LinkedIn Now Targeting Universities, 14-Year-Olds 87
Nerval's Lobster writes "Get 'em young: That could be LinkedIn's new motto, after the professional-networking Website opened itself up to universities and students. LinkedIn's University Pages offer schools a place to post updates about campus news and activities; they can also link to famous alumni, who will doubtlessly love when a couple thousand students try to connect with them all at once. Some 200 universities are setting up LinkedIn Pages, including NYU, the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and more. Why this aggressive expansion into a younger demographic? Today's students are tomorrow's cubicle bees and entrepreneurs; by locking them into the network early, LinkedIn can (at least in theory) maintain a user base for many years to come. (It's safe to presume that at least a fraction of these young users will eventually engage LinkedIn's paid services, which makes this initiative a long-term revenue play.) Building a substantial base among students could also help LinkedIn head off future competition, such as Facebook moving more aggressively into the careers space. Or it could just open a whole lot of concerns over privacy and security, similar to what Facebook already faces with its teen audience."
They ruined what made it successful already. (Score:5, Insightful)
LinkedIn's value early on was that people added their real life connections. It was predicated on someone being a co-worker, or manager, or supplier. When you searched your network what you found was people who knew the actual person, and could vouch for them and/or provide a personal introduction.
As LinkedIn grew this rapidly declined. It started by people accepting requests from folks who were at the same company, but with which they did not interact. It grew when recruiters started friending everyone they contacted so their search network could grow. It jumped the shark when they put buttons that made it way too easy for someone to friend you just because you were in the same LinkedIn group with them, along with 10,000 others. And now, the expansion to students.
I know plenty of people with 1,000+ "friends" on LinkedIn. They don't know even 10% of those people close enough to introduce you, or provide a vouch. As a result, I no longer turn to LinkedIn. Too many of my "can you introduce me to" mails get back a "yeah, I don't really know them" response. There are too many incentives to "grow your network" by adding people you don't know, and not enough incentives to have a high value network, by having it be built on personal relationships.
So the magic is gone. The upward trend might continue a bit longer like a rocket who's motor has burned out as they add students and such, but the ultimate trajectory here is down unless some major course correction, in the form of dumping people you don't know, occurs.
The whole point of Linkedin (Score:4, Insightful)
If not, it's probably time to abandon my linkedin account.
Re:LinkedIn much worse than Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't let you block people, and it lets people know when you've visited their profile. It's fucking creepy as hell, and yet everyone gets on Facebook's case instead
That's appropriate for a professional network, but would be terrible for a personal network. Even compared to putting personal stuff on Facebook, putting personal stuff on Linkedin is unwise.
My linkedin profile is my resume, word-for-word if differently arranged. I don't care who sees it, because it is explicitly my "public face". And it's quite nice to know month-by-month how many people see my page, as a sort of vague gauge of employment market temperature - if I paid to see who among those who visited were recruiters, it would even be somewhat accurate, but I don't care that much.
LinkedIn is supposed to be the stuff you make public and want others to see, so no, I don't find that stuff creepy at all. Of course, if younger people start using it differently, then the creepy factor could escalate.
Linked-In the new home of Resume Padding (Score:5, Insightful)
At one time I had a Linkedin account, then I got rid of it. I still periodically look out there at people I've worked with. Let's see there was the Director in the Architecture Group at one organization that labelled his time as Director of Architecture. Of course there's the CIO that was CIO for three months then was fired but his Linkedin profile says he was CIO for two years at that organization. Some old habits die hard I guess, it's just now billions of people can see it.
Then there's the incessant asks from people that I've worked with to recommend them on Linkedin, which is now the substitute for what we call references. Sorry Joe, I can't recommend you because while we worked at the same place we never really worked on any projects together and from what I recall you were always late to meetings and people called you stinky behind your back when you weren't looking.
Sorry Linkedin, you like other Social Media sites are off of my list for good, you don't help me get my gigs and you certainly don't help me keep my confidential information confidential. That's not what they're about, I get it, but no, I'm not turning my CV over to your organization, not today not tomorrow, not ever.
Re:They ruined what made it successful already. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have found exactly the opposite- people endorsing me that know nothing about my skills, which makes me very suspicious of other peoples endorsements.
Re:They ruined what made it successful already. (Score:3, Insightful)
I totally agree, recommendations are one thing, but the endorsements are worthless, 95% of the people who have given me endorsements could not possibly know in the slightest what I'm good at in terms of those skills. What happens is Linkedin gives them a prompt occasionally to "Endorse so-and-so for this skill" and they click "ok".