This is fascinating to me - I know LinkedIn is valuable, and lots of people describe it as an essential account they can't get rid of. Meanwhile, I can't work out what LinkedIn is even for.
I update my profile there occasionally, but only to not have out-of-date info being spread. It occasionally produces a low-quality contact or recruiter spam. That's about it. My peers don't keep theirs up to date, my employers don't use it as a major hiring source, I don't trust endorsements there as meaningful or predictive. The interface is enormously frustrating, and it's not even a particularly good job board.
Is there just a parallel ecosystem of people who engage with LinkedIn so deeply and consistently that it forms a real network? Is software just a low-LinkedIn-use field? What on earth are people doing on that site?
I've had an account on LinkedIn basically since it was available to the public. I stripped my account bare years ago and never use it for anything. I log in about once per year to check privacy type settings and maybe change a password.
From my observation, LinkedIn has had three relatively distinct eras for the product.
In the early days it was very simple work & business networking, as you'd expect it to be. A profile + connection between people.
Then it tried to evolve into a more general purpose tool, including publishing content, some communication, etc.
Then having fully captured its market, and with limited upside growth potential on users, it went full spam abuse engine. They kept ratcheting up the user monetization focus regardless of the damage to the product quality, and it has never turned back from that path.
I think LinkedIn is a social hole, where people deposit an account and information out of perceived necessity, and then rarely engage the product again until they change or update their job situation. There appears to be a shield of social-work pressure that keeps it alive and updating. People use it, so people use it. The value proposition certainly appears to be mediocre over time. I've known very, very few people that have gotten much value from it, yet almost everyone I know (that is non-retired) keeps and maintains a profile at a minimum level.
I suspect now that social media has reached a point in the last ~5 years of all-connected status (just speaking of the US here), it's going to become increasingly socially acceptable to quit platforms that were previously regarded as necessary. More and more people will experiment with rejecting the pressure that has been maintaining these networks artificially. I've seen that happen increasingly on Facebook, and LinkedIn often seems to be a graveyard these days.
I don't see where LinkedIn can go from here, in terms of increasing its value to people. They're very clearly not going to return the product to a less annoying, basic use case that sparked the user build-out in the first place. They may find a few more clever ways to monetize their hostages though.
> I think LinkedIn is a social hole, where people deposit an account and information out of perceived necessity, and then rarely engage the product again until they change or update their job situation. There appears to be a shield of social-work pressure that keeps it alive and updating. People use it, so people use it.
This is a fantastic summary, and something I'm going to think about with non-LinkedIn contexts as well. At this point, I update LinkedIn so it won't be out of date, and keep it alive so I'm not confused with other people. (And because deleting the thing looks like more of a pain than having it...)
It's an entirely defensive posture, and I only go to LinkedIn to pour information in, rather than to take anything valuable out.
Actually, it makes me think of those stupid "communication for recipient only" email disclaimers. They probably don't carry any legal weight, but once they got common some companies worried that if they didn't use them it could be brought up in court as evidence that the communication was shareable - so now everyone adds 5-10 lines to their emails just to get back to where they were before the meme ever started.
Indeed, this summary seems fair.
I've been keeping a profile up to date mainly because I thought that potential employers might look me up and probably think me too weird if they couldn't find me on either Facebook or LinkedIn. I definitely don't want a Facebook account.
This seems pretty on point. Personally, I deleted my LinkedIn account ~a month or two ago after realising it serves no useful purpose for me, and earlier today deleted my Twitter account (also mostly unused). Never had a Facebook account, so no action to take there.
GitHub is the only "social" platform I still have involvement with, and that's because it's actually useful. ;)
I feel the same way. None of the people with whom I work directly make use of linkedin at all, yet whenever I attend a business event or networking something or other, people look at me as though I just sprouted a tail when I tell them I have derived zero use from linkedin. It has only annoyed me with its spammy emails and pernicious alerts to invite people I might know, I can't fathom how it is an enjoyable experience to use for anybody.
I use LinkedIn exclusively as an online resume with the occasional message to contacts asking for advice or asking about details for a job. The social aspect is lost on me, as well.
For a journalist the answer is simple: Finding sources. Many of us have accounts solely to find an expert in a field or a person within a company to talk to.
In developing countries like India and Eastern Europe, there are many posts with hundreds and thousands of likes and comments. There IS an ecosystem of users who engage with linkedin deeply. HR recruiters and entrepreneurs publish long insightful/motivational pieces which give them leads and publicity. Then there are also those '+1 if you're interested in this job' posts, which garner plenty of comments.
entrepreneurs publish long insightful/motivational pieces which give them leads and publicity
Serious question: does this actually work? I'm considering a "content strategy" to build brand trust, and one option is to publish on LinkedIn. I'm pretty new to using the ecosystem for anything meaningful though. I'm in the middle of my "free trial" of the +1 level (Pro? I forgot- whatever they try to get you to sign up for...).
But if published content actually gets read, or if at least people search there when trying to learn more about somebody, then I'll consider it.
I update my profile there occasionally, but only to not have out-of-date info being spread. It occasionally produces a low-quality contact or recruiter spam. That's about it. My peers don't keep theirs up to date, my employers don't use it as a major hiring source, I don't trust endorsements there as meaningful or predictive. The interface is enormously frustrating, and it's not even a particularly good job board.
Is there just a parallel ecosystem of people who engage with LinkedIn so deeply and consistently that it forms a real network? Is software just a low-LinkedIn-use field? What on earth are people doing on that site?