interested in innovation and creativity

An Open Letter to Ben Edwards at the Economist and why LinkedIN fails

Posted: December 21st, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Marketing | Tags: , , , , | 9 Comments »

Hi Ben, here’s a note I tried to send you recently via Linkedin:

“I recently read about your decision to make social a core part of your strategy, which as an ‘on and off’ subscriber to the economist I’m thrilled to hear. I’m also professionally interested as I’ve been writing about social strategy at http://experiencecurve.com since 2003.

Best,

@karllong”

As it turns out LinkedIn thought this would be annoying to you, which of course is a possibility, but I was willing to take that risk. Unfortunatly Linkedin didn’t want me to take the risk of disturbing you so gave me this error screen when I had finally crafted the note to my satisfaction and within the limited wordcount that Linkedin provides.

Screen shot 2009-12-21 at 12.22.49 AM

Anyway, I don’t want to labor the point but I figured this serves as one example of how companies often fail to understand “social”.

Anyway, good luck with taking the Economist social, you guys have an amazing treasure trove of content, especially the audio. I’m sure very few people know how much great audio content you guys produce.

Thanks to Neville Hobson for writing about this in the first place “making the economist social. Oh and I highly recommend to anyone the podcast that Neville partners on “For Immediate Release“, despite it’s PR focus it required listening for folks learning about the social web.

  • http://hyperarts.com/social Analisa

    Why in the world would I ONLY want to “connect” with people that I already know personally?

    Yes, everyone still is on LinkedIn, but I do not know a single person who benefits from their presence there.

    I am glad you shared this experience, I have been frustrated by this myself as well (obviously).

  • http://experiencecurve.com Karl

    No kidding, Linkedin is virtually useless to me. From what I understand is they make money from selling access to peoples data, which is why they make it so difficult to connect with people. You have to pay to send “InMail”, it’s like email, but you pay per message. Not a sustainable model IMHO. It’s so easy to do better than linkedIn, the time is right for them to get sideswiped by an agile startup very soon.

  • http://omidabroad.blogspot.com Omid

    I find LinkedIn becoming more and more irrelevant. The way I saw it at first, it was for actual business networking – hence its resume style profiles, etc. Now with it’s link-to-Twitter functionality and daily messages from people with pseudonyms trying to “connect” to me, it seems to have lost focus.

    I’m all for branching out and widening scope, but all of LinkedIn’s current activity looks like a whole lot of flailing after a missed opportunity.

  • http://www.jonbuscall.com jon buscall

    Afraid I’ve had a similar experience. Consequently, I don’t really use LinkedIn that much. I find Twitter and Blogging to be a more useful way of making connections and generating conversations.

    Interestingly enough a lot of my clients want to know how to get more out of LinkedIn. I suspect it’s because it still has a reputation as THE social network for business professionals. However, as more niched networks emerge within particular fields, Creatives, Journalists, etc, I can see LI struggling.

  • http://www.teamandadream.com Skip Shuda

    A bit of contrarian perspective here, I find LinkedIn to be quite useful for me and my clients. Keeping the network closed to people you’ve met allows you to treat it truly as a Trusted resource. That means that references you give, referrals you make and introductions are believable and helpful. Furthermore, their Answers section allows people to share their expertise on specific questions. I’ve seen significant traffic driven to a web site from some good Answers on LinkedIn. Finally, it has been quite helpful in researching influential people that I’ve never met, but who are going to be present at an upcoming conversation.

    LinkedIn is not Twitter or Facebook to be sure. It is a venue for creating and leveraging trusted relationships and accessing/sharing expertise. Will more niche-focused channels emerge? Probably. But for building trust within professional networks, its still the best game in town (that I know of).

  • Juan

    Stopping unsolicited spam is a good thing.

  • http://experiencecurve.com Karl

    @Skip I have heard some people get value out of it, I have not managed to. for me it’s a combination of bad design and a lack of motivation on my part, in other words i’m easily put off doing work on linkedin because it seems to fight me every step of the way.

    @Jon, yeah, Linkedin will go away as soon as someone puts together something more meaningful. Right now they are just milking access to data as their cash cow, they have no motivation to connect people for free. I could send an “in mail”.

    @juan SPAM by definition is unsolicited bulk messages. Not personal communication between people who don’t know each other.

  • http://anfstores.com/ jackwills

    Right now they are just milking access to data as their cash cow,

  • eonarts

    Hey Karl -
    I get a LOT of value from linkedin & I really appreciate that it’s closed. It’s bad enough that I get recruiters missing the point & wanting to link to me. LinkedIn has led to a number of interviews when I’m actively looking.

    I think that their auth code sucks & I hate that its constantly asking me to re-login but that’s the main annoyance with it.