March 28, 2016 at 2:13 am As the editor-in-chief of a management magazine (Strategy+Business, www.strategy-business.com), I have a different perspective on this

March 28, 2016 at 2:13 am As the editor-in-chief of a management magazine (Strategy+Business, www.strategy-business.com), I have a different perspective on this. The potential value of LinkedIn is as a vehicle for showing up professionally. Within a company, and often outside, people realize their aspirations by demonstrating what they can do distinctively. That goes beyond having a personal brand: it involves having relationship equity, reputational equity, and competence – all of which accrue, over time, just as powerfully as interest-earning capital. LinkedIn is a vehicle for accelerating this, which is why it has value as a platform for publishing articles etc. It's also why the spam issue is serious - to the extent it interferes with that platform. The problem articulated here stems from a confusion between public and professional identities. They’re not the same thing. They involve different kinds of equity. A public identity requires having a reputation and presence. We need to be able to publish, critique, and show up. LinkedIn is a platform. A professional identity requires relationships and connection. For managing relationships, we need to be able to prune and prioritize people. Avoiding spam is critical. LinkedIn is a connection point. I too use it to find people and try to contact them. For both purposes, we need aspirational guidance, damage control (dealing with rumors etc.), and the ability to have one place where people can always find us. To the extent LinkedIn offers these transparently, it can monetize them. It hasn’t, in my view, lost its vision. It’s grappling with the fact that its vision is complicated. And the tools are not always clear. The user interface gets in the way. Is that a trust issue - or just a user experience issue? Thanks for posting this . I appreciated this essay and the comments. Reply