What is the value of LinkedIn?
Published February 13, 2007 by Robbie
I’ve had an account with LinkedIn for three years. Over that time, I’ve received dozens of emails from various people that want to connect and emails from LinkedIn updating me on changes to my network. I’m now up to 109 connections. It could be significantly higher, but I tend to reject the connection requests from people I don’t know (go figure).
In all the time I’ve been a LinkedIn member, I can’t recall one beneficial thing that has happened as a result. I have some friends that sing the praises of LinkedIn, but I’m not sure why. At this point, I’m considering canceling my account unless I can find a reason to keep it. Right now, LinkedIn is in the hole with me from a productivity perspective. I’ve put a lot of time into it, but received very little in return.
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I’ve had exactly the opposite experience.
I’ve put very little time into it: most of my profile is just “please see [my web site address].” I do accept most connection requests, including from people I don’t know well but either want to know better, or have something in common with (e.g. common schools, worked at the same companies, etc).
As a result, I’ve gotten numerous good and great job offers, consulting gigs (including ones I’ve actually taken for real money), met some excellent people for networking purposes with whom I still have relationships… Considering I spend at most 10 minutes a week on LinkedIn.com, I think that’s a great return on investment.
I see two problems for most people and their usage of social networking sites like LinkedIn. One problem is the company’s fault: they and their competitors hype social networking like the end-all, be-all solution to something. It just isn’t, and users should stop expecting miracles.
The second issue is that most users, like you, refuse too many connections in my opinion. Why? It doesn’t cost you anything, doesn’t reflect on you badly, and has a positive expected value in the long term. It may be a tiny EV, but it’s positive, not negative. Most people instead just stick to their offline acquaintances online, and connect only with those — not much point in that ;)
That’s just my take on it, I do recognize I’m a bit of a contrarian and my views aren’t shared by a lot of my friends…
My views on LinkedIn are mixed. I lean more towards Robbie in that my policy is to only accept invites from people I know or someone interacted with.
I don’t agree with Yoav’s point that the EV is positive (by definition). If you end up “making a connection” to somoene with a very, very negative EV (like a career criminal), then at some level, you are responsible for others that might connect to that individual. Not saying this is probably, but it is possible, hence the “EV is always positive” argument doesn’t ring true with me.
My two cents.
I also had the exact opposite experience. We have made several connections on the site. My suggestion is if you already have it up and running, than that is the hard part.
Why not just leave it open and maybe something will come about.
I think it is also important to be an active participant in any community if you are expecting to get something out of it.
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/using-linkedIn/ULI/88503-3282206?goback=%2Enrp_1_1187990345044
Check out this post. The problem with Linkedin is that they say one thing and encourage another. they say only link to your friends yet know that recruiters are their biggest customers and recruiters do not use the inmails. The users are the product not the customers. Linkedin is an online white pages that is searchable and includes resumes. Some people think that if they only link to friends they aren’t visible to millions of people. All they need to do is make the names private, but if they did that, the traffic would go to nothing.