People's vanity is a great driver for marketing

I just got a message from Linkedin.com thanking me for being part of their community and informing me that I was one of the top 1% most viewed profiles.

Sounds like I just made the dean's list.
What a great piece of marketing!

In today's digital media everyone is interested in likes, follows, pins and any other metrics that measure the reach of their profiles and the content they post. With this marketing activity, Linkedin has recruited 2 million people to spread the word. It will be no surprise, when we hear they grew from 200 million to 1 billion.

People's vanity is a great driver. All these metrics are about vanity combined with direct response, just like the click-though for online ads. Regardless of the audience you're targeting, any new online service needs a "self gratification" metric for what they're doing! A metric that feeds people's need for self promotion and drives service adoption, usage & sales.

I hope Linkedin didn't count the number of times I've viewed my own profile, when putting me on this list :)