I increasingly don’t understand the purpose of Linked-In. They were a nice way of connecting to business contacts, but are and will always be a lousy way of doing anything else.
As they add ‘friend’ updates, news and so forth the real messages (which is who doing what) becomes lost, and the entire business less useful.
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Added 13 Jan 2009 Disclaimer
These opinions are my own, and not that of any of my current or former clients.
Hi Lance
I’ve found it useful to stay connected with people I’ve worked with and met over the years.
I do get requests to join my network from people I don’t know (‘spam’) now and then, but I’ve stuck with the rule that I will only add them if I know them, but give them my contact details if they want to meet up.
I’m increasingly using the LinkedIn Groups feature for an organisation I’m involved in (PDMA-NZ) as a means of initiating discussions (discussion forum), but to also attract new members from the wider LinkedIn network.
However, I’ve seen some LinkedIn groups where there are people are using as a means of self-promotion or selling services which is annoying, eg: “send me your email address and I will send you a copy of a report”.
So mixed experiences….
Cheers
David
Lance – I agree completely. Between spam requests from recruitment agencies and other companies trying to hock their services, and the random “noise” I get out of a handful of groups, my eyes glaze over.
I agree.
Ideally Linkedin would work as a supercharged address book, people update their own entries to stay current. That functionality alone is extremely valuable – especially for me as a journalist when I need to check contact’s job titles and similar almost daily. It would be even better if it tracked phone numbers as well.
All the other stuff is just fluff. Most is just worthless or distracting. Too much actually detracts from the value of Linkedin.
I’ve got some spam contacts because the invites arrived on my phone and the user interface defaults to connect – so before I know it that flaky sales critter can tell the world they are my friend.
This, in my view is a design error although I bet it was deliberately done this way by Linkedin.
It could be fixed if there was a simple way to disconnect from contacts. Linkedin really doesn’t make disconnecting easy. How annoying.
Can someone here tell me what benefits of putting one’s CV on linked-in? One thing that I’m sure that putting one’s CV on linked-in is that it helps Nigerian scammers to look for online identities and photos to steal and use for conning of lonely old ladies/men who are looking for love on the internet.
People who put their private info on linked-in are those who announced to the world, “Hey you there, please look at me. Check me out and see how fantastic my CV is. I’m cool ain’t I? “.
A good example is commentator above, Bill Bennett. I’m keen to know what benefits that Bill gets from listing his CV detail on linked-in?
I’m a journalist so keeping in touch with others is my main motivation for being on Linkedin.
Lurking is an option, but I get better access to other people’s information from having my own entry.
Having said that, I get maybe three or four writing jobs a year after people have read my Linkedin profile – sometime they find me there, more often they go there to check me out before getting in touch.