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by Micah Elliott.
Original Post: Spontaneous Recommendations on LinkedIn
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LinkedIn appears to have gained an enormous user base. The majority of people I've worked with are already there. It took a few people prodding me to sign up before I bought into the idea. But I was still skeptical. What was the point of it? I couldn't quite figure out what problem LinkedIn was trying to solve. It just looked like another address book, and it was forcing me to store redundant resume information. And I hate redundancy! And worse, it wasn't intended as a communication tool, so why get connected to everyone? It certainly can't integrate with mutt!
But then it started to click. LinkedIn did some things to make it fun and useful. Just like Facebook (which I'm only just starting to use, and don't plan to use much), it encourages users to build up their connections. I started to find friends and colleagues, and it was kinda cool to see what they'd been doing with their careers. But that wasn't quite enough to make it compelling. Then I noticed a little green-bar indicator telling me that my profile was only 55% complete. What does that mean? Well, I better fix that. Do I get some special status when I get to 100%? Let me just fill in the rest of the education section, and then add some other jobs. Okay, cool, now I'm at 70%. This silly gimick (the green bar) was making me want to keep adding information.
It kindly told me that I'd need to add some "recommendations" to increase my completion status. Okay, what's a recommendation. I started browsing around some of my connections, and saw that my buddy, Son, had like 20 recommendations. Wow, people must really think he's great! But I can't just go asking people to say nice things about me. Guess I'll try writing one about a former colleague. Hmm, it's pretty hard to find people to write nice things about. But I chose someone, and wrote a short blurb about how nice Wendy was to work with. Whoa, that felt good! She was a little surprised to see it, but I explained that LinkedIn compelled me to do it.
After a couple more, I caught the bug and started writing nice things about more acquaintences. Now I'm really feeling great. This wonderful excercise caused the following to happen:
Reflecting back on positive experiences in my career
Remembering the people who were fun to work with
Thinking about business relationships in a new way, focusing on tangible positive events
Making others feel good and motivating their positive behavior
Encouraging others to make something positive of each relationship
Maybe someone will write back something nice about me. Admittedly, that was part of the initial selfish motivation. But really, I don't care much if I get the reciprocation. It just feels good to capture a positive relationship you've had at some point in your career.
There are still various LinkedIn features that are not obvious to me -- why am I a member of these groups?? But at this point I have to say that LinkedIn is doing some things very well.
Business idea: build a social system (or add-on) to encourage sharing kind relational reflection.
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