I recently wrote about Linked Lurkers and how
we need to engage with and contribute to communities to avoid being seen as a
lurker. Discussions with @dougshaw1 and others revealed that many of us
have mixed experiences of LinkedIn especially LinkedIn Groups. I
have quite strong feelings on the subject so thought I’d share them with you!
LinkedIn is often compared to a business conference or
even a professional networking event. Overall I don’t disagree, but
in Discussion Groups I’ve experienced a real division in quality which you’d be
unlikely to experience in the real world.
For me these are best described as The Good, The Bad &
The Ugly:
The Good
In essence communities of practice that provide support,
share information and offer perspectives and learning. Often smaller
in size, the experience is one of quality not quantity. In these
groups not only do you find value in much of the discussion content, you find
members of the group becoming part of your professional network, friends even.
The Bad
The Group purpose might seem appealing but in fact it's
very hard to find what attracted you in the first place. Either through
scale or poor management you spend a lot of time looking for something
useful. Where the membership is in the thousands, the combination of
self promotion and irrelevance becomes an almost toxic mix. There
may be some nuggets in there but if this was a conference you would have walked
out by now.
Discussion is absent & self promotion rules. Any
discussions are used as a platform for members to promote their
position. Self promotion and even shouting matches are par for the
course. If you are looking for a supplier of services then there are
plenty here but would you really go to a demented hawkers market to procure
expertise for your organisation?
I’ve been actively using LinkedIn since 2004 when it had
a little over 1million members. Now 7 years later it has 120m
members. To my mind the above 3 types of Discussion Group have always
existed. Maybe each serves it’s purpose. For me I’m only
interested in The Good where community matters and good things come from good
behaviours. When I feel a Group becomes irrelevant, too large or full of
spam & self-promotion I leave.
What do you think? What are your experiences?
