Sometimes it feels as if LinkedIn has been with us as long as the internet itself but hasn’t evolved at all. Let’s just call it Social Networking 0.0.
I appreciate that it may be much more than an allowance of reasonably dressed job-seekers flapping their apocryphal CVs in front of a reasonably interested audience, but it hasn’t done a thing for me. Perhaps it’s a social network for mingers.
Furthermore, it really annoys me whenever I receive an email from the network that starts with the word ‘Congratulations’ whenever a contact agrees to connect with me. It’s not as if I’ve been contacted by a Nigerian bank or a lottery based in Geneva.
Twitter I understand. I’m a long-time champion and consider myself my own personal Jesus, er, newspaper. A mixture of quotes, tech stories, causes, opinion, promoting other people’s ideas and my own work (only 10% of the time, honest, guv) means I have an excellent network.
Facebook is more baffling. While I believe it has squirreled away more of my personal data than a hibernating rodent in December, I still can’t quite press the deactivate button. It occasionally unearths an overlooked friend and the inbox can still contain interesting material.
But LinkedIn doesn’t. I could have an inbox of 30 messages for all I know and I’m convinced that none of those messages will be particularly interesting, rather convoluted threads of groups that I have been foolish enough to become part of, while not wanting to hurt the feelings of those who have set them up.
Then there’s the slew of people asking for me to recommend them on the site. Never has such an easy task pissed me off so much, especially if they do ask me to do so after I’ve ignored them… for reasons of my own.
It doesn’t matter how tenuous the connection, the requests still keep coming. One of them even asked for a recommendation after I’d got him a job and then acted like a prima donna before he was sacked. It’s as if in LinkedIn nobody can hear you scream.
But others I respect swear by it. They say it is more ‘professional’, that they can ‘link’ to a higher demographic and they aren’t distracted by personal updates. They can ‘reach out’ to people they want to contact and take things ‘offline’ when they want to talk business.
No doubt, but I’m not falling for it. I suppose I’ll update my profile at some stage and may begin to engage with LinkedIn, but at the moment I’m all LinkedOut, mm mm, oh, oh, yeah yeah!
Monty Munford has more than 15 years' experience in mobile, digital media, web and journalism. He is the founder of Mob76, a company that helps tech companies raise money and exit. He speaks regularly at global media events with a focus on Africa, writes a weekly column for The Telegraph, is a regular contributor to The Economist, Wired, Mashable and speaks regularly on the BBC World Service.
