How Users Are Shaping the Future of LinkedIn

By Jim Yenzer & Chip Evans Ph.D.

LinkedIn.com is the premier dynamic user based online resume and work profile in the market place. There is an advantage to the job seekers who have a LinkedIn profile over the candidates that do not. LinkedIn added tools, features and widgets that gain their members additional exposure and have gradually made these items more robust to gain even more attention with a members overall network, the illicit 3rd level connections. These initiatives allow LinkedIn to function as your personal PR machine. LinkedIn’s total global membership is up, in Q1 with 75% of new members coming from outside the US and more jobs are listed on LinkedIn than ever with 3.5 million job listings.

The US alone is 115 million members +
Regional membership
116M+ EMEA
89M+ Europe
68M+ Asia and the Pacific
13M+ Southeast Asia
6M+ DACH
15M+ MENA
50M+ LATA

Nevertheless a trend appears to be emerging, that seems to support a thesis that more content is less captivating. More is wasting time and exposing too many too often to what they don’t need.

Sharon Stern, a Business and Executive Coach, asserts that, “many experts in the field agree that the individual bio shall replace the resume in the future and that LinkedIn will be situated to take advantage of that when the industry shifts”. Yet certain aspects of LinkedIn are not adding value. There are mixed views of posts where users share articles giving them more exposure to the vast membership of LinkedIn. The issue is that posts have become akin to DRIP marketing campaigns with some are just constantly saturating their connections with them.

The returns on these types of posts are diminishing. LinkedIn offers a key element that is absolutely essential for success. There are robust tools and techniques to stay in front of other members in a regular way that promotes your individual brand. Abusers of their brand start to spoil it for everyone. It is not just those who repeatedly post a math puzzles, change their profile photo once a week or other non-relevant, non-productive Facebook like activities. It’s also someone who puts 50 feed items a day regardless what they are. On LinkedIn one can achieve information overload quickly and members being overzealous are often to blame. When posting on LinkedIn carefully select, vet, and add value to others business day, be thoughtful and precise. Provide value for the reader. Limits on overuse would be a great tweak LinkedIn could implement. Similar to InMail, those who create excessive feed, beyond a specific threshold, are charged in a premium membership service fee structure. If a member has 10,000 connections for example they are otherwise getting content in front of their connections for free on an unlimited basis.

In the past year LinkedIn has changed its home page and become more wasteful of bandwidth and less valuable to business and job recruiters with the degradation of the home page content. Businesses and job recruiters do not have time, nor wish to "filter" content of a business and job recruiting network with the influx of math puzzles, IQ tests, and religious quotes. Freedom of speech is always paramount to a good social medium but these threads become either argumentative, or incendiary (religious) or wasted space for what could be valuable to businesses and job recruiters.

Dr. Evans, the co-author of this article, once generated 2 to 3 million annually with connections and advertising on LI when it was related to business. He was a top premium subscriber, pay up to $1000 a month alone for a recruiter membership. Now, he is indicative of why LinkedIn stock dropped over 18% in the past two weeks, on declining earnings per share and acquisition made. Businesses and job recruitment do not have the time nor interest to "view" threads that should be filtered to groups on religion, or math puzzles, or even inspirational quotes that are often not even written by those that the authors "credit" the quote to.

Instead, businesses and job recruiters actually use these threads to identify those that are "writing at work", or expressing points of view that the firms that they work at may see as negative to what their firms stand for. As an example, a thread" Jesus is King" is not only incendiary by its writing, as only one third (1/3) of the world is Christian, but is not something a firm like GE wants to see its employees (who so identify themselves on their profile as working for the company) announce to the LinkedIn audience. Conversely, job recruiters now even view this type of thread to identify who Not to interview, as they want to recruit well balanced individuals who know where to write, and where not to.

We suggest that LinkedIn consider categorizing the home page, actually moderating it smartly, to move math puzzles, religious dialogue, and personal opinion to sub categories, or separate page that the LinkedIn users can choose to go to or advanced controls on what they see in their feeds. If change does not take place and the continued "fake profiles" proliferate, we will see LinkedIn become a Facebook, and the social medium it was will lose even more value".

Taken from the LinkedIn home page: Mission

“Our mission is simple: connect the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful. When you join LinkedIn, you get access to people, jobs, news, updates, and insights that help you be great at what you do.”

When LinkedIn began the process of limiting and reducing the way people connect it stepped backwards and stepped away from their mission statement. Does this alteration to the mission damage its integrity? Not if there is good reason to do so, for example to protect its active members.

The Communications Decency Act, Title 47 U.S.C. Section 230 (c) provides immunity for third party postings. In a nutshell it holds that LinkedIn and other website operators cannot be treated as the author or publisher and cannot be held liable for things members create. Section 230 has been challenged in the courts several times and been upheld. Section 230 (c) does not protect LinkedIn from itself.

LinkedIn’s has a potentially devastating obstacle that is growing everyday but is nearly unseen and difficult to measure its destructive force as a user. In the same respect that the American public has become numb to the fact deficits will continue to seemingly expand forever, the same numbness has taken over LinkedIn on this issue. LinkedIn is presently disengaged from a proactive removal process for fake accounts and accounts that misrepresent others or impersonate them. LinkedIn does little to initiate those types of policing without any members feedback, complaints or submissions. LinkedIn will close an account when good cause is shown. After it is brought to LinkedIn’s attention that the member is violating the LinkedIn User Agreement or is involved with some other nefarious act LinkedIn will spring into action.

LinkedIn should police its own platform and be vigilant, but they are shielded by the protection provided under Section 230(c). The number of fake accounts closed vs. the number of fake accounts existing is too few. The pain that may one day be at the footsteps of the LinkedIn’s platform is likely greater than is considered by their management. How many fake accounts are on LinkedIn currently? What if it’s 20 million members? It’s likely not 20 million nevertheless; LinkedIn does not speculate nor know how many accounts on their platform are fake. They have not made it public. LinkedIn cannot stop fake accounts in any meaningful way and every day the numbers grow higher and higher.

The majority of the burden is for the user to find these accounts and report them to LinkedIn and hope they do something. This fake account expansion is a slow drain on the LinkedIn platform via its own integrity. The ethical and prudent course of action is to actively safeguard and monitor their platform against fakes. LinkedIn with a $25 billion market capitalization could and should have teams working around the clock dedicated to stopping and finding fake accounts that already exist and that are trying to be opened.

It could be argued that LinkedIn’s largest asset is its platform and one would think its value is worth policing. If in the future LinkedIn has 1 billion members and 500 million are real and 500 million are fake the utility of the platform diminishes exponentially. Once trust is harmed with this type of platform, one based on transparency, it cannot be repaired easily. The dangers of fake profiles or impersonator profiles are not only nefarious individuals collecting your information for potential criminal activity but they now may email you malicious malware that will wreak havoc on your computer. They will be able to send these emails daily hoping you click just one link ending in disaster. Imagine someone getting fired because they brought the entire computer network down at their job for clicking on a link from one of these fake or nefarious account’s emails. We all need to be aware the problem is getting bigger by the minute; like a garden covered with weeds it is time we get rid of what is killing our flowers. For more information on how to spot fake accounts look for a follow up piece in two weeks’ time where actual examples of recently closed accounts will be provided.

Controls on users feed should be tightened by a LinkedIn Code of Conduct directed at member’s feed in an effort to narrow the uselessness. Posts should expresses a business topic that would not otherwise been seen as Facebook noise or entertainment. We need and enjoy entertainment however not while we are on the clock. A vast majority of Americans use LinkedIn while they are working. LinkedIn must be mindful that their user’s time is precious.

A potential first step in the LinkedIn offensive on the war on waste and fraud is LinkedIn should actively monitor and consistently and aggressively closedown fake/nefarious accounts. LinkedIn should allow restriction options for members on anonymous browsing where as a user could select a change in settings and block them or only allow very specific types of anonymous browsing, i.e. inquiries for job offers. LinkedIn must protect member’s safety through a strictly enforced code of conduct and prohibit all forms of harassment while enforcing strict penalties on all violations. LinkedIn could eliminate a majority of new fraud by requiring a verified credit card to be on file as proof of identity even if they open a free account. Or the LinkedIn account holder provides a verified cell phone number, and has their profile picture be kept on file with LinkedIn and uploaded to and Google Images to run all photos through a master database. If someone is a teenager who is allowed to join LinkedIn at age 14 they must have an adult with a verified Credit Card and that adult provide consent to the account being created. LinkedIn’s future should be bright if they can focus on seeing the potential damage letting these problems go on unresolved.

To learn more about the Authors:
Chip Evans, PH.D. - https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/evanschip - 38 years in Management Consulting, Business Advisors, with a team of 52 licensed consultants worldwide.

Jim Yenzer - https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/jimyenzer - Business Coach for Startups, Profitability Consultant, Capital Funding Strategist, Value Creator, Change Catalyst & Mediator

https://press.LinkedIn.com/about-LinkedIn