I've recently taken the time to put some effort into my LinkedIn profile and while the experience does include some powerful game elements, it's still lacking in some fundamental places. With a few more game incentives, I believe LinkedIn could dramatically increase the time spent on the site, and the amount of connections a pro user collects.
Capping profiles at 500 to say 500+ is an interesting limit. The average number of friends a typical Facebook user has is around 130. LinkedIn likely used something like this as a benchmark, to try and drive up the average number of contacts a typical user may have. It doesn't seem to have worked all that well, because as of around 2008, the average number of connections for a LinkedIn user varies between 23 and 150.
In the book Game-Based Marketing, it says that Air Miles had a hard time trying to figure out how to cope with the large number of users that hit the 1M air miles mark - something they expected few to achieve. They began to roll out higher levels with bigger prizes for reaching several more million points. I would like to see LinkedIn take a similar approach, and find new rewards and ways to differentiate those users that are passing the 500 connection milestone.
The idea is that you should have a plan for a never-ending list of benefits that your users don't necessarily have to be told about, but will learn as others progress through the "game" of adding connections. For example, when you reach the 250 mark, you should be able to upload a more high-rez image of yourself. When you reach 500 connections, your status appears a little brighter in your connections' feeds. When you exceed 1,000, your profile gets a special border and when you reach 10,000 connections, you're featured on the LinkedIn homepage. But why stop there? When you reach 100,000 connections on LinkedIn, you get a lunch with a CEO of your choice. Of course, you'll have to find ways of verifying that these connections are genuine, and build security measures to stop people from cheating your game, but that's just the nature of creating a great game. As long as users know there are rules, and you enforce them, it will make winning all the more incredible and the story that much more powerful when somebody does finally win.
The above not only applies to LinkedIn, but it could just as easily apply to Facebook and Twitter. Facebook limits the number of friends somebody can have at 5,000. I know this because my friend Cindy is an MMA fighter who is constantly struggling with this cap. You shouldn't punish your power users by limiting them, but rather encourage them with incentives and ways to differentiate themselves, other than by a small number. Twitter limits their users by capping the number of ReTweets at 100+. I know this because I actually hit that limit during the earthquake in Ottawa when I made fun of the Canadian government. Twitter should let everyone know exactly how many people RT'd me, and give me a reward for it. If I get a reward for 100+ retweets, rest assured I will let everyone know and they will also strive for that reward, thus boosting the total level of user engagement.
Social networking is a great opportunity to promote yourself and boast about your accomplishments. With a few lessons learned from games, social networks could benefit tremendously.
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