Back to the roots of Linkedin

Can we get back to the roots of Linkedin ?

I know that I start to get old. I openend my Linkedin account close to the beginning of the 3rd Millenium...

At the time, it was about connecting to people you knew, who could help you in your business, and who you were prepared to help. It was about learning from people who you didn't know, but who could contribute to what some people consider as secondary today, but which at the time was important : your business, your professional life, your fulfilment in your job.

Look at what Linkedin has become today, and it's getting worse during summer :

• personal statements about political ideas
• professional politicians getting confused between FB, Insta, Tik Tok and Linkedin. Profesionnals don't care about political statements. Especially if issued by governments that really don't do a lot for business (can't help thinking about France...). So Linkedin should not be a platform for governments or their ministers.
• people sending you inmails about how they can help you accelerate your sales. I'm in Private Equity. I don't sell. I don't send out media campaigns to create traffic on my website. People selling this stuff should at least look at their potential "targets". Else they discredit their own product and approach...
• People you didn't know existed, living on a Continent where you never set foot, and not even bothering to send a little message with their request to connect...
• False accounts trying to get you into discussions to help them in their social engineering to better hack you later (thanks to my IT provider for the training sessions ;-) )
• One post out of two is abour climate change. The other half is about ESG... Is there nothing else ? And even if I agree that both topics are important, Linkedin is becoming like any other platform with dogmatic and ideologic believers... who don't seem to be able to accept contradiction (be it argumented of not).

I'm not a boomer of age, but I must admit that I regret the good old days. When people talked without judgement. Accepted opposing ideas. Didn't do hard-selling and had a profesionnal yet personalised approach.

This short thing to say that I am probably closing down my account soon. I don't know where to go else. But maybe it doesn't matter anyway...

Have fun. But if an old, influential guy from Microsoft reads this, and if it gets him to think, then there is already progress.

Thank you for having read this post until the end !