Open Letter to LinkedIn

What started as a neat online rolodex evolved into a business networking site, but now is a lousy version of Facebook. (I am not alone in this opinion, see here and there.)

People have a shortage of time, because we have to do way more per day to keep above water. Social media is an admitted time suck (see Hubspot story; or the nextweb post; or this article about social ruining your life; and wired’s social is a waste of time.) So why would a business social network make it more noisy; more of a time suck?

Discussion is missing in many of the groups. I belong to the maximum allowed – 50 – and very few have posts that are anything but links. For a SOCIAL network, the social is gone. Now LinkedIn is just a broadcast medium, but is ANYONE LISTENING?

The Pulse is that anyone can publish anything. And much of it is just press releases or other pitches. You couldn’t curate the Pulse? Or like Reddit have articles voted up or down?

If you are going to copy another social network, why Facebook? Because of the numbers? Those numbers indicate that LI stinks in most categories. And these numbers show that engagement and reach are down.

Here are some ideas:

Get cleaner design – like G+ and Instagram.
Less is more in every essence of design.
Stop auto-playing videos.
Curate Pulse “articles”.
Maybe have a Featured section or something with the Best of.
Pay for Community man

agers to get discussions back in Groups.

Not every Liked update should show up. Have a share button. Because people like everything, which floods my feed with stupid sh!t. Important Note: That results in me not liking the person liking all that stupid stuff.

I have had to go back to an egg timer for social media with 10 to 15 minute intervals to jump in and jump out. See more time management tips here.

Tags: linkedin, social media, social networks
Related tags: social network, curate pulse, social media, social, network, because