LinkedIn is the new Facebook

Does anyone else think LinkedIns 'professional' image and value has been diluted by the millions of mouth breathing idiots who use it? I got sucked in by the hype a few months back, accumulated 500+ friends, got previous managers to write reviews etc. and now all I am left with is my very own self indulgent page on the internet.

I don't even see the point in the endorse feature - I had someone from India, who I have never met, connect and endorse me for 'Time Management'.

Then you have the endless articles on 'startups' and being an 'entrepreneur' with hundreds of people posting philosophical thoughts on something they have no experience in.

Anyone else get what this whole LinkedIn hype is about?

 
HFer_wannabe:

It's a great networking TOOL, meaning you have acess to tons of people and their history/contact info that you couldn't normally get anywhere else. I've been able to speak/meet with people all over the street just by reaching out on LinkedIn. Not to say it isn't difficult, but it gets you a lot further than FB ever would.

This.

 
TheKing:
GoldenCinderblock:

I just look at it as another way to let my classmates know I'm better than them.

I'm sure they're all on suicide watch after reading that you're an intern in Asset Management.

LOLOLOLOLOL

Best way to make someone jealous - put "analyst" @ GS even though u r in ops.

speed boost blaze
 

Imagine you are a management consultant/DD person working on a DD (due dile) project. You need to find a specialist that knows about say fertilizers markets in SE Asia (because your client is looking to source potential buyers and wants to find out more about the markets). The best place to start is LinkedIn (particularly given the secretive nature of some industries/countries/regions). Those on LinkedIn are usually happy to be contacted for business opportunities.

I get the point, but have to disagree, LinkedIn is very useful. I have found a potential buyer in the past through LinkedIn (fell through at the last minute). I also find it useful for target marketing - you need to speak with the right people.

 

Why are you spending time on there reading articles or whatever? And it's a marketing tool - of course there are going to be articles about start ups and entrepreneurs, probably written by entrepreneurs trying to get the word out about their business.

"You stop being an asshole when it sucks to be you." -IlliniProgrammer "Your grammar made me wish I'd been aborted." -happypantsmcgee
 
D M:

Why are you spending time on there reading articles or whatever? And it's a marketing tool - of course there are going to be articles about start ups and entrepreneurs, probably written by entrepreneurs trying to get the word out about their business.

I agree. 1+

[quote=Matrick][in reply to Tony Snark"]Why aren't you blogging for WSO and become the date doctor for WSO? There seems to be demand. [/quote] [quote=BatMasterson][in reply to Tony Snark's dating tip] Sensible advice.[/quote]
 

As a college student I find it extremely helpful for interview prep, networking and finding potential connections within specific firms that I wouldn't be able to find otherwise.

Do have to agree though that the endorse feature is bullshit....other users essentially endorse you for whatever they can so you endorse them back. Its really turned more into a "FaceBook" over the last year or so, my homepage is regularly filled with pointless articles I have no interest in, always posted by the same people.

"I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's." William Blake
 

I 100% agree with this. My feed on Linkedin is 10x worse than Facebook. Kid with cancer asking for 1MM likes, endless article posts and reposts. They need to do something to clean it up.

Some people spam it or use it like shit, but many of us have professional pages and use it for jobs, networking, etc. Let's keep the kiddy games to Facebook and not foul this amazing tool.

 
TNA:

I 100% agree with this. My feed on Linkedin is 10x worse than Facebook. Kid with cancer asking for 1MM likes, endless article posts and reposts. They need to do something to clean it up.

Some people spam it or use it like shit, but many of us have professional pages and use it for jobs, networking, etc. Let's keep the kiddy games to Facebook and not foul this amazing tool.

It really is worse. I saw that kid with cancer thing and was stunned. That and all the "Influencers" whose posts are worthless.

 
TNA:

I 100% agree with this. My feed on Linkedin is 10x worse than Facebook. Kid with cancer asking for 1MM likes, endless article posts and reposts. They need to do something to clean it up.

Some people spam it or use it like shit, but many of us have professional pages and use it for jobs, networking, etc. Let's keep the kiddy games to Facebook and not foul this amazing tool.

But honestly, what else would go on the feed? Just don't read it. The power is in the network, the groups never connect people, people just join them to stalk more people without signing up or as a tenuous "connection" to someone.
"After you work on Wall Street it’s a choice, would you rather work at McDonalds or on the sell-side? I would choose McDonalds over the sell-side.” - David Tepper
 
Oreos:
TNA:

I 100% agree with this. My feed on Linkedin is 10x worse than Facebook. Kid with cancer asking for 1MM likes, endless article posts and reposts. They need to do something to clean it up.

Some people spam it or use it like shit, but many of us have professional pages and use it for jobs, networking, etc. Let's keep the kiddy games to Facebook and not foul this amazing tool.

But honestly, what else would go on the feed? Just don't read it. The power is in the network, the groups never connect people, people just join them to stalk more people without signing up or as a tenuous "connection" to someone.

True, but the feed is more about what is relevant to your network more than who. It's basically tailored cnn.com etc. for your attributes. The anniversaries, promotions, new jobs are great insights, but IDGAF about how many triangles are in a pic or who can think of a word starting and ending with certain vowels.

If the glove don't fit, you must acquit!
 

I agree with OP, and I think the people who post random shit and use it like Facebook should be embarrassed. But it is still a good way to follow organizations/companies and keep up to date on things going on around you in your industry that are valuable.

Array
 

It's an incredibly important tool for job seekers and university students. I have found some great alumni on LinkedIn that I never would have found without LinkedIn (data protection act BS). It's also great for finding the right cold-emailing targets that share similar interests and backgrounds.

But yes, in a way it is turning into Facebook although I find myself accepting more connection requests from high school totty on LinkedIn. Perhaps they now find that their loser bad boy BFs don't cut it in real life.

 

I agree, I'm seeing 'likes' for things that I saw on fbook years ago. Okay, so someone has cancer...I get it, but why spoil my news feed? I can't short dead children.

And for the soldier in Iraq doing what you signed up for, I appreciate it...but next week I don't want a pic of a janitor cleaning up after a prom toilet abortion begging for a reason to be.

Seriously though, I'm hoping actual professionals are not deterred from legitimate use as it becomes more twitter/fbook-like.

If the glove don't fit, you must acquit!
 

I agree with most everyone's comments. The articles people post/like are annoying. Fortunately like FB you can hide people's status updates. It is a great tool for networking as it definitely helps you see who your contacts may know. That way when you meet with them you can be more specific than "do you know anyone in X industry". However, now that my mom joined LinkedIn I feel like it has jumped the shark. I bolted from FB once my parents joined.

"Give me a fucking beer", Anonymous Genius
 

I think people over think everything and can always find a reason to complain. I use Linkedin for its targeted reason--helping me in my future career prospects (pretty much everyone I know has had job related communication via Linkedin). When I'm not looking for a job I log-in once a week/3 times a month to make sure I haven't been hacked and to accept relevant contact requests. I've got no issues with Linkedin.

 

Saw a guy in the "people you may know" section with money bag emojis on both sides of his name. In my opinion this should be punishable by death.

"I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's." William Blake
 

What productive use could the feed even have? I only use LNKD to connect with people and search for profiles if I need a contact and shit. Why are you guys scrolling through that shit? What do you expect to find?

heister: Look at all these wannabe richies hating on an expensive salad. https://arthuxtable.com/
 

Its a great intel tool. It helps me find out who's working in what company. Whether a company role has high turnover, what sort of people that companies wants to hire etc. I just ignore or filter out the lame articles. Linkedin provides more information which might be helpful to the decisions you make. Before that, it was much harder to obtain such information and it was easier for people to mislead you. For me, Linkedin has served its purpose.

 

This is how I operate my page. I don't need to connect with someone that I went to college with that now lives in Boston and works in PR, just because we were classmates.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for freedom of thought which they seldom use.
 

I treat Linkedin as a personal creds pack/resume - people can due diligence my (self-published) background before/after meeting me in a business or networking context, get some information that avoids them having to ask blatant or boring questions which they may not otherwise have time or opportunity to ask. I can do the same on others.

Those who can, do. Those who can't, post threads about how to do it on WSO.
 
SSits:

I treat Linkedin as a personal creds pack/resume - people can due diligence my (self-published) background before/after meeting me in a business or networking context, get some information that avoids them having to ask blatant or boring questions which they may not otherwise have time or opportunity to ask. I can do the same on others.

Yep.

I am an asshole in terms of whose connection I accept. For me, the site is an incredible tool. I don't use it to connect with people online, I use it to stay in touch with people I know offline. The recap emails are great. So-and-so just moved to a hedge fund, sick. Another guy got a PE position as a post-MBA IBD Associate? Cool, should shoot him a note.

The 'feed' isn't even a thing for me. I don't even look at it.

I am permanently behind on PMs, it's not personal.
 

I still don't understand the endorse feature. People just endorse me for things and I have no idea if they actually think I can do these things, or what. Are endorsements a tit for tat thing?

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
 

I agree with many of those commented on some Linkedin's minuses. As I am an active user of Linkedin (which is a must for me as a recruiter), let me present my set of pros and cons:

Pros:

  • Great networking tool which helps you not only to find and connect with interesting people, but also to conduct researches you may need for your job\interests (ex how many Stanford grads are working in startups and so on...)

  • Nice place to show your CV and recommendations to potential employers which leads to:

  • Nice (but by no means the best) tool to search for a job

  • I like its article\news feed (which is on the top and recommended by Pulse) - at least it is working for me

  • Recommendations there (I am talking about comments in Recommendations section) could be useful also

Cons:

  • Terrible main newsfeed - yes, I already hate these "I need 1m likes" and "only 1 from 10 can solve this". Not that I am against charities' promos or puzzles - but every thing should be in its place. I believe that newsfeed of professional social network is no place for this.

  • Groups are typically not useful. Discussions there are futile and there is no sense in trying to find anything important there

  • This thing with skills endorsement... I think this option is not useful for the reason mentioned above: everyone can endorse you for everything and there is no way you could understand if this 'evaluation' was fair or not. Still I know that many recruiters pay attention to this section. As for me - I am just not using it and you will not find any skills in my profile at all.

So to sum up: Linkedin is a good tool overall and worth using it, but there are several flaws that spoil our experience with it. Some features for now are just useless and not working properly, some requires your attention and tuning in order to get at least some benefits from using them.

Yes, like Facebook.

BR, MARK

 

Yes, I refuse to have skills on my profile. People endorse me for shit they have no clue I can do. And the pulse things is cool and I have a lot of head hunters on my site so I see a bunch of jobs. In fact the jobs section is pretty awesome. But the feed absolutely needs to be customizable.

I half agree with groups. But I blame group members more than LinkedIn.

 

I think LinkedIn is good for staying in touch with business contacts because it eliminates all of the personal junk from Facebook but I do agree that the value has been diluted. Every time I log on I am prompted to endorse people. Users are just endorsing for random skills with the hopes that they will get endorsed back. I don't think that aspect of the site holds any value anymore.

-- reaper
 

I love LinkedIn and I go on it everyday. The biggest value add in my opinion is just giving recruiters and head hunters an easy way to get a hold of you. Also, the job board is very good. A growing number of employers are offering a "apply through LinkedIn" option on corp websites rather than spending 30+ min filling out useless forms of info. I'd advise anyone in finance to keep their profile updated and professional because you never know who may view it.

 

This is interesting. I've never seen my LinkedIn feed being spammed. Although I'm in university which might be why all I see is people sharing new jobs, but that's it. If worst comes to worst you can just click 'hide' and hide all posts by a person.

Once I did bad and that I heard ever. Twice I did good and that I heard never.
 

I almost feel like the more work someone puts into their LinkedIn, the less competent they are at their job and the more likely they are to be wayy exaggerating their past experience. I'm not talking about posting your past jobs and some info on what you did there- I mean the kind of people who write an essay for every position they've ever had (including lifeguarding, etc) and then have like 30+ endorsements for a bunch of crap you should already know how to do. Someone tried to add me the other day who had "FaceBook" listed as one of their skills with almost 15 endorsements for it, the most recent one being their mother (I'm not kidding).

LinkedIn is good for connecting with OTHER qualified people (as in, you are both professionals that may benefit from a connection) and for job hunting. It was also great for me to be able to look at the profile of who was interviewing me (if they had one) and for reaching out (AKA searching for MD's to cold email) in college. If LinkedIn only had a person's name and their current position, I don't think it would be much less useful than it is to me now.

 

Once endorsements starting pissing me off, I decided to try to endorse about 20 friends with pirate skills (ship building, money laundering, and of course piracy) I think 7 or 8 accepted them (without looking Im sure) and its still on their profiles today...

"I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people."
 
onemanwolfpack:

Once endorsements starting pissing me off, I decided to try to endorse about 20 friends with pirate skills (ship building, money laundering, and of course piracy) I think 7 or 8 accepted them (without looking Im sure) and its still on their profiles today...

And the next hour of my life will be spent doing things of this nature and trying to hold back girlish giggles.
heister: Look at all these wannabe richies hating on an expensive salad. https://arthuxtable.com/
 

Ridiculous sentiment in this thread. LinkedIn is what you make of it. If you accept strangers as friends in your "network", then you can expect dilution of utility.

LinkedIn is just a rolodex with bells and whistles. It isn't your network, it just manages your network. The benefit is that, when used properly, you know how to contact the people that actually matter in order to leverage your network in some beneficial way.

 

I can't stand this type of stuff anymore. I don't want to see things that I look at normally. Show me different. My FB feed is literally the same 5-10 stories over and over. Same deal with any of my other social media accounts.

...
 

I wish LinkedIn had 'news channel pages.' Like if I wanted to see posts about M&A from 'LinkedIn Contributors' as well as breaking news and LinkedIn groups all on one page I would search for the 'LinkedIn M&A' page.

26 Broadway where's your sense of humor?
 

I deleted FB a long time ago because it was trash. LinkedIn remains because it has some purpose, but the feed is garbage. I literally unfollow and hide half the shit I see. I'd happily pay for a useful version of LinkedIn.

 

Couldn't agree more with the comments. Is it good for LinkedIn? It could be, trash does attract advertising money as we know. But it sucks for user experience if you're talking about the original purpose or at least the original reason I joined.

 
moneymogul:
adapt or die:

I would love a LinkedIn style website for finance professionals only, email verified. It may already exist. I prefer social media sites with some exclusivity (prob why I've started hating FB over the past few years).

WSO may as well be the official unofficial LinkedIn of finance.

Yeah, if there was a part of the site with no anonymity, profiles with pictures and updated info, email verified, that would be perfect. That was the site could have a professional networking side and still keep the circus clown forums with high school and college kids giving advice intact on the other side.

 

Fortunately, I haven't found any "mouth breathing idiots" you encountered.

I mainly use it to look for job openings and to give easy access of my CV to employers.

I also only connect with my colleagues and professionals in my industry (my expected industry to be exact, since I have not graduated yet).

Fortes fortuna adiuvat.
 

My favorite thing about Linkedin is the weekly articles about how MBAs are not worth it and the student loans are crippling America. You then have hundreds of people commenting about how their online degree from University of Phoenix or an MBA from India cost them next to nothing and how there choices are the path to follow, but they work mediocre jobs with no name companies and their headlines read "Entrepreuners ★ Bean Counter ★ Team Player".

 

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"Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money." - Mickey Bergman - Heist (2001)
 

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