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What Is The Point Of LinkedIn?

Ann Friedman doesn’t see it. Excerpt: LinkedIn promises to harness everything that’s great about a digital economy that so far has done more to limit than expand the professional prospects of its user-citizens. In reality, though, the job seeker tends to experience the insular world of LinkedIn connectivity as an irksome ritual of digital badgering. […]

Ann Friedman doesn’t see it. Excerpt:

LinkedIn promises to harness everything that’s great about a digital economy that so far has done more to limit than expand the professional prospects of its user-citizens.

In reality, though, the job seeker tends to experience the insular world of LinkedIn connectivity as an irksome ritual of digital badgering. Instead of facing the prospect of interfacing professionally with a nine-figure user base with a renewed spring in their step, harried victims of economic redundancy are more likely to greet their latest LinkedIn updates with a muttered variation of, “Oh shit, I’d better send out some more résumés.” At which point, they’ll typically mark the noisome email nudge as “read” and relegate it to the trash folder.

Which is why it’s always been a little tough to figure out what LinkedIn is for.

Do you use LinkedIn? I’ve been part of it for years, and I have never once used it. If I barely know you, I’ll be your LinkedIn buddy. I make a habit of not approving LinkedIn contact requests for people I don’t know at all (and I get them a lot). But I don’t really know what the point of the damn thing is. Help me out here.

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