Last week Mike made the case that Facebook won’t replace LinkedIn, arguing that people prefer to manage their professional contacts separately from their friends. In my previous post I’d suggested that Facebook migh replace LinkedIn. In the light of Mike’s article I’m going to explain why I think this is likely to happen.
I created an account on LinkedIn three years ago and connected to a handful of friends, customers and collaborators. After that my account languished for a couple of years until the end of 2006 when I refreshed my profile and connected to some more people. Right now I’ve got 33 connections, qualifying me as a miserable norman-no-mates in LinkedIn land.
To put it bluntly I don’t like LinkedIn. I always feel a little bit dirty asking someone for a LinkedIn connection. I think this is probably because the platform offers such a coldly reductionist view of what a business relationship means. In LinkedIn all that counts is a person’s job title, where they’ve worked in the past and how many high-powered connections they’ve notched up. This dehumanises people and relationships, rendering them down to their mechanical and factual base. To use any system is to express complicity in the values it embodies. LinkedIn doesn’t reflect my values or my experience of professional relationships.
In May this year I created an account on Facebook (late adopter that I am) and got swept up in the usual ferment of friends and apps. The people I’ve listed as friends in Facebook cover a wide spectrum from purely personal to purely professional. But I’ve met all of them (with one exception) and I like all of them. Unlike LinkedIn, Facebook gives me a rounded picture of each person that might include their music and reading habits, glimpses of their family life, photos and video clips, updates from their Twitter feeds and so on. It’s important that the Facebook platform encourages people to interact in a playful way. I’m liable to find professional contacts slapping me with a kipper or turning me into a zombie. When was the last time that happened on LinkedIn?
In my experience successful businesses are built on strong relationships which include both professional and personal elements. I believe people have an innate preference to interact with each other across multiple dimensions, regardless of conventional work/life distinctions. LinkedIn makes absolutely no contribution to this whilst Facebook provides lots of helpful mechanisms. That’s why I predict people will increasingly use Facebook for their professional connections as well as their personal ones. Watch out LinkedIn!
August 9th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Hmmm…I don’t think that Facebook will replace LinkedIn. I agree with much that both Mike and Charles say. However, on one hand, “successful businesses are built on strong relationships which include both professional and personal elements” but on the other “I certainly don’t want to turn the CEO of the company I was consulting for last year into a zombie”. I use LinkedIn to start relationships in business and hope that in time I can ‘graduate’ them to Facebook. If you can retain good business having turned a CEO into a Zombie, you’re doing the right thing.
August 20th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
On a serious note – anything as much of a cliche as — Don’t mix business and pleasure — must have stood the test of time for a reason. On a less relevant note I worry about what happens to couples who split up – all those pictures of them together won’t go down well with the new potential partners – its hard enough disentangling your social lives as it is – how do you break off all contact to make a clean break in the facebook age ????
November 13th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
In furtherance – I have observed an even more complex phenomenon on Bebo. Many 16 year old boys profiles refer extensively to their girlfriend – (they are encouraged to answer questions in their profile eg what are you most afraid of? ANS: [girlfriendname] in a mood etc. Then you see their girlfriend listed top of their friends – so you click their girlfriends profile – Relationship status SINGLE. So then you scroll through the comment history of their girlfriend and find one from ‘boyfriend’ a few weeks back ‘So how was it at Robs place – I guess you must have run out of credit. I guess you must have been back for a few days now I really really really love you’…. So for years he will be at the mercy of his ex-gf to delete that…. so I guess they are going to grow up thick skinned in the social networking generation
December 15th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you Idetrorce
March 7th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
This is an old post. Maybe no longer so strongly felt (visceral)?
I don’t understand “feeling dirty” about asking for a connection. I only ask people I already know well — or people I’ve recently met and like.
For the same reason, I don’t understand “In LinkedIn all that counts is a person’s job title, where they’ve worked in the past and how many high-powered connections they’ve notched up. This dehumanises people and relationships.”
The connections are person-to-person; they’re not person-to-text. No one has to tell me that my friends are real people. But I’m interested in learning what their expertise is, when they’ve started working someplace new, etc. I honestly wouldn’t mind also knowing more what their “non-professional” lives are like. But on the other hand, I have other ways of knowing that.