In my time on Linkedin, I’ve developed several phobias that will mean future revenue for some lucky psychiatrist.
I started Linkedin with hope and excitement. Access to millions of smart, savvy professionals who would be kind enough to answer industry questions in minutes vs. weeks of calling contacts to find the person with the right experience. It’s like being able to have 50 coffee meetings in an hour. I was also excited to reach out and help others in repayment. What I experienced instead was slogging through a huge quicksand of self promotion and advertisement. Here are some of the more serious ailments I’ve contracted so far.
Photo Credit V!CAR!OUS from Flickr
- Parasitophobia – Fear of parasites. Fear of various people (recruiters, network marketers, ex-significant others, my mother) befriending me then bothering my network. This is pretty serious.
- Coprophobia – Fear of feces. It’s terrifying to see the weekly email update from groups. 8 pages long or more with ads and self promotion being disguised as discussion. I’m afraid to look at my email box these days and have no motivation to search through hundreds of trash posts to find a real discussion.
- Epistemophobia – Fear of knowledge. I saw 15 ads for herpes pills in 3 different groups. Do I really need to learn the multiple ways to treat unmentionable diseases.
- Euphobia – Fear of hearing good news. All the “must see” discussions with self aggrandizements have become overwhelming. Not to mention the endless “amazing events” that one should attend. I don’t mind hearing about events if I see it in a promotion category. It’s seeing it disguised as a discussion that turns me off.
- Nomatophobia – Fear of names. There are people who are so endemic at spamming that their names can cause convulsions. I often stumble across the same person in multiple groups always asking the same questions.
- Diderodromophobia – Fear of trains, railroads or train travel. I really dislike the open ended questions with a bit.ly link that forces you to click through to find out what the heck the link is for.
- Coulrophobia – Fear of clowns. There are certain acquaintance you barely know who suddenly want to connect with you on LinkedIn. These are people who normally you would never even want to invite to coffee. Now you have to come up with a good reason not to accept the invite on LinkedIn. My favorite excuse is “The enter key got stuck”. I’m still sitting on that invite from an ex co-worker who wanted to involve me in a class action lawsuit that I didn’t think was valid.
- Octophobia – Fear of the figure 8. Ok maybe this is just my issue.
- Ichthyophobia – Fear of fish. I hate spending time to answer what I thought was a serious question only to find out it was bait from a network marketer.
We implore you, Group Managers. Protect us from these hideous experiences. Give us back our faith in Linkedin. Use your moderator lightning bolt and blast away. Banish the promotions to their own categories. Squish the articles back into the news sections. Make it safe for us to enter discussions again.
© 2010 MoneyandRisk.com
Photo credit V!CAR!OUS
Kim,
I love it! I feel the exact same way. Brilliant piece, thank you!
Allison
Cute article. Thanks for posting. I have one to add – fear of posting to a group! This being a rare exception. I made the mistake of joining and posting to a new group recently only to be ousted by the moderator one week later because she didn’t like my grammar! I was called all sorts of names by her, all unjustified. I cried for days reading her very nasty LinkedIn note she sent to me. It took all of my self-control not to respond in kind to her as she was clearly on a power trip and looking for a fight!
So there you go.
Thank you for starting a discussion with all the pitfalls – and giving me the opportunity to vent a little.
Creative! Good counsel to the managers. We are headed for information overload!
Thank you everyone. I think a lot of people has been frustrated with how Linkedin is being misused lately especially with all the promotion by social media to connect on Linkedin.
If Linkedin (the company) does not handle the deterioration of the user experience, it will become marginalized like Myspace. There are already alternatives to Linkedin such as groupsites and private groups.
Hi Kim
May I ask what are the alternatives to Linked-in that you would recommend? I have seen the same person(s) talking about Social Media promotion & SEO optimization repeatedly. Maybe Linked in can devise a method in which a person can make one post on a given topic, regardless of the number of group(s) he/she is in.
Thanks for a very useful post.
Prakash,
There are a lot of alternatives to Linked-in and the choice depends on why you are networking. I started typing out some ideas and got to 2 pages so I will post them in an article. For example, if you are networking to find jobs or contacts at a higher level, Linkedin is not the only answer. Most senior executives and business owners (especially business owners with lots of employees) are busy and they rarely get on Linkedin. It’s not a part of their business rituals. They network in private groups and through other methods. I am in a private online network group that requires someone in the group to sponsor you in. These private groups are not accepting of blatant self promotion or advertising.
I threw that curveball to my internet marketing expert to think about since he’s the tech guru. I got some ideas back such as giving Linkedin members ability to filter out specific people. We’ll see what else he comes up with.
What group managers can do right away to address some of these issues is to put up additional tabs for promotion, introduction, events. People can then post in these tabs as appropriate and the group manager needs to be extremely active in moving inappropriate posts immediately out of discussions. Unfortunately, in some cases, the group managers are the worst offenders and they also keep their own promotion post as a featured discussion for literally years or months. The groups that are monitored and clean make the Linkedin experience extremely enjoyable.
Currently, Linkedin is already providing ad service that forces banner ads to selected groups. This is an option that people can use at but they might be too cheap to buy.
We can only hope that the offenders learn that the tactics they are using does more harm than good to their reputation in the group. Unfortunately, spammers don’t care about being a good citizen. If they destroy a group, they just move on. It’s part of their business model.
What a clever way of approaching this subject matter. Kudos!
I agree with Kim. Again our social skills & our etiquette’s of accepting and rejecting is tested like never in the history before. Key is monitoring activities yours and others.
Very funny! Would love to follow you on Twitter… I could not agree more with your comments, and fear I am developing some of the same phobias – worst of all is when you get them from the posts of good friends – who knew that social networking could be so revealing of “about me”ness
Thanks so much for this clever article. I’ve realized that LinkedIn is as you note filled with self-promoters. And I don’t have time for these people or their self-promotion. So I use LinkedIn less and less. It has terrific potential for bringing people together, but only if the managers find some way to reduce the spam content. Thanks for putting my thoughts into such a humorous discussion.
Too funny – great article! That sums up completely my feelings on all social networks!
Thank you everyone for giving me feedback. It helps when I’m hunching over the laptop at 3AM in morning.
Very funny … and true! When I’ve spotted posts advertising medical procedures (for example) listed in group discussions supposedly regarding non-profits, I’ve brought it to the attention of the group leader, who has removed them. Shouldn’t the leaders/moderators of various groups be monitoring their groups for such abuses? It shouldn’t be up to the members to do that!
Jane, unfortunately, in some groups, the leaders/moderators are the worst offender because they view it as a private platform to promote themselves.
Excellent Kim and I don’t use LinkedIn I have an acct I went one like 2 times a year ago just came by to let you know I am very impressed with the site and when I look for post that I know will interest bloggers I know where to come in fact I already recommended the site for a business blogger to get some ideas
Sorry LOL
This site comes closer to matching your talent and is excellent Thanks
John
I believe you have proven that we laugh at other people’s fears. I couldn’t help it, especially after reading:
Now you have to come up with a good reason not to accept the invite on LinkedIn. My favorite excuse is “The enter key got stuck”.
That is priceless!
In a more serious vein, I think that the low barrier to entry to “professional” sites is the root of the problem.
Whatever you may think of the BNI membership model, its barriers keep out a lot of tire-kickers.
Cheers,
Mitch
funny way to present a very obnoxious linkeden reality…I just don’t likec their newsletter…
Thanks Kim…
@ John, thank you for your incredible support as always.
@ Mitchell I had a blast writing that article and it’s a success for me when I make you laugh.
@Sam, thank you. LinkedIn could be an amazing resource when it is used right but the latest changes is just making the issues worse.