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| Is LinkedIn jumping the shark with a new influencers feed? |
In what may end up being the jumping of the shark for LinkedIn
they, to me at least, have succumbed to social peer pressure.
Up until now the news feed features and highlights that appeal
directly to you we're in your feed. It included only influencers and top
discussions from groups you are a member of and news feeds from your network.
I may be ahead of the game and yes, it seems all social
networks have a life-cycle. I want to mark today as the day that I said this is
the LinkedIn 'jumping the shark moment.' It seems the professional network has
buckled to the pressures of other social media and taken steps to remain
relevant with users.
Why do I say this?
LinkedIn, after it dissolved an agreement with Twitter for an instantaneous update feed has now, in what I believe is a
struggle to remain relevant, has announced that it has engaged with the professional world's top influencers to post content, whether wanted or not, generated by the
business world's top influencers.
According to another blog and as evidenced by this morning's
activity, Twitter has engaged the likes of Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Chopra
and Robbins to circulate content on its network, and on a regular basis.
What I don't want in the least is logging into LinkedIn to
read Obama or Romney’s political agenda, Deepak Chopra’s peaceful meditation
recommendations, or Tony Robbins “inspiration”.
Even though I have a choice whether or not I want to follow
this stream of what I consider to be irrelevant fodder on the network, if one
of my connections chooses to follow and post updates from these 'influencers' I
am faced to deal with countless stories and 'news' feed in which I am not
interested.
I purposely choose who Is in my network and from who I want
to see updates. Why would you force upon me the people who LinkedIn thinks are
important?
When I log in to Facebook I don’t get political agenda thrown
upon me from anyone other than my friends who choose to promote their own
beliefs, and If I don’t like them I can argue, or un-friend them.
Even if they don’t thrust this upon me and make me choose to
follow it, it still opens the network up to people who likely aren’t the real
people posting information that will be re-tweeted, re-posted on Facebook, and
put into news feeds.
I don’t believe that the likes of
Obama and Romney (or Chopra or Robins for that matter) will really sit down and
create LinkedIn updates. Sorry, but I’d like to think they have better things
to do with their time. So whatever
publicist is posting their messages (that will undoubtedly appear all over the
social networks including LinkedIn of which I am a part), I am almost certain I
will not be getting information from this “Trusted Elite Influencer.”
LinkedIn...I hate to say it because I do find the
professional networking you provide of value not only to my business and
colleagues within my business but, I am sorry; this looks like the beginning of the end to
me.
I woke up to the same story re-posted several times on my
timeline saying it was a trending story. I may have missed a strategic move by
a former colleague or a current colleague as a result. I may use LinkedIn differently
than the average user; who is mostly interested in leveraging contacts to gain
better employment opportunities; but I feel the new changes have reduced this
network to a glorified social medium that is teetering on the edge of becoming
just 'another social media outlet.'
Don't get me wrong, LinkedIn has its place. I've said before
that I think it will render job aggregation boards obsolete, but I really think
LinkedIn could do a lot more to become more than a recruitment platform. Maybe
that’s what they are going for with the trusted elite news feeds / following,
but I think they missed the target.
They need to engage professionals: the exact people using
LinkedIn. We need to know what professionals are seeing in their
industry; not just a single job they need help with. Maybe we as a professional
group are transactional and single job focused, but doesn’t the big picture
have relevancy?
What do you think? Has LinkedIn devalued itself to pander to
the likes of Facebook and Twitter to remain relevant, or do you think the mere
nature of the network as a professional network is enough to sustain its relevance,
no matter what they do?
Josh Kaplan writes on various subjects including
information technology breakthroughs, big data, IT staffing and recruitment, healthcare
IT recruitment, and technical industry news and trends.
