I’m a very early subscriber to LinkedIn. A friend was one of the early VCs funding LinkedIn. He told me about it and asked me to sign up as a user. In the early days, it seemed to be more of an online CV, but pretty quickly became very interesting for the discussions I found. There were groups with interesting discussions, in my feed there were always diverse article that I could learn from. Often, I learned more from the comments and discussions following the articles. Authors would participate in these discussions, debates would be conducted. I learned so much and met/connected with so many fascinating people.
Today, LinkedIn is vastly different. It resembles my physical mailbox. It is stuffed with junk mail, I have to unfold every ad sheet, cardpak, to find the one or two pieces of valuable mail in the mailbox.
I’ve managed to convert most of the important pieces of mail to online. All my bills come electronically, and are paid automatically. All our invoices are electronic and paid electronically. Mostly what I get in my physical mailbox are greeting cards. Even many of those are now online. I get few physical letters, though I love holding them in my hands and reading them, saving many in a special folder.
My physical mailbox is virtually useless. I open it once a week, on garbage day, when I take the trash to the curb. I stand over the trash can, moving most of what’s in my mailbox to the trash (talk about efficiency).
Welcome to the new LinkedIn!
The new LinkedIn looks like the advertising mailers that fill my mailbox. My feed is filled with advertisements with clever pictures and carousels. They include cheatsheets, AI tools, Free Prompts–just enter “1 Billion” in the comments section. Yesterday in one scroll, there were over 20 posts with these images in my feed—and nothing else sandwiched in between.
Well almost.
Sandwiched in these are the “my struggle and eventual triumph commercials.” Sometime with pictures of someone in a bed with IVs and tubes coming out of them. Sometimes on an exotic beach in triumph. They remind me of the St. Jude’s, ASPCA, and other commercials with heart breaking narratives, the appropriate background music, all ending, in “For $19.95 per month you can rescue a sales guru….”
Then there are the LinkedIn Agencies, they’ve got the formula. Some author presents an idea, part of it is interesting, but then when you read line after bro-line, it turns into nonsense and faux wisdom. But these are architected to create 1000s of likes (mostly manufactured by the Linkedin Agencies.) There are also the 100s of manufactured responses, “Bro, such stunning insight…” “The secret to success…” “You rock…” 99.9% of these responses are meaningless adulation. But no engagement or conversation. For the few who try to make a substantive comment, they are ignored. The authors post for visibility and never actually participate in the discussion themselves. Afterall, that’s hot how advertising works. It’s a one way broadcast medium.
And I find, I’m looking for meaningful conversations in all the wrong places.
LinkedIn has become the virtual mailbox offering as little value as my physical mailbox. I suppose I will restrict my LinkedIn usage to garbage day……
Where have the great conversations gone?
For the time being, I’m finding more great conversation in places like Substack, but I suspect soon they will go the way of LinkedIn. The reality is I’m finding small cohorts of people looking for real, virtual, even written exchanges. We’re not on big platforms, we aren’t measuring success by likes. We’re there to learn.
But I’m liking these exchanges, I get so much from them.
And I’m liking the idea of restricting my LinkedIn usage to garbage day (Tuesdays if you are curious–except after a Holiday). Because if all I see in LinkedIn is garbage, what could be more appropriate?
Afterword: Here is the AI generated discussion of this post. I was surprised how they handled my snarkiness and the discussion of the platform itself. It’s actually pretty good.
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