LinkedIn: Looking for Its Next Gig?

February 29, 2016

I signed up for the free LinkedIn years ago. I don’t do too much LinkedIn surfing. I do delete the email I get from the company. I had one of the goslings post a list of my articles to see what would happen. (Results of the test: Nothing happened.) I find it amusing that marketers and PR “professionals” want to be my LinkedIn contact. I used to write these folks and ask, “Why do you want to be my LinkedIn friend?” (Results of the test: No one writes back.) Now you know why I don’t do much LinkedIn surfing. No, I don’t read the musings of the firm’s “thought leaders.”

I did read “LinkedIn Problems Run Deeper Than Valuation.” The write up informed me of this interesting “assertion”:

The problem stems from each of the company’s revenue streams, which ultimately diminish the business value of using the service. Whether it’s being paid to promote content, focusing on sales and recruitment over other professions, or interruptive advertising, these streams incentivize poor behavior by individual users on the site.

I like that “poor behavior” and the incentive angle. The concrete foundation of LinkedIn, it seems to me, is spam.

The company, according to the write up, has a reason to face each day with a big smile:

The company still has assets that are the envy of any tech company — a vast user base and a wealth of content to exploit.

As Yahoo’s publishing experiment demonstrates, content may not be enough.

I think the larger issue is the fact that social networks often lose their stickiness after a period of time. Google’s social efforts seem to mirror the challenges of MySpace. LinkedIn may find itself trapped by its own job hunting system choked with marketers’ leading thoughts.

Why not drive for Uber, Lyft, or Amazon? Less spam and probably a shorter path to some real cash. By the way, did you ever try to locate something using the company’s search engine? Quite a piece of work is that.

Stephen E Arnold, February 29, 2016

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under News, Search, Social

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.