Yes of course their IP is extremely important and they need to get this right - if you cant provide any useful meaning of the data to their customers then the data is basically useless. You can see how important the acquisition of Marianas Labs was in this regard and they basically changed their business model around this.
But there are other extremely bright people out there who can come up with similar algos and whatever else. They cannot however, produce a database of a billion profiles with a social graph. This requires a billion people to input their personal details and input their social connections - this is what Facebook is and 1PG were lucky enough to score a copy of the data. This is why the data is the gem in their crown and why the only real competitive threat is FB.
Agree LinkedIn is pretty useless. Its good for traditional job hiring where the job seekers can find roles, but useless for passive candidate targeting. Their data is based on a professional connections, not social/personal ones.
1PG Price at posting:
$1.31 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
