I am not a fan of LinkedIn, the “professional” social networking site. I’ve recently closed my account with them actually simply because I was getting lots of lovely emails regarding people in my “network” and their activity, and nothing else. At all.

Oh, there was that one message from someone in Russia making me a business proposition, outlining their requirements, pricing and a promise to push work my way…

I passed. Like Bernard Black mentioned after Manny had sold all his books, It’s not that kind of operation that I run.

But back to LinkedIn…

My first major quibble is that it’s not in the slightest bit intuitive. Everything is structured in a way that means you have to go through page after page of guff before getting to the point.

Do they allow upload of CV/Resume? Who knows? 

Can you ever complete your profile? Not as far as I can see — you have to get more references than a rat has fleas

Is it possible to just email people through the system without having to search for the frigging way to do it (I’m referring, of course, to messages attached to network invitations where if you’ve accepted said invitation, you can’t actually email a response to the person in question).

It’s only recently that I’ve found a way to delete people I’d rather not be networked with (for personal reaasons, as I found out they were total nutters; a story for another time). 

And finding where to turn-off the bloody messages that come through with monotonous regularity telling you what other people are doing (Geoff is picking his nose; Sally is considering moving into waste management after dealing with the CEO of her company for 3 years; Jennifer has linked to thirteen people you’ve never heard of).

Some of it is — and I’m sure I’ve mentioned this elsewhere — like a small child or a Yorkshire terrier jumping up and down next to you trying to get attention.

I’m a busy person — I’ve got things to do that don’t include reading inane email messages telling me what other people are doing. And I only work 3 days a week, so what’s it like for people who work full-time?!

And this is the rock-solid basis on which sites like this are built — Facebook is another bloody awful example of it — the functionality you want is buried under layer after layer of bullshit. 

Douglas Adams puts this feeling best when talking about the Syrius Cybernetics Corporation in “So long,  and thanks for all the fish (on page 145 of the paperback edition if you’re interested):

“…It is very easy to be blinded by the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all…”

And by Ford Prefect thus:

“… their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws…”

Ultimately what I’m getting at is this: We shouldn’t have to learn something by being forced into it when we just want to communicate with people — that’s the genius of Twitter (and what Google gave us in search engines) — we should just be able to bloody do it when we want to and HOW we want to.

</end rant>