Is LinkedIn Testing Shark Filled Waters with its New Top Influencers Updates?

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.

Can your Klout score become discriminatory in the ‘real’ world?

I recently came across a very well-penned article by Wired’s Seth Stevenson regarding Klout; an online service that measures your influence in the social media realm. In a very cursory summary; it works via a metrics-measuring algorithm developed to track how many times your tweets, Facebook posts and various other iterations of social media are passed along to followers, as well as by who retweets them and how much influence your overall network of people commands.

What does your Klout score say about you professionally?

Good or bad. It may be influencing how people judge you personally and professionally.

Stevenson discusses the potential perks and pitfalls of the service. I am not going to go into further explanation, as I am more interested in the comments following the article and in the story of Sam Fiorella, a Canadian interactive marketing executive, who was allegedly passed over for a job because his Klout score was too low.

In a social business marketing arena, I can understand that an employer may want to take a quick look at a score or how many people follow you. I’ve even had a former colleague tell me that he found it preposterous that a social media consultant would ever approach his company with only three recommendations on LinkedIn. However, to discount Fiorella’s 20 years of experience in favor of a number generated by a proprietary algorithm (meaning we’ll never know exactly what data it’s crunching) is absolutely ridiculous (and perhaps illegal?).

Background checks on potential employees are common but constrained to specific instances to protect people from discrimination (in the US). For instance, a negative FICO score could possibly tell you whether or not to give an employee the keys to the corporate coffer. A positive drug screen might reveal that a candidate is not the prime choice for a heavy equipment operator position.

Even if a background check comes back with a negative result, you must give the candidate an opportunity to explain the circumstances (and/or individualized analysis) and cannot discount them based solely on criteria such as these.

The Klout story is tricky because frankly, there are no EEOC regulations specifically referencing: ‘We’re sorry…love your experience, you’re the top candidate, a great leader, but we’re passing. You don’t have enough Klout.’

Some of the comments regarding Fiorella’s journey we’re insightful. The overwhelming sentiment was that Klout has no clout, especially when it comes to hiring decisions. One commenter said they would check Klout scores and immediately disqualify anyone with a score higher than theirs because it meant they were on social media too much. There were also a few adopters and purveyors of this type of media service lauding the insight it could have for marketers, in building brands, and yes; even hiring.

The idea that there are people out there who think Klout could provide any insight as to whether or not to hire someone for an executive-level job, or any job, for that matter is troubling. There are those who might say Fiorella was in social business marketing, his score should have been high, and he should have known that Klout existed. Possibly a valid point; if he thought it was a relevant medium for his type of clients.

It’s not just marketers. Say you’re applying for a sous chef position. The head chef uses Klout personally to monitor her Klout and how popular her foodie blog is becoming. Out of curiosity she checks your score. She finds out your involved in a controversial organization that does not match her views or, even worse, those of the restaurant owner. Or what if she finds something that could violate EEOC mandates about your sexuality, or that, even though you look 28, you’re really approaching 50, and wouldn’t likely be able to handle taking orders from her; a 30 year old.

EEOC regulations are intended to prevent discrimination based on ethnicity, sex, convictions and more. Information found on social media and ranking services have the potential to be in direct conflict with these rules.

Last year, Advertising Age published an infographic on social media demographics for several services that influence on your Klout score. At that time, nearly two-thirds of Twitter users were white and nearly the same ratio women. Couldn’t using a Klout score at all in hiring decisions, based on these ratios alone, have the potential to be discriminatory? It would be interesting to see the demographic breakdown of the top ‘influencers’.

I know it’s a stretch, but the idea of giving any credence to this type of score in hiring decisions seems ludicrous. (Unless of course you want to hire Ludacris to be your next spokesperson.)

If you are connected to any form of social media, your data is out there and people are using it and manipulating it in every conceivable way to make it sellable. Unfortunately, it can also be used to judge you as a job candidate, which opens up a host of new questions for HR folks to handle.

We stand on the edge of a ‘Jumping the Shark’ moment, possibly for all forms of social media. Users are catching on to the ramifications of posting too much information. Services such as Klout, being that their data relevance has already been called into question by many, run the risk of becoming irrelevant as users tend to shy away.

I am very interested in hearing about how much clout you give Klout.

Is Twitter ‘Jumping the Shark’ with new marketing partnerships?

Is Twitter advertising threatening its relevance?

The fifth season of the sitcom Happy Days began with Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli (The Fonz) water skiing in his trademark leather jacket and jumping a tiger shark being held offshore in an attempt to prove his manhood to the world.  The entire series was launched by an episode in which the character made famous by Henry Winkler, attempts to prove his manhood by jumping 14 trash cans, a new record, on a motorcycle. While the series lasted 11 seasons, the aquatic themed episode marked the beginning of the show’s ratings decline from the number two spot then to 55th in 1984.

Webmaster and radio personality John Hein first used the term “jumping the shark” to describe the latter episode’s stunt as the moment a television show is grasping at straws and running out of ideas to remain relevant or of any quality to its audience. Since then, the phrase has become synonymous with the beginning of a downturn in popularity and relevance for anyone or anything, from a public perspective, that leads to its ultimate demise.

Recently at SXSW, Twitter and AmEx announced a partnership whereby Twitter users can synchronize their account to earn savings on their AmEx card by re-tweeting  #tag deals from both offline and online retailers. The early adopters of this new program include the likes of Best Buy, McDonald’s Whole Foods and Zappos to name a very few.

I am making another bold prediction, right here, right now. This may be Twitter’s jumping the shark moment. In other words, when businesses start to embrace Twitter as a coupon pushing medium, I predict it’s going to be flooded with people putting #bestbuy, #amazon, #wegmans, and #giveme1dollarandIllsellmysoul.  This will undoubtedly relegate Twitter to the ValuePak crowd.  It will be a slow trickle at first, but it won’t be long before corporate spam dominates Twitter.

In itself, Twitter is a self-promotion medium and a very powerful one at that. It’s a way to say to the world, “Hey look at me. Here is what I am doing. You might be interested in this. This is hilarious” and so on. I use it to promote this very blog.

There’s one very important distinction between the way I use it and Twitter advertising. The people who follow me on Twitter choose to follow me. What’s to prevent Twitter advertisements from showing up in my feed from some followers and blocking out the content they really want to read? What’s to prevent the ads from populating your feed or blocking out your tweeted messages so much that they’re lost in a sea of Twitter advertising? What’s to prevent you from seeking and alternative way to get your message out?

What can save Twitter from jumping the shark?

The medium must become a source of searchable instant information: Twitter search. Twitter could be a “real-life” or reality version of Google, with information and answers instantly available from experts. Make that into a searchable database, and you have something that won’t be destroyed by corporate promotion. What the heck, I wouldn’t be opposed to having small related banner ads that could accompany the interface at the bottom of the page.

At their onset and always in the back of their minds, dot-com and new media start ups have how it is that they are going to make money or go public. It goes into the business plan and they take it out to investors. They must remain agile in their thinking about selling ads or services to make it a viable business proposition for investors, and here’s the key, while remaining relevant to their audience. Currently Twitter advertisers use campaign boosters and engagement tools to promote their products and services, a system which allows users to choose what brands or services they want to follow.

When you put the advertising in the hands of the users and it goes viral enough times, you’re not only relegated to the ValuePak crowd, you’re right up there with the “The first 1,500 people to click on this link will get a free iPad – I am not kidding” spammers.

In all reality, one could tell you to simply block all of your worst offending followers.

But then again, should you choose to do so, didn’t you just lose part of your audience?

With this new form of Twitter advertising and promotion, I can almost picture the fin rising from the water, dimmed slightly by a ramp-cast shadow, and hear a familiar diatonic cello chorus building into crescendo in the back of my mind.