A Couple of Problems with Linkedin
How a social media platform loses its mojo
One only needs to a user of a platform such as LinkedIn to see how trends change the content of these sites. From its early days as a resource for connecting to individuals or organizations that were of interest or you were connected too, it was a great source of technical information for many varied disciplines. Having an interest in the electrical industry, it was a great way to reach out for a global view on trends, new products and disruptive technologies. Having a tight group of connections was almost seen as a form of elitism as it was seen as the antithesis of the growing social media platforms.
But something has changed. It now seems that LinkedIn has also become the home of those seeking as many connections as possible and the overabundance of short video’s giving advice. Unfortunately, the majority of those videos are advising on sales techniques, leadership or other spurious business knowledge. These topics are soft targets as they require nothing more than opinion pieces on a subject for a couple of minutes. Hardly a format gaining powerful insights. Now I am willing to admit that a bias may exist due to the age demographic I site in. However, experience does still matter and the cynic within me sees most of this as pointless self-promotion. What for though? Probably in an effort to gain even more connections.
Which leads me to the subject of personal branding. LinkedIn has become bombarded by these new style self-help gurus that want to teach us all how to improve our personal brand. In its basic form, a personal brand is ok if you are looking to promote your skill sets and are able to offer advice in an altruistic manner to help others. But this has become lost as a swathe of personal brand ‘coaches’ have marketed an offer that means that if you don’t sign up, you will ultimately miss out on future career opportunities. Please!
First of all, why do we need to commoditize ourselves to the extent that we are a brand? Humans are a diverse group of primates with different abilities, knowledge, interests and ideas. Yes, develop your own style and work on your strengths. But to sit in a group and be told about ‘personal’ branding all seems a bit wrong. Secondly, what dimension of personal brand that you promote on LinkedIn demonstrates your emotional intelligence, ability to solve complex issues, strategic thinking or how well you participate in group activities. They may be able to be done, but not easily.
I have no issue with individuals looking to make a living assisting others. However, the whole personal branding world looks almost exploitive with the lack of psychology or social science credentials behind many individuals. I guess the old saying about a fool and his money being easily parted still holds true. At least that’s how Tony Robbins makes how fortune.
Another topic that seems to come up a lot on LinkedIn is that of religion, or to be more precise, religious messages alluding to God, Jesus or Allah being great. At its very core, LinkedIn is a secular site and should not be a place for someone to express their religious beliefs. Happy to respect all individuals of any faith, but I don’t believe we should be scrolling through these ‘announcements. When you look at the Mission and Vision statements for LinkedIn, there are not a lot of reference to the site being one to inform the public that God is great.
Vision — Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.
Mission — The mission of LinkedIn is simple: connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.
I accept that things change an evolve over time and that there will always be a creep towards social media type site than that of a purely business networking tool. The challenge for those of us that do want some better content and less of the meaningless chatter will be to just put up with it, move on or create a new site altogether.
