Did LinkedIn Throw Out the Baby with the Bath Water

Is it just me, or do you really not understand what’s going on over at LinkedIn?
I’ve been on record in the past as saying how smart I thought it was that LinkedIn moved from a social network for business to a content marketing platform for business. Thousands and thousands of businesspeople produce content on the LinkedIn platform natively. I put blog posts there as well.
They’ve tried to become a B2B magazine. Why go to Fortune, why go to Forbes, why go to Entrepreneur, why go to Inc, why go to Wired, why go to Fast Company, when all that kind of content is in one place on LinkedIn? Smart. And their advertising revenue is doing well. They bought Slideshare;  super smart. Buying Newsle? Also super smart. They’re doing a lot of smart things.
But in their move towards this new system, it feels to me like they have completely ignored a lot of what they used to have. LinkedIn Answers, which I thought was a great feature? They killed it a couple years ago.
LinkedIn Groups at one point was a big, big deal. I know there’s still people who use LinkedIn Groups. Maybe you use LinkedIn Groups. There are certainly clients of ours at Convince & Convert who are active in LinkedIn Groups and rightfully so. But for me and, I think, for many other people, LinkedIn Groups is now a ghost town.
There are so many more Facebook groups that I think are more useful, more interesting, better format. It just seems like a forgotten part of the LinkedIn experience.

The thing that I really don’t understand is that I am getting a ton of LinkedIn connection requests every single day from people I don’t know. I’ve no idea who these people are. Why do these people want to connect with me on LinkedIn? What is the advantage there? If we are LinkedIn friends, it’s not like you all of a sudden now get access to some secret, amazing thinking that I’ve got going on. I just don’t understand why people want to connect with strangers on LinkedIn. It’s not a semi-anonymous distribution network like Twitter, it’s supposed to be a place to connect with and vouch for people you actually know. Right?
(or maybe I totally don’t understand what LinkedIn is for now?)

Send LinkedIn Requests Only to People You Actually Know?

I don’t know that I have ever sent a LinkedIn request to somebody that I didn’t know. I was one of the first 1,000 people, I think it’s first 1,000 people in the world on LinkedIn, and I’ve never, ever done it. I just don’t understand why you would do it?
It seems to me like LinkedIn is ignoring the core of their system to try and roll out all this new content-based stuff. I’m just not quite sure where they are headed. It’s starting to get confusing to me, and maybe to you?

Sprout Social Shoutout

Speaking of LinkedIn, today’s Sprout Social Shoutout is for my friend, Viveka von Rosen, who is one of the foremost LinkedIn experts in the world. She is super smart. Follow Viveka on social media. On Twitter, and obviously you can find her on LinkedIn too.
This video is from Jay Today is my near-daily 3-minute video where I talk about social media, content marketing, business and life. JayToday is available on Youtube, iTunes (as a video podcast, and now as an audio podcast too), and at JayToday.tv. The show is sponsored by Sprout Social (which I use for my social media), and Candidio (a great video editing service – check out their easy new video templates!).

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