(Blog-Off II Entry) All I Want for Christmas is to Love LinkedIn

LinkedIn, I don't want to be negative, so take the following comments as constructive criticism to bring out the best in you. I believe in you, LinkedIn, and one day I'm sure you'll show me you believe in yourself too. As the only large social media networking tool specifically built with B2B "linking" in mind, I am often disappointed at the lack of tools and cumbersome operating structure made available by your website.  While LinkedIn improvement wouldn't be my favorite present of this holiday season, it could be a heck of a stocking stuffer because I want so much for you to realize your potential. Hopefully the following will prompt introspection leading to personal growth.

I will outline three beefs (in the interest of time), I have with LinkedIn, that keep me from sharing my love with the site under, the auspices that it will motivate the site's developers.

Question & Answer

First, I have a serious issue with the Question & Answer area of the network. Although it is useful, expectation can sometimes promote disappointment. Question & Answer sharing between experts is an excellent idea to help people share information, but the search function can be difficult to navigate quickly and easily to inspire regular use. 

Additionally, there are often instances when Questions are "Closed" and I can't assist with some actionable and powerful insight I could offer. It makes me wonder how often this happens to me with questions I have asked. Closed questions wouldn't be such a big deal if the query didn't end up at the top of my search results; alas, closed questions still come into my stream of consciousness due to the unintuitive search ranking system.

Network Updates

My second beef is toward the Network Updates area on the home page. Similar to myself, it is obvious most people don't keep the application open to post their blogs, whitepapers and articles on a regular basis. LinkedIn attempted to remedy this by allowing access to Twitter, a more real-time collaborative site, but it doesn't work well for me. I can post from LinkedIn to Twitter without a problem, but I prefer to use Tweetdeck and the #In hash-tag - which is supposed to allow sharing between the two social networks - doesn't always work for me. That is a fail of epic proportion, in my eyes.

Additionally, I don't much care about some of the updates I do receive on my LinkedIn home page. Someone else's recommendation for a person in my network and "who's now connected to who" updates often don't have much value for me. Hasn't anyone at LinkedIn ever heard of the old axiom, "So What's In It For Them (SWIIFT)"?

Sales & Marketing Support

Finally, I would like the site to be more useful for sales. While I enjoy the ability to search for companies; view their employees on the network and view with whom we're mutually connected, prompting warm introductions, I am unimpressed that I can't become a fan of a company and receive regular updates. Facebook, on the other hand, has Fan Pages allowing for constant contact with a business. The problem is Facebook skews more toward consumer marketing than it does B2B collaboration.

I operate in the B2B sector, and would like to get updates from companies and be able to mass communicate with organization's employees that become a fan me, so that I can message them when I have a solution to an organizational need that can utilize my company's skill set.  In short, I would like some tools allowing for more solutions oriented networking.

The possibilities with LinkedIn are endless, and it is this thought that inspires these criticisms. I didn't have time to discuss the frustrations I have with the mobile application or the Groups section, but that gives me something to write about another day.

I would like to end on a high note, though. I am quite impressed with the "Jobs" section of the site. The search tool and ability to request a recommendation from your network makes this section robust and more opportunistic than HotJobs, Monster or CareerBuilder. Thank you for that, LinkedIn.

Are there issues you have with the site? Do you think I'm just complaining too much? I would love to hear what the body thinks about this issue.

Comments

[Manal Assaad]

Hey Therran,
I got to agree with you there; you make some great points.
I have only been on Linked-in for a few months and I have yet to explore it, for only one reason: its lack of what it solely preaches to stand for, interactive networking with professionals.
I don't understand why people always try to separate business from personal (social) life. It's like if you actually acted like a social human being who'd like to easily approach other people and talk to them and share with them your opinions and knowledge, then you're not professional enough. The only professional thing you can do is just post discussions about your blog/product/service etc.
If you go through the discussions in most of those groups, you'd see that most of that have no comments at all, and the rest are actually misplaced discussion topics, MLM schemes and spam.
But here is the upside of it: over the past few days, I've been having many great interactions with people mostly because I started (appropriately) updating my Linkedin status with more social content that actually allows feedback and encourages my connections to interact with me.
My guess is Linked-In (and most of the people in it) is afraid of turning itself into yet-another-social-network; but it has to understand that even professionals are normal people who want to share knowledge and expertise through socializing and casual communication.
I hope I didn't go way off topic here. I'd just love to see LinkedIn at its best and actually helping people realize their purposes of being there in the first place.
In the spirit of what I'm advocating, here's my linkedin link: www.linkedin.com/in/themanalyst and my email the.manalyst@gmail.com ; I'd love to connect with as many professionals as possible and allow for more interaction and better communication.
Regards to you all;
Manal

[Therran Oliphant]

Anelyn -

Send me your email address to therran@oliphantconsulting.com. I have a link to LinkedIn Employment assistance. As I said before, this is my favorite part of the site and I want to pass the best parts along.

Regards,
Therran

[Anelyn]

Thanks for your advice for my patients, Therran. Since this is the first time in aproximately 20 years that many of them are looking for work, they are not well versed in using SM sites. They will appreciate being made aware of the diversification value of using other Social Media sites.

[kay]

Thanks Therran for enlightening me...positive comments are appreciated and always good food for thought.

[Therran Oliphant]

Laurie:
I (Therran) actually wrote the post, but Laurie knows LinkedIn quite well. She has alredy helped me out with some things that I would like to use better.

Tim:
Thanks, and when I develop the site to rival LI, I will contact you to get the patents! :D

Demega:
I'm appreciative of your comments. I hope it helps you use the site more effectively.

[Demega]

Linkedin is a good networking site but it does challenge your patience with its layout. The construct is not conducive for the B2B network but it does a good job of connecting people. This is a great post to critcally identify opportunities for improvement. This is a great article to help users and Linkedin. Nice job Therran.

[Tim]

Therran, I love your posts. I love Linkedin as well. I have been using it to get more contact, although a lot of people frown upon connecting with those people you do not know. I get requests daily and do them as well. I also send out my address book and got plenty of requests that way. A lot of my connections are those people in higher executive positions, which works well for me. Keep up the good work. Check my blog out.

[Therran Oliphant]

Anelyn:

I was hoping the saving grace was the Jobs section. Although, I understand how they can be frustrated. LinkedIn has a low user rate. I don't know the statistics, but I think there is a higher percentage (than other SM sites) of people that are on this very rarely. Thus, the point of linkage is lost because of slow response rate, misunderstanding value, and genuine apathy. Sorry to hear about your friend's issues with job searching. Tell them to use all of the Social Networking sites in conjunction for this one. I think there is still value in the LI jobs section.

[Elizabeth Thomas]

Laurie - Your post could not be more timely. I actually believe LinkedIn is experiencing a resurgence... finally. Since it added a few new applications (mimicking Facebook-style functionality), the grandaddy of the social networks is becoming relevant.

(For those who are new to social media or about to enter the job market, this is the one social network you really need to be participating in.)

LinkedIn has different demographics from Facebook, MySpace and all the other social media networks. LinkedIn is older (68% are 35+), wealthier (66% make $60/year+), and better educated (72% are college grads), which makes it a perfect vehicle for new grads, non-traditional students and anyone who wants to start networking.

The Good News is that for people who enjoy social network connectivity but don't want to live and breathe it, LinkedIn is the ideal option. It’s safe and it’s strictly business. With so few interactivity options, you will never be faced with the “wow, I wish my client/boss/mom didn’t see that picture” dilemma, something that is all too common on Facebook these days.

LinkedIn works because it purposefully does less than Facebook and MySpace. The connections are controlled. It's genuinely easy to use. There is virtually no layout control and only minimal advertising. You don't have to worry about being tech-savvy or multi-media capable. The site is organized like a regular address book, something everyone knows and understands.

The Bad News is that with LinkedIn, the address book approach also makes it easy to treat it as nothing more than an old Outlook contact file with your personal profile on it.

For me, the reality is that LinkedIn offers amazing opportunities to grow a network, a reputation, a business or a career – whatever you need. Because it’s much less flashy and "in your face" than the other social networks, you definitely do have to dig to find the best stuff.

Thanks, Laurie. A well-written and insightful piece!

[Therran Oliphant]

Peter,

The only way I know of, to do mass connection requests, is to set up a group and ask the group members through a group question. You cannot message them through email or any other form of communication. It has to go through the LinkedIn Group Question portal. There are some heavier users than myself, here, that can hopefully give you more options. But that is the only one I know of.

[Therran Oliphant]

Janet:

Thanks for that extra beef. If the site is to promote people getting to connect, this is obviously not helpful. Thanks for adding to the list. By the end of this, I may need to have a BBQ for all this beef!

[Therran Oliphant]

Dave:

Thanks, and I do agree with many of your points. I have some rebuttals of my own.

1. I don't want it to be more like other sites; I want it to be "sticky" like other sites though.

2. The Q&A closed question thing is a bugger. I don't think I was too harsh on that section, but I would like to see them shade those QA's differently, or set them off as another search, or give some hypertext at the top of the query that reads, "see previously answered questions," rather than just mix them in with the other search responses.

3. With Sales and Marketing, we're coming back to the site being sticky issue. If I don't stay on it, I don't learn how to maximize it, so why wouldn't I be able to set up RSS Links, Alerts, FB, e al just make me leave the site and my whole point is if I LOVE it, then I use it with ubiquity...not as a side show.

I do greatly appreciate the well-formed opinions. I think this is one of the great things about SM... we may have to agree to disagree until I become a power user, such as you seem to be. :)

[Peter]

Do you know if there is a way to so mass connection requests ie everyone in a group rather than one person at a time. And also, is there a way to email to everyone in a group rather than having to copy and paste each person?

[Anelyn]

As a psychologist, I have several patients that have been "down-sized", "right-sized" , or otherwise "let go" from their employers. Therefore, in their currently unemployed states, they have used a variety of tools to assist them in obtaining new employment.

To date, I have heard many complaints regarding the capacities of LinkedIn in assisting with their job searches. The biggest source of discontent is that the networking opportunities obtained from this site have not been beneficial. This post has helped me understand their frustrations.

[Janet Barclay]

I'd like to add a beef to that list: When you want to connect with someone, you have to choose from a fairly long yet incomplete list of possible answers as to how you know that person. LinkedIn probably considers it a complete list, because "Other" is one of the options, but if you choose that, you have to go and look up the person's email address so you can enter it. I suppose that's to prevent people abusing the system, but they can easily get around that by simply clicking "Friend."

If they're going to offer different options, "We've done business together" should be broken down into "Client" and "Service Provider" or something along those lines.

This whole step seems rather pointless.

[David Benjamin]

Therran,

I don't often get to play opposing view however I will do so in this case.

While you bring up a couple legitimate points, I have to defend LinkedIn as a powerful networking tool when used effectively.

What I hear you asking is for it to be more like some of the other sites, why? LinkedIn is the oldest, most respected professional networking site used today. Sure it has flaws, they all do but there is plenty of right about LinkedIn that I don't think you addressed.

Why the Q & A might help themselves by allowing addition comments even when questions are closed, there was a reason to set it up that way. I don't see that as being a major flaw. Having closed comments populate early in your search demonstrate that the question has been asked which might help when thinking about creating a similar type question.

Sales and Marketing has always been a strength of mine when using LinkedIn. I don't want to become a fan of a company. You want to be able to follow them and their news? There are other ways to do that outside of LinkedIn, I'd recommend choosing those options (RSS feed, google alerts, find their FB Fan Page, etc)

I don't want to come across as a LI defender because as I've mentioned, it's not a perfect platform. I think as you spend more time on LinkedIn, you'll get more comfortable thus getting more benefit from its use.

[Therran Oliphant]

Toya:
Boredom is the number one reason it took so long for me to begin to attempt to utilize this site. I always thought it was just me, and that I needed to just learn how to start using it to begin enjoying the site. Thanks for the validation on that.

Darlene:
I would be happy to look at your posts. Send me the links! Thanks for the comments.

[Darlene Sabella]

This is a really great article, I always post my articles on linkin and I really don't get much feedback on that site. You are right on your points, but many of the programs on "add this" does nothing more the the same problem as linkin. It must be the learning curve. Take a look at my posts I would really apprecate it. Thanks for sharing.

[Toya]

Therran,

Appreciated this post. Yeah Linked-In has proven totally useless to me. I thought I was going to have these great networking opportunites and a legit place to showcase who I've worked for and what I have done. But, so far I can barely get past the login stage of it before I get bored and am ready to move on.

This was an excellent post. Thanks for sharing it.

[Therran Olipahnt]

Laurie: Thank you for the excellent info. I am going to check out your settings and seriously consider copying them. I guess I don't get enough use out of the system to muddle through finding some nuances...another beef perhaps?

I like the idea of choosing who gets updated with my questions, also. I might be looking for a solution to someone in my network and the mere question couldn't invalidate my "expert" status in their eyes - awesome insight...yet another beef *sigh*

Thanks again!

[laurie]

Therran -
I hear you especially on the Q&A beefs (closed questions rising to the surface).

I would have to agree that I find Linkedin a bit slower and dormant compared to the rapid development we are seeing in Facebook and Twitter applications (and Hootsuite and Tweetdeck are on a race!).

Of course I'm sure comparing the IT development budget of Facebook to Linkedin is like comparing the US Defense budget to Canada's.

A couple extra points for you -
1. You can modify which network updates you get and so turn off the 'new connection' updates. I have copy of my personal linkedin account settings on slideshare off my linkedin profile if that is of interest. (linkedin.com/in/ldillonschalk)

2. I find the privacy control pretty loose compared to Facebook. You can either turn on or off the status and profile updates but you should be able to choose what people get update. For instance, I want to share my status updates, events, blog, connections and answers to questions but not my profile changes nor questions. Sometime I don't want to share the questions I ask to my network. and sometimes I do but I want the choice.

Anywho.. great post. It should get a lot of reading.
Laurie.