Marc My Words: LinkedIn and Lynda—Perfect Together?

Like most LinkedIn members, I recently received this email ad:

The online social media giant, focused primarily on professional careerdevelopment, communities, and networks, has acquired Lynda.com, an onlineeLearning provider that focuses on skill building. Check out their video announcement along with this industry analysis of the deal.

To understand whether this marriage will work from a learningperspective, it’s important to first understand the partners.

LinkedIn, as you well know, has evolved into the primary social networkfor careers and jobs, and for connecting professionals with each other. It isrich with discussions, groups, and other features that can provide a treasuretrove of content and ideas that can help you in your work. But LinkedIn alwaysseemed to lack a way for members to skill-up quickly. Sure, they can ask theirpeers questions, read posts and attached articles, and hold conversations, butthere was no easy way to access integrated training on a specific topic.

Enter Lynda. Focusing on software, creative, and business skills, itprovides thousands of courses developed by an army of outside contributors. Lyndasays it vets its “authors” for teaching skills and subject matter expertise, andcarefully monitors subscriber reviews and purchasing decisions.

This seems like a natural. Adding a training and skill-developmentfunction to LinkedIn can only enhance its value as the go-to onlineprofessional networking site. It also provides LinkedIn members more reasons touse the site over the course of their careers, not just when they are lookingfor a job.

That said, here are six things to watch out for:

1. Course quality. Despite assurances,there are surely courses in the Lynda “library” (I like this term much betterthan “catalog”) that are poorly designed, inaccurate, boring, etc. Lynda mustput quality front-and-center in their value proposition. This means constantly rejectingbad products and culling the library of courses that have outlived theirusefulness or should never have been there in the first place, even if they are popular, and replacingthem with better product.

2. Business model. Lynda is profitable. Itslegion of course authors are independent contractors, paid in part based on thenumber of “views.” The good news is that in paying contributors, Lynda hasleverage over the quality of what they will accept (how well they do this iskey). However, this requires Lynda to charge for their services, and while thishas been successful for them, it is contrary to the expectations most LinkedIn membershave—justified or not—that it all should be free. Perhaps a premium LinkedInpackage (paid) might have unlimited access to the Lynda library (with possiblespecial deals for organizational memberships).

3. Talent management. It isn’t far-fetchedthat LinkedIn might want to get into the talent management business to roundout its suite of career development, networking, and training. It could focuson competencies but this would require rigorous needs, capability, andperformance assessments, tight cooperation with professional disciplines, aswell as specific, targeted training. And, the training would have to be morethan just videos, focusing much more on certification (see next). Issues oflearning management (e.g., LMS), security, and reporting would also have to beaddressed. A tall order.

4. Certification. Lynda does not offer anycertification, at least not yet. This is probably a good thing in thatcertifying performance based just on video-based courses is loaded withproblems, and because Lynda itself is not claiming to have the subject matterexpertise to be a credible certification agent. Will legitimate certification agenciesand academic institutions connect with Lynda to provide accredited courses? Weshall see.

5. Overall strategy. LinkedIn works as asocial networking and collaboration site first.Its strength is informal learning. Thisshould not change. If it starts to look like a training site, if coursesovertake networking, the uniqueness of this marriage would be lost and I’d lookfor a divorce. That said, it would be awfully nice if LinkedIn members andgroups could easily integrate selected Lynda offerings directly into theirdiscussions and other activities.

6. Lynda asa separate service. In addition to enhancing the LinkedIn experience, it’slikely Lynda will remain a stand-alone online training provider. As such, itjoins a chorus of companies seeking to provide additional training options toorganizations, or, in some cases, replace internal training efforts. Thechallenge for the training industry is not how to keep clients and companiesfrom going around training departments to Lynda (too tempting; they most likelywill), but how to be sure simply watching Lynda training videos doesn’t providean easy (and invalid) path to performance certification.

I’veheard Lynda referred to as everything from the “YouTube of training” to a realbreakthrough in education access. Time will tell, but there have been manysimilar efforts in the past and most results have been disappointing. ForLinkedIn, the Lynda.com acquisition looks like a very good move to provide moreservices for members rather than simply being seen as an online resume. Itexpands their learning and performance ecosystem. But if LinkedIn treats training like they treatendorsements, which have become quite trivial (in my view), the courses willbecome increasingly meaningless. It’s not how many courses you have; it’s how valuablethey are.