unrealistic to expect to build a LinkedIn competitor and get anywhere near these numbers, even just a tiny portion of users is all it takes to build something successful. This is where I believe Hive comes in. We already have the core pieces needed to build a professional social network.

Hive is poised for the Web 3 revolution that seems to be picking up steam. Admittedly, I wouldn't say I like the term Web 3. It conjures up images of the early days of the Web when people described their start-ups as Web 2.0 to get funding for apps with vowels dropped like they were making Apple products and not web applications.

So, maybe we skip the queue forming to eat Twitter and Meta's lunch; we go to the other queue with fewer people, and it is ripe for opportunity. In the coming weeks, I'll explore what would be needed and how building a LinkedIn-type network on Hive could be possible.

Am I crazy for thinking this should be a thing on Hive? I feel Hive is the social blockchain, and it's great for these types of things.