Believe it or not, it’s only been about 18 months since I last exploded about the world’s least important social network, Linkedin. Because anything before March, 2020 seems like a decade ago, I thought I hadn’t ranted about them in quite a while.
Nonetheless, I’m committed to the rant now, too late to stop. So if you’re ready, let’s get rolling.
LinkedIn is no one’s idea of social.
I don’t interact with anyone I know on LinkedIn. Occasionally a distant contact will reach out to me, but the conversation — if there is one — quickly moves to text, call or email I despise LinkedIn messaging because about 98% of my LinkedIn messages are unsolicited. And they aren’t very relevant to me.
I know there are a small number of “influencers” who manage to make hay by pushing content to their LinkedIn feeds. I’m not saying it’s impossible. It’s just not possible for a person without an established name to build a name for themselves using only a LinkedIn feed presence. Let’s be honest about that.
And, if LinkedIn isn’t a good source of original content or updates about the people you know, if it’s not a good messaging platform, I’ll say that overall, it’s not a good social network.
LinkedIn has betrayed its original purpose.
When LinkedIn launched, its goal was to help people connect online to the people they knew in real life. It was fairly difficult to connect to someone you didn’t share some sort of real-world connection to. That was the point – build a network online to mirror your offline one. But, at some point after the company was bought by Microsoft, the company focused on selling subscriptions to its Premium service. Premium lets you connect with and message anyone. That’s the opposite of LinkedIn’s mission as it originally existed. Because Premium is affordable, practically every person selling snake oil or some other scam has jumped on it. I’m bothered by them daily and I’m sure you are too.
LinkedIn isn’t really even a great hiring site anymore.
Having done some hiring recently, I found that LinkedIn’s job listing tools aren’t really cost-effective or smart. I wasn’t able to really target the people I wanted to hire and the cost was much higher than other alternatives. I wasn’t pleased with the experience at all.
I’ve always thought that if LinkedIn had any purpose in life, it would be to help connect employers with qualified applicants. I guess it wasn’t.
Prove me wrong.
I don’t know anyone who really likes LinkedIn. I know some folks who think it’s better than it is, and they don’t hesitate to recommend it based on the idea that people could use it to connect, to reach new customers, and to hire new people.
You’ll find sites like this one which claim LinkedIn is a top-10 network, but if you dig deep they’re usually talking about membership numbers, not time spent on site. Here’s a site that says that while people can spend up to an hour a day on Facebook or Instagram, they spend less than one minute a day on LinkedIn. And, I bet if they filtered out time spent telling people to leave you alone, it would be even less.
But hey, I have my opinion. I dare our readers to prove me wrong. Show me that people are actually engaging with LinkedIn, not just swatting away spam. Show me how it’s possible to make LinkedIn the core of your online identity. Even better, show me someone who’s done it. I’d love to feel like there was some life in LinkedIn, but I have to be honest, I am expecting very few comments.
