I’ve tried. I’ve tried several times. And every time I try looking at LinkedIn I always end up staring at it and thinking, “What is the point?”
OK, I do get part of it, that it’s sharing your network of contacts so that everyone can benefit. But to me it seems like a lot of overhead for an as-yet-undefined benefit. It’s Yet Another Database To Maintain.
That, and I get frustrated because there doesn’t seem to be a neat way of saying that I’m a freelancer, working for myself and not a company, and that I want to connect to people in that capacity. See what I mean?
So are you using LinkedIn? How do you get value from it? What am I missing?
[Update 30 March 2011: I’ve closed comments on this post, and on the follow-up post, So LinkedIn is a giant Rolodex, eh? You can continue the conversation at my most recent post, Getting to grips with LinkedIn.]
I do get LinkedIn, and understand the need for multiple social networks. One for personal contacts such as friends and family, one for work/commercial-related contacts such as colleagues and business partners. The kind of updates that you want to push to both are very different.
It’s a place for unemployed people to hang out and talk about themselves. The title hawking is farcical and the bragging is ugly.
LinkedIn does feel very Web 1.0 and I absolutely agree that it’s a pain in the ass to use. I think people only use it because they feel like they have to for professional reasons.
Where’s the hipmunk for business networking? How would it look like?
Stil: I love linkedin 🙂
Before linkedin, i had worked at companies alongside talented, smart, skilled and hard-working colleagues and then ultimately lost touch with them as we all moved on in our careers. I have no idea what these people are up to, no way to contact them, and no way to continue to share information with them.
In a LinkedIn world, each colleague or business associate i meet with i connect with and keep their contact details up to date for all the future.
For me linkedin is like a future proof rolodex of all the great people i have ever worked with, and a way to connect with these peoples skills, knowledge, colleagues and network with social recommendation to ensure it is almost 100% spam-free.
I dont think LinkedIn is an everyday usage application, but as an as-needed service its really useful for me. I have found value in LinkedIn to the point i am also happy to pay as a premium member $50 per month (and the company picks up the tab so its win-win).
LinkedIn is version 1.0 of a good idea. Its key fault is that it records that I know you, but has no context or ability to measure strength of relationship, as Hashable does. (Disclosure, my fund is invested in Hashable). This strength of relationship aspect is important, and comes from documenting the encounters such as #dinner, or #intro, and can be derived algorithmically once you digitize the interactions. Hashable is thus the useful version of what I had hoped LinkedIn could be but can’t.
LinkedIn simply knows that we met at some point in the past. I have used LinkedIn from the getgo and find it useful for one simple task, being a place where I can get current and updated contact info on people I have met. It is like a live Rolodex and has allowed me to catch up with people I knew many, many years ago and lost contact with. But that is it — simple utility for me, but not a $1bn idea.
I had similar frustrations when I was using LinkedIn – as John Frankel put it, it’s a “place where I can get current and updated contact info on the people I have met” — it’s not an efficient networking site.
****Shameless plug for my networking service*****
I founded my company (Meeteor) to explicitly address that gap.
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We launch in about 48 hours, so check it out — we’d love your feedback!
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I am still waiting for the benefits of being Linkedin !
“Well, just because something is the second most-popular doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to work for me.”
I looked at your LinkedIn profile and it appears you use it plenty. Why would you spend so much time on your LinkedIn profile if you don’t get LinkedIn?
Back to the popularity issue. I hear what you’re saying. (I’m not on Facebook.) But If you’re freelancing it helps to have a bigger market. LinkedIn is a huge market of people who want to do business with freelancers, and it’s growing fast.
People go to LinkedIn to search for my expertise, and they show me daily stats of this! I got great offers through Monster.com back in the 90s but LinkedIn is 100000x bigger, that’s one way of looking at it. I recommend you check out some groups on there, but consider joining groups where your ideal clients go, then get to talking about what they want, don’t want, etc. Then figure out how to turn off the “daily digest” email notifications. 😉
I didn’t “get” LinkedIn until I was working at a job where I was able to observe the hiring process. When we wanted to hire a new developer, the first thing my manager did was hop on LinkedIn and do a few searches. The fact that I wasn’t on LinkedIn at the time weighed heavily on me after that.
What’s the advantage? People do what’s easy. LinkedIn makes it easier for someone to hire YOU.
As a user of LinkedIn from the very beginning I really appreciate the ability to maintain a professional network there, totally separate from Facebook, Twitter or any other social network. I really enjoy to see updates on former colleagues from a few years ago. As a manager I also always check references of candidates on LinkedIn especially to see what experience and skills they report on their profile (as it is sometimes different from what shows up on their resume).
[Other shameless plug coming up :] But I find it difficult to maintain/assess skills on LI profiles so I created my own offering: MySkillsMap to focus specifically on tracking professional skills and the context where these skills have been used. I actually looked into integration with LinkedIn but they replied that the currently have a closed set of integration partners. That I think is too bad as LinkedIn could really go to the next level should they open up their platform.
I recently went from employee to freelance, and then I discovered this oddity you mention, that LinkedIn is not made for freelancers. I had to create a “company” and call it “independent professional” in order to slot my freelance work into it. Nor could I link to the companies for which I have been genuinely working as a freelancer, because I am not an employee and therefore do not have a company email.
Strange that LinkedIn should be so out of sync with the reality of the labour market. And I’m not talking “clunky UI” here but a major mismatch between its data model and the structure of the domain in which it operates.
@Matthew Hatton. I agree that LinkedIn serves 90% as the tool of choice for headhunters and their prey. It’s the simplest way to dip your toe into the waters of the job market without actually diving in.
I read the article from Hacker News.
Holono was made for people who hate LinkedIn so I figured like minded people may find it interesting.
Next time I’ll have a “Shameless Plug” message midway.
LinkedIn=Business. Facebook=Friends and Family.
I’ve gotten the majority of my contract jobs from LinkedIn as well as my current full-time job. It’s a great resource — you just have to know how to use it.
LinkedIn is one of the few things I *do* get. It’s an incredible database of professional career activity. I check it *all* the time when hiring, interviewing, prospecting, working with vendors, see what friends and colleagues are up to, etc.
Goodness! All these comments overnight. Thank you. I guess that’s what happens when things are posted at Hacker News. Thanks, Big.
I’ve just started my Monday morning, and I have some errands to deal with before I can read everything here. But I will do so later today.
[Comment deleted. Abusive, fake email address.]
Just to add to the noise (though hopefully some signal here):
– as Karen Dempster noted, it’s a useful gateway to more sophisticated social networks and social network use. Clients I work with – government, military and bigger businesses feel more comfortable with the notion of a “business only” network. It’s the social network for people who wear grey suits.
– it’s definitely a Rolodex for me. As my use has become more sophisticated, I’ve actually trimmed back my connections there. The signal:noise ratio is good when used this way.
– though many of the groups on LinkedIn are now infernally polluted with pitches and recruiters, there are many that aren’t. If you find them and use them well, they can be gold.
– same goes for Answers. Ask the right questions and Quora and its ilk start to look low value in comparison.
[Comment deleted. Abusive, fake email address.]
peter viertel
you are clearly from linkedin. linkedin, you suck and so does your social media manager
@ladygaaga: I’ve deleted two of your comments, leaving only one standing despite what is clearly a fake email address. Care to explain your evidence for Peter Viertel working for LinkedIn? Quite frankly I expect a better standard of behaviour around here.
@ladygaaga I looked up Pieter Viertel on Linkedin and it says he works somewhere else. Maybe you should have tried that… 😉
Haha.
We love seeing folks talking about a “hipmunk for X” — glad our brand already has that kind of impact on people 🙂 we love you all for the continued buzz. Seriously, it’s rocking our hipmunk’s world.
LinkedIn is (sorry to say) useless to me… I’ve had account there for more years than I care to remember, yet I havent done anything there besides accept requests, receive and give recommendations (which so far haven’t resulted in anything meaningful). Professionally, I connect on twitter, I ask and get replies to questions on Quora/Stackoverflow.. I dont get LinkedIn either..
The reason theres so much interest in this article is because after you log in and have attend to those outstanding requests that have piled up, there’s about 10 to 15 seconds where you’re thinking “ok, what now…”
I signed up for your beta. When can I expect an invite?