According to a May 16, 2011 article in the Wall Street Journal, LinkedIn (LNKD) is scheduled to begin trading on the NYSE this Thursday. It’s interesting to see the contrast of those who place such value in LinkedIn (previously referenced WSJ article states they hope to raise up to $274 million) especially when our Google Analytics reports a number of “LinkedIn is worthless” keyword searches every week. These searches ultimately lead visitors to a “Is LinkedIn Worthless” article we published last year. We would guess that those searching for such articles have already
put a gross amount of time into trying to add value to their business or personal professional development on LinkedIn to no avail. Out of frustration, those poor souls probably type in “LinkedIn is worthless” to find out whether others are feeling the same way. Unfortunately our “Is LinkedIn Worthless” article probably didn’t bash LinkedIn like they were hoping, since we have for the most part had a positive experience using LinkedIn. But we still have some reservations.
LinkedIn Service / Feature Failures
Like the “LinkedIn is down” screenshot (above) suggests, LinkedIn service is not perfect. In fact, that screenshot was taken today, only a few days before their planned IPO. We also experienced a LinkedIn connections feature failure that lasted through months (and several help requests) before it was resolved. We were unable to access any of our connections, which if you know LinkedIn, you know the entire system value is based on connections.
We recently launched an advertising campaign on LinkedIn, but weren’t impressed with the results. Of course, there is the Wannamaker maxim that says: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” But, the fact that LinkedIn was the half that was wasted doesn’t bode well.
LinkedIn Groups/Connections Worthless
Much of our traffic comes from our blogs, which we post to LinkedIn groups and other social platforms, so we know the groups have value. But, when we go through ecommerce groups requesting permission from group members to connect, we often get no response, or something months later like “Sorry for the delay, I never really log into LinkedIn.” This really makes us wonder how active LinkedIn users are. Are they really going in to check their mail, connections’ status updates, etc. Based on hundreds of hours of experimentation, our guess is probably not.
Stock Options?
While we’re not ready to buy LinkedIn stock, we’re definitely no where close to neglecting our presence on LinkedIn. In fact, we don’t want readers here to think LinkedIn has totally failed us. What’s a more likely scenario is that LinkedIn is working just as its architects intended; less as a promotional tool and more as a place to have genuine, social media, discussions and meet relevant connections. We’ve learned that by turning down the promotional noise, and slowing down to listen and REALLY engage is the way to go.
