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LinkedIn Now Targeting Universities, 14-Year-Olds
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."
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.
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.
Is worthless. The only thing it's good for is for when some dumbass posts "Worked on major projects including Half-Life 3" on their resume and spills the beans.
It's got all of the meaningless connections and annoying ads (in this case, recruiter spam) of Facebook with none of the hilarious drama or animal pictures.
Commercialization and demand for profitability - the 2 fastest ways to fuck up a good idea.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Was that it allowed me to manage my professional contacts and promote my career without the nonsense of facebook. I'm not interested in logging in to linkedin to make friends or play games. It's all about business. If said university students and 14-year-olds happen to be in business and have something to contribute to my career, I'll happily welcome them to the community.
If not, it's probably time to abandon my linkedin account.
"Networking" is already annoying, being mostly about forming fake social relationships to advance your career. Click-to-Like networking on the Internet is even worse, as there is no real effort nor assessment of reputation.
Legislation barring companies from recruiting minors.
i have foreseen it
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I left when people I barely knew started "endorsing" me for skills I don't have.
"Oh you work in IT, right? I'll endorse you for SEO skills"
Never been so insulted in my life.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
The aforementioned tweet.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I manage an application/server suite that includes some mail functionality. In the 5 years I've been doing it I've only ever had to enter 1 domain into the blacklist... linkedin.com
It remains, to this day, the only site in the blacklist.
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.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Two weeks ago:
LinkedIn Shuts Down TopTal Ads That Featured Photos Of Female Engineers
In the last two weeks, have they fixed the cultral problem at Linked-In? I doubt it.
Originally it was the only social network that I was willing to join.
Now it's the social network that I am most happy to have left.
Call it "The Ten" and allow people to only be friends with up to 10 people.
I've already got that, I just check my Friendster account.
Sniff sniff .. I smell a company being run on VC vapors...a concerns for numbers that have to keep going by hook or by crook lest the actual valuation of the business-plan-free enterprise all come tumbling down..
What does LinkedIn sell and to whom and for how much and how often? How much is any of our data even worth with every cloud-based social-web search-engine new media play all running the same analytics on the same user base? A dollar? A buck fifty? Once? I'm worth a 1000 times that to Starbucks and they have only to plop down another green fish-girl sign on some block that doesn't already have one to start minting fresh people just like me.
There has to be a limit to the amount of money that can change hands for binders filled with women's likely shopping preferences and how many times you can sell this information to sellers. People aren't just aren't born and don't die that fast. Once you know someone is a liberal Subaru driving lesbian with a soft spot for abused animals, a keen interest in Sara Maclaughlin and a $1500.00 a year wardrobe budget where is there to go for the next 50 years with this person ?