LinkedIn recently made a move to improve their messaging capabilities.  Sadly, they’re doing a very poor job of simply copying Facebook.

Facebook has been enhancing it’s messaging system for a while now and it’s actually pretty good.  I can message a friend, a friend list or an external email address.  I can add dozens of friends to a single message (I’ve added up to around 20) and the interface is clean and very easy to use.  The ‘new’ LinkedIn message center is simply a less functional copy of Facebook.

LinkedIn only allows up to 10 contacts on a message.  I can’t think of too many situations where I’d need more than a few people on a LinkedIn message but there are always exceptions and the fact that they’ve limited it is just silly.  They also don’t allow me (at least that I could figure out) to enter someones email address.  What if I want the message to go to an account that isn’t linked to my LinkedIn account, or to a co-worker that doesn’t have LinkedIn (yes, there are still those few).

One thing I did like about the LinkedIn message composer is the fact that it allows me to choose which linked email address the message is sent from.  Definitely something over Facebook…but then again Facebook doesn’t really need this.  I don’t want my work email address sent to people when replying to job opportunities.

Here’s a couple shots of the different messaging services for comparison:

I know devloping these kinds of services requires a lot of work and I appreciate that.  It’s better than what it used to be.  I just think if you’re going to blatantly copy another social networks messaging capabilities you need to do it justice.

As I said in a post a couple weeks ago about Facebooks recent valuation, I’m a Facebook user and think it has some great things to offer. I remember Facebook having some political groups and pages as far back as the 2006 elections where people could choose candidates and issues to support. I think that’s great. It’s important that politics start to play a larger role in college students lives since they’ll eventually be our nations leaders.

One thing I didn’t notice, maybe it’s because I don’t access Facebook as much lately, is that Facebook has become such a force. I mean really…when did Facebook start sponsoring Presidential debates?!? Are they taking one out of the YouTube book and hoping Google notices? What kind of disgruntled family would that be…Google buys a company Microsoft just invested $500,000 in.

Here is a small shot of the Facebook politics page!

Back to switching between debates and football!

Recent investments in Facebook by technology powerhouse Microsoft value the social network at a mere $15 billion. Microsoft invested $240 million for an estimated 1.6% stake in the company. I know Microsoft has some extremely deep pockets and as the world moves to a more web-centric focus (online document processing, business management, personal productivity, etc) they needed to do something relatively drastic…but really?!?

I don’t know about you, but I consider investing in a company and ultimately giving it a valuation greater than the combined GDP of Iceland ($11.38 billion) and Greenland ($1.1 billion) pretty drastic. Of course the GDP is an annual number and Facebook doesn’t quite make $15 billion a year but the thought of it being valued that high blows my mind. Part of that may be because I remember using the site in 2004 just after it expanded beyond just Harvard students and wasn’t anything overly impressive and ‘social networking’ as we know it today was relatively young.

I understand that Facebook’s valuation still doesn’t place it in the company of the Google’s, Microsoft’s and Exxon’s of the world with market caps ranging from $210 billion to almost $500 billion, but I still think that it is just slightly over-valued. To put things in perspective, the GDP of Greece is $256 billion and the GDP of Sweden is $290 billion.

Well that’s it for now, I just thought I’d share my thoughts.