Followers Impressions Engagements

Since the last Fudge Sunday Monthly, here are the newsletter issues you might have missed:

• k8s Operator, Could You Help Me Place SysCall??2023 Feb 13
• Smooth k8s Operator?2023 Feb 05
• IDP Clearly Now?2023 Jan 30
• Deploy Everything You Touch?2023 Jan 23
• Cost Cause?2023 Jan 16
• Happy When It Toolchains?2023 Jan 08
• Such Tweet Nothing?2023 Jan 01

Granted, most of my newsletter content is being consumed directly via Buttondown on fudge.org but there is also the contribution from LinkedIn originated traffic.

For the newsletter this month, I'll draw from two (2) Creator links:

1. Audience https://www.dhirubhai.net/analytics/creator/audience/
2. Content https://www.dhirubhai.net/analytics/creator/content/

So, if you are reading this, it could mean you are what LinkedIn calls, Followers.

Followers

According to LinkedIn:

The number of new followers (including connections and non-connection followers) in the selected time range.

After low leveling my entire LinkedIn periodically... and most recently in 2018, the bulk of returning Followers was very rapid but has slowed since 2020.

As of this update, LinkedIn claims that I have 3,848?Followers. I don't know how many Followers are genuinely real people, honeypots, pseudo-replicating researchers, sock puppets, bots, nation-state sponsored CYBINT / DNINT / SOCMINT / Digital HUMINT actors, or somewhere in between.

You know, like on Twitter.??

Hello. ??

As I begin to engage in outbound content creation and delivery, I suspect this will climb similar to my time while I was a CTO, Field CTO, etc. when it was more than 4,000 Followers but I don't think it was more than 18,000 — so not LinkedIn Influencer sized by any means.

Speaking of which... then there is what LinkedIn calls, Impressions.

Impressions

According to LinkedIn:

The number of times your posts were displayed on screen. This number is an estimate and may not be precise. The graph below shows the change in impressions on each day in the selected time range.

Notably, when you change jobs there are more ways for others to notice. If you follow many folks, it can be very easy to miss.

However, it does appear that LinkedIn wants to drive more traffic and has responded by creating a link that let's you see recent job changes, etc. in your network.

• Job Changes https://www.dhirubhai.net/celebrations/job_changes/
• Birthdays https://www.dhirubhai.net/celebrations/birthdays/
• Milestones https://www.dhirubhai.net/celebrations/work_anniversaries/

This feature indicates "Beta" so YMMV.

Ultimately, this will drive what LinkedIn calls, Engagements.

Engagements

According to LinkedIn:

The total number of engagements on your posts, including reactions, comments, and reposts. Engagements from organizations aren't included. The graph below shows the change in engagements on each day in the selected time range.

Anyway. I don't plan to change my content mix or approach to game engagements.

Does this mean I won't become a LinkedIn Influencer? Perhaps.

Do I care? Not really.

What I believe is happening with these vanity metrics — and the notion of Creator feature expanding — is that LinkedIn wants to siphon traffic to remain within the LinkedIn walled garden. Why? I'll give you a hint....

More Migration Mediation Machinations

So, up this point there are LinkedIn Followers, Impressions, and Engagement. But, I'm not treating LinkedIn as the primary modality.

Instead I opt to invest time each week into an email newsletter and anchor website content destination:

i.e. fudge.org

In the coming months, I'll be working on ways to point to fudge.org from prior experiments on other platforms. It's slow and deliberate because I just haven't found the time to get it all done (yet) for the search engine crawlers and nginx redirect recipes.

For now, I'm using pinned posts on Medium and my old Substack to drive human originated traffic to fudge.org -- and it is still fascinating to see how varied (limited) oEmbed cards are across these services.

As always, thanks for reading!

-Jay