Thursday, March 3, 2011
Trying to divine the true purpose of LinkedIn is frankly an exercise in futility, and that’s after four years of faithfully logging into the site. I understand its stated purpose is to help you connect with professionals. There’s that phrase, the clarion call of social media: to connect. But whether these connections translate into anything more than a living, breathing body count, I’m not sure.
When I first started using LinkedIn, every new connection would be a fascinating story unto itself. I’d carefully browse the person’s profile, then the network, and in the process I’d cobble together a kind of corporate narrative. Then came the changes. Upload a profile photo, I was encouraged, lest my social footprint languish at only 80% completion. Shake down someone for a recommendation, if I wish to reach 85%. In order to attain 100%, heaven knows what kind of witchcraft I would’ve had to marshal.
Flash forward to today, and these arbitrary percentages have thankfully been removed. Sure, I never bothered to act on them, but all the same, a part of me would always wonder whether I was somehow incomplete as a person, simply because I didn’t reach for that headshot in GIF format. I don’t delve into other people’s profiles nearly as thoroughly, if at all, though I do make the effort to click the “Report Spam” button for invitations that really amount to cold calls.
When all is said and done, LinkedIn is a kind of modern-day Rolodex for me, a compendium of electronic mail addresses. I suspect quantity is also a benefit here, with the “body count” I mentioned earlier acting as a kind of rudimentary benchmark for prospective employers and business partners alike. That’s about it. Sometimes I’ll log into the site and be ovewhelmed by the stream of tweets or check-ins. It’s, like, if I wanted to see content from Twitter or Foursquare, I would’ve gone to those sites on my own good time. But hey! You’ve dragged them all here. Thanks, I guess. And, oh! I see so-and-so just checked into the Denny’s by the airport, before promptly being inaugurated as the Mayor thereof? Glory be. I supported his campaign from the start.