After fourteen years of captivity, hundreds of posts, numerous articles and fifteen thousand followers, I finally bade farewell to my virtual hangout. The problem was that I wasn’t getting anywhere. What had started off as a professional network space had become a mesh between Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram. Here are the regular posts on LinkedIn nowadays:
- I am Super Excited to announce that……
- I usually do not post such instances but this time around I had to because…..
- Here is a cute video of my cat chasing its tail…..
- Please enjoy my 5000th photograph of myself loving myself; I have posted everything already except me taking a dump.
- Please read the caption below, this is not just a dog chasing a cat but the challenges of life chasing you in circles, keep your head high and take the humps as they come.
- I have just completed another certification and “I truly hate my job” so can you please help me get out of this hell hole.
- So happy to announce that I got engaged/married/divorced today.
- Dad, I will miss you forever, you were my rock, my strength my whatever (As if the dead Dad has an access to Internet underground).
- I would like to confess in front of my LinkedIn community that I was abused as a child, fell to drugs, ran a chain gang, ate dolphins with impunity but here I am coming clean and bold and bubbling so you can read my blogs and buy my trainings.
- I am an Author |Motivator|Futurist|Enterpreneur |Business Startegist|CEO|C Level Executive|Managing Director|Joker|Superman|Batman|Janitor|Thinker|Coach|Data Science|iOT|BBC|CNN|Cartoon Network|
The last one has really been picking a lot of steam lately with personal stories of gore and violence as a base for a great professional career makes one feel that not being abused as a child was some sort of a unlucky charm; in short the place has become a swamp with no direction.
These are the key lessons that I have learned the hard way:
- Every professional who matters never wastes his time and has no reason to hang around in Cyber Space. Only job seekers, pitch losers and time wasters who are dying off boredom in office are active on LinkedIn. A new breed has been housewives who have been informed that LinkedIn is just as good as TikTok and their vidoes are sure to get major viewership so post along.
- No one is reading, the crowd on LinkedIn has an attention span of a squirrel, anything more than four lines and its of no use unless its a self loathing post with a sexy picture of the subject. Articles; forget it, I have tried for years to get attention but the same people kept commenting and liking the post, maybe they felt sorry for me and wanted to give a shoulder to cry upon.
- The requests for connections are without subjects and its a race to increase the number of your followers.
- The people who matter rarely respond.
- Unless you need to get in touch with a particular person or organization, this space doesn’t provide any add on. Similar videos are available to enjoy on Facebook and time is better wasted on YouTube, much better.
- I have had better results on posting my articles on Facebook that were originally published on LinkedIn.
- LinkedIn has become a funeral parlor for dejected employees seeking any outlet to look busy. If you are cuaght in office browsing the internet then what better medium than LinkedIn to show your bosses that you were researching about the next breakthrough product.
- If you are a creative person with original content then its better to find a space for your talent that does justice but unfortunately still maintain a minimum presence on LinkedIn, someday, somewhere a bored individual might pick what you have been trying to pitch.
- Repeat: Do not write articles on LinkedIn, trust me on this, no one is there to read.
No one reads articles on LinkedIn, its a dump for bored employees counting minutes. If you must, then post photos of your naughty dogs, bewildered cats or spectacular accidents; people love these and you’ll receive amazing likes.
I am shamelessly blurting out my frustration but this is how I felt after all these years. I was posting an update weekly on the Mobile Phone Industry and the Gray market that goes with it, for years I had been the only person doing so and the reason had been to develop conatcts within the Industry. Did I make any contacts, yes I did, a few but the effort versus the return was not worth continuing it anymore.
What I had noticed was a minimum interaction from the readers as many of them were genuinely afraid to put in a comment (I did ask a few). Others did not see a reason to interact as they were receiving free information anyway. It all boiled down to creating one way traffic as professional information became a scarce resource on the platform.
In an attempt to not look too personal and too opinionated, people are afraid to share news that they actually care about. Instead, they share news that they wish they cared about. Also, every link has to be vetted with difficult questions that show how vulnerable you really are:
- “Does this article show that I know what’s going on in my industry?”
- “Is this article inspirational without making me look too religious, and put me at risk of losing my job?”
- “If my boss reads this article, will he think that I posted it because I think that he is incompetent?”
Eventually it gets too hard, and you end up sharing a horribly boring article about “industry trends” because it has some pretty charts and it’s almost time for your lunch break.
Maybe the experience in the East is different from Western countries
There have been times when I wondered that maybe it is our region, the East does not bring any inventions or original ideas so the individuals on LinkedIn are just trying to look pep, I mean people in the Middle East wildly celebrated with Apple reached 1 Trillion $ valualtion or when Bezos became the richest dude on the planet; I dared not to like those posts as it didn’t seem right somehow. What has been the contribution of the individual celebrating this achievement other than buying an iPhone for himself, MacBook for his wife and another iPad for his kid? Fails me.
So, here I am, abandoned the safety of LinkedIn and venturing in a new territory to explore.
Lastly, I have seen individuals being blackmailed by bosses for spending too much time on LinkedIn for an apparent fear that the team is about to abort the toxic organizations; maybe disgruntled employees need a new space.
Looking forward.
