Who’s to blame for all the clutter appearing on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn’s adaption of Facebook-style functionality is driving new user behaviours which may be diluting the site’s appeal and usefulness. Tym Yee would like to see LinkedIn get back to business.
I’m a firm believer that social media inherently gives us the permission to post useless crap on the internet.
It’s a widely understood tenet of networked cultures – the more you put in the more you get out. That’s why I retweet commentary from my favourite V8 Supercar drivers, double-tap those pictures of your brunch on Instagram and have no beef with those who choose to post their baby’s every milestone on Facebook.
These deeds are examples of my personal investment in social media – time and energy which I believe is relatively well spent.
In turn, the information I receive and the interactions I partake in add value to my life in the form of meaning, identity, distraction and entertainment.
Without getting all existential here, it seems like a fair trade-off – a little bit of labour for a whole lot of life.
Unlike the above-mentioned social networks, however, I’ve historically considered LinkedIn in a different light.
LinkedIn has been the network I’ve relied on to get the sneaky scoop on new colleagues, archive my career achievements and advertise my skills to prospective employers.
The input required has always been relatively minimal and my use of the service is primarily utilitarian.
This is why for years my profile just sat there on autopilot connecting with people I believe I must have emailed once but probably wouldn’t recognise in the street (and a big ‘hello’ to the many hundreds of you out there).
But in recent times I’ve seen a shift in the LinkedIn narrative away from strictly business-related interactions towards the more social and personal kind.
Inspirational quotes, quizzes and irrelevant clutter now litter my feed in many forms. Although I personally consider these types of posts out of place here, seeing them in this context is unsurprising, for two reasons.
Firstly, like all social platforms, LinkedIn needs us to give it more. More information about who we are, more indication about what we’re into, more insight into how we behave and what type of messages we might be receptive to; it needs this data in order to effectively monetise us, which comes as no shock to all the marketers reading this.
To make building a marketable-to-profile appear more seamless we can do ancillary tasks such as share an update, upload a photo or publish a post.
We’ve been encouraged to do these types of things on Facebook for a lot longer than we’ve had the capabilities to do them on LinkedIn, so the transfer of these conventions is pretty clear.
Users are treating LinkedIn like Facebook because the tools are now pretty similar, and this gives the platform a better idea of who its users are.
But the other trend making our LinkedIn feeds appear like a hot mess is the fact that we’re not necessarily in control of how what we do appears in other peoples’ feeds. And there are risks here.
At some point during your career you will have had a water-cooler conversation with a co-worker about the importance of ‘building a personal brand’ for yourself.
You know the trope: dress for the job you want not the job you have; network; actively listen to others; ask questions; have an opinion; stand out.
This now happens online, too. LinkedIn was great for this in the early days because you were limited with what you could do – update your job title, send a request or write a quirky bio for example.
Back then, constructing a distinct work-related persona was a conscious effort. But as the network has grown and advanced, the way you construct your personal brand is inherent to the way you’re required to use the service.
You might scratch your head when your feed is populated with comments from distant connections on posts from random people half way around the world, but in the same way, you’re probably popping up elsewhere in the network without realising it.
Think about that. How many people are you annoying by simply doing something on LinkedIn? How irrelevant must you appear to those people?
Most importantly, think about how little control you have over this; where you appear, to whom and in what context. You might just be considered part of that clutter to someone else.
It’s a difficult line to walk. We need to engage with the network as a marketable user base but we can’t fall into the trap of applying Facebook conventions to a professional environment.
We need to be conscious of the fact that when we do choose to be active on LinkedIn that we have no idea how this will shape our professional image because we don’t control where we appear and to whom.
There’s no silver bullet solution and some may even argue that it’s all gone to the dogs already; however, I’d like to suggest we champion a new mindset moving forward: Let’s get back to business.
Tym Yee is a marketer and writer at Optus.
It is a debate with regards to the social network interface of Linkedin, which is pretty much Facebook’s. Personally, I only connect with close friends and family on Facebook, so Linkedin gives me an opportunity to ‘network’ with my business card holder; it has it’s pro’s and I have gained success in work, from doing so.
The con’s with Linkedin becoming more ‘facebookised’ are seeing endless posts, by the usual suspects of nothing but drivel. The self publishing function, whilst it does produce great posts and even some influential posts (Matt Barry). It can enable anyone to write an article and that results in a one sided agenda fest = ‘block’ or “not again?!”. Now, if Linkedin can fine tune the algo and perhaps offer a ‘rate this article’ function, we could see the future of business publishing right there. If every article in my feed was quality; I would look at it on my commute, everyday…
I wish Linkedin would add a function to contain how many job title’s you can have. If I was paid a dollar for the amount of people who are self described speakers, entrepreneurs, authors, motivators (add further buzzwords here), I would be a rich man. Self proclaimed CEO’s of a company of 3 people and zero revenue. Linkedin could tighten this up also.
I look at the various uses of Linkedin: recruitment, networking / selling, publishing / information and of course, with Lynda; learning. If it can be polished, it could be an absolute diamond.
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Interesting perspective, Tym.
Linkedin has become the Frequent Flyers lounge and what you are suggesting is something like the Chairman’s Club. Not in any hierarchical sense, but more in the fact that the overtly professional origins of Linkedin seems to be crowded out with In-flight magazines, Bintang t-shirts and thongs (sorry, sandals and socks). It appears that the environment is being increasingly cluttered and degraded in the name of utility creep and facilitating monetisation.
Of course you can set your profile to dial out the incoming noise, but as you mention and as other have successfully fought Linkedin within the courts, you have little control as to how your profile may be used to annoy others.
http://fortune.com/2015/10/05/.....ss-action/
I agree there is a place for a reversion to the rigidly professional origins of Linkedin. Whether that’s a LinkedinPro or a gap in the market for a new entrant.
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I like it as it allows me to share Richard Branson articles and Gary Vanyerchuck videos about why it’s good to fail. I also like “reaching out” to people I don’t know as I’d like to hit “500+” status.
Regards,
Standard-issue LinkedIn Wanker
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@Entrepreneur, innovator, digital evangelist, social media ninja.
You (madam / sir?) just made my day. Hilarious!
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yeah, that’s a great comment, +1 to the social media ninja
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I agree fully with Tym. LinkedIn has started to have all that same clutter which adds no value. When my linkedin feed has posts with headings such as “read this” or “this is really good” or “a great quote” or “latest update” I wonder who thinks that such posts will make me want to open them or that they will add lustre to their profile?
Please linked in, let’s get back to basics.
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Brilliant Ninja!
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when the bloke who frames my pictures endorsed me for digital strategy I realised LinkedIn probably isn’t a true barometer of talent
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A basic IQ test to qualify listing would get rid of the wanders. But Linked In would go too.
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This week on LinkedIn I remember seeing a great video on Snapchat versus Facebook, a huge amount of updates around International Women’s Day and the major issues around gender equality. I also noticed that this article has been shared 69 times already on LinkedIn. Seems like pretty decent content to me.
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LinkedIn seems to go out of its way to annoy me – from trying to force me to invite my entire email database as a “connection” to spamming my feed with posts from people I’ve never heard of asking me to pray for their sick child.
I’d like less social network and more professional service please.
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“Appropriate” is a completely subjective characteristic. There are some things which 99.9% of the people out there would consider to be in appropriate on LinkedIn. But overall, it’s a continuum.
To me, inspirational quotes are ok. However, I can’t tell you how many times I have seen the same quotes over and over, with different pictures, mis-attribution, etc. I mostly try to post my OWN “inspirational quotes”; i.e. things that are my own.
Brain teaser puzzles, math problems, women in bikinis or models who are “just promoting their ‘marketing’ business” really have no place on LinkedIn in my opinion. Neither do pictures of women who are wearing outfits that they would go out clubbing in (aka hooker wear). But again, totally subjective.
I have tried blocking the OPs so that I don’t see the crap I don’t want to see. However, LinkedIn only let’s you block so many people. In most cases, I am not even connected to the idiots who post that stuff. However, if someone I am connected to comments on any of these things, it ends up in my feed. I don’t want to unfollow them just because they posted a comment. So, why not allow me to block things my connections comment on?
Another idea: An inappropriate button or an “Dislike” button. YouTube has the “thumbs-down” option. It’s time LinkedIn and Facebook implemented it too.
Then, if there is stuff that has a lot of “Dislikes”, it won’t show up at the top of my news feed.
That’s another thing, LinkedIn is really disrespectful to me, a paying customer, because they don’t let me permanently see “Recent Updates”. They force me to view what they consider to be “Top Updates”, which is usually complete crap.
-Daniel
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