Martindale-Hubbell the next LinkedIn or Facebook?

Believe it or not I’m not trying to pick on Martindale-Hubbell. I just find some of the things they do or say amusing enough to share with you.

Read today on a listserv that Martindale-Hubbell, in trying to keep a 100-lawyer client in their directory, told the law firm that Martindale would be the new Facebook or LinkedIn for lawyers in due time.

Martindale is saying they will be the next LinkedIn? If that’s true, it seems to be totally irresponsible statement.

LinkedIn:

• As of March 2008, LinkedIn had more than 20 million registered users, spanning 150 industries.
• As of December 2007, its site traffic was 3.2 million visitors per month, growing at an annual growth rate of about 485%.
• Founded by co-founder of Socialnet.com & leading exec at PayPal and funded by Greylock, Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and the European Founders Fund, all tier one VC’s funding Silicon Valley companies.
• Reached profitability two years ago.

Martindale:

• No management team that I know of that has experience with building social networking sites.
• Unique visitors to Martindale.com down 13.4% over last year per Compete.com.
• Struggling with the launch of a corporate blog, something much simpler than software infrastructure and management team needed for successful social networking site.

As far as becoming the next Facebook? Seems rather silly. Makes as much sense as Martindale saying we’ll become the next place where all young lawyers will hang out to socialize online. Does anyone really believe that will happen?

Martindale has been a great company as a lawyer directory. But to try and create something that’s vogue today by boasting that we’re a new company that’s introducing Web 2.0 solutions is irresponsible and is only going to damage to reputation of the company.