LinkedIn, the Cable Company
I imagine anyone without a LinkedIn, right now, is feeling pretty attractive. If you signed up recently, the honeymoon phase will end, trust me. I joined November 3, 2010. Everything seemed right and I was excited at the job opportunities and networking I was going to experience. I had just graduated high school and began to learn about how the real world works.
Around this same time, I experienced getting mail solicitations for the first time. Addressed to me, albeit in my father’s house, was mail from Time Warner Cable. That’s not it, either! I can’t remember all of the cable companies at the time (everyone keeps buying everyone, dammit!), but there were around 2 other companies vying for my courtship, as well. I was a shiny new customer and brimming with naiveté. Who remembers the deal “They’ll get $100 and you’ll get $100.”? Or the one where each time a friend signs up, you get a credit to your account for premium channels?
It’s great for when you buy a new home! A cable company gives you 3 months of premium channels for free, lowers the price for a year to make having cable reasonable, and they bundle in a home phone.
Sound like LinkedIn, yet? Join and enjoy a free month of premium! Check. Spam your friends to join! Check. Bundle things that aren’t used like LinkedIn Connections (the result of acquiring Newsle)! Check. Arbitrary metrics to induce positive and continued interaction. Well, okay the cable analogy only extends so far, but now that my profile is 100%, I have 500+ connections, I posted a few times, and LinkedIn knows where I went to college, what are the tangible benefits?
Much like a cable company (yes, we’re back to that analogy, because I put it in the title), LinkedIn doesn’t have to improve upon its product offering to bring on new users nor to keep existing users. You continue paying for cable despite being at work one third of your day, sleeping another third, and watching cat videos on Reddit the remaining third. You don’t frequent LinkedIn, just like you don’t regularly watch cable; but you keep it, because sometimes you like to watch TV live. And at some point in your life you’re going to want a new job.
LinkedIn is everyone’s “just in case” network. 94% of recruiters are active on LinkedIn, but only 36% of candidates are. Job seekers, by a wide margin, prefer Facebook, with 83% reporting they are active there, compared to just 65% of recruiters. (Source: Jobvite)
It makes sense that recruiters are more active, because recruiters pay, but LinkedIn has more than one type of user to satisfy. That’s exactly where LinkedIn’s UX deteriorates. Go to LinkedIn, right now! Ads on the top and the right hand side, none of them from recruiters. Check your inbox, there are probably a lot of people doing the equivalent of cold calling you to use their services or watch their seminars. The majority of recruiters that slip through the cracks probably aren’t relevant to your interests, demonstrating that LinkedIn does a poor job of matching candidates with employers. And nearly every interaction is plagued with importing your entire Gmail contact list AGAIN and accidentally inviting everyone you’ve ever interacted with.
Scrolling through the home page, you’ll find updates that are more akin to Facebook than anything and suddenly it dawns on you…LinkedIn has managed to build a less attractive Facebook and rebranded it as a site for job seekers. At least cable has it honest; they came before the internet! LinkedIn, the fastest growing social network, has shown little ambition to improve. Mentioning their bad design is a good way to piss off co-founder, Reid Hoffman. And my optimistic post about LinkedIn’s Lynda acquisition has turned out to be little more than gross speculation.
It’s clear that there’s a lot about the user experience at LinkedIn that could be improved, and I spent a good deal of time ripping into one of the most promising forms of social media in this post; however, I don’t criticize the King to spite the kingdom. I genuinely believe that if LinkedIn spent more time improving their product for existing users, they’d have a much more valuable product. At some point, growth rate slows. If everyone in the world signed up for LinkedIn, eventually all they would have are unenthused users.
LinkedIn, everyone hates cable companies. Just…don’t be a cable company.
