Scot Duke saw the social networking trend early.
Back in 2003 when the fog of Forced Retirement started rolling in on my career at one of the Fortune 100 big boxes, I started looking around to make the jump to where the sun was shining brightest in order to lessen the blow of being pushed out of a job I truly enjoyed. Where the sun was shining the brightest at that time was on the Internet.
The sun still is shining brightly out here in La-La-Land but the fog of deception has now moved in to the more fruitful places to reside online causing a them to decay. This time the failed economy has moved in to cloud the brightness and causing a lot of the online social/business network to experience problems.
When I came online LinkedIn was the strongest business/social networking site online. In some cases it still is, but today LinkedIn’s value to the business people who uses the site to connect to likeminded REAL people is as low as the economy. What is making LinkedIn’s worth lessen each day is the uncontrolled levels of Spam.
100’s of people join LinkedIn each day, then quickly moves to joining as many Groups as they can (50 max) so they can get the ability to email the group’s membership a message that has nothing to do with the purpose of the group. Compound these hundreds of emails by 100 and you have the Spam Fest LinkedIn is now experiencing.
Oh, I have had those few people out there claim they are not getting spammed and even a few less who tell me Spam on LinkedIn is a way of life there so I need to “Suck it up!”
Since founding the Business Golf Country Club on LinkedIn and now managing the private business/social networking group on another platform, I truly understand the challenges the LinkedIn administrators face with battle to solve the problem. I had to move the BGCC off LinkedIn since I was losing valuable members of the private group to the unsolicited emails they received from other members I allowed into the club. This reflected badly on me professional and on the members who joined the private group to avoid the underbelly of the internet crowd.
Solutions are limited to keep a business/social network viable in today’s environment of business people who are searching for anything they can find to do to make a buck..even going beyond to using deception and deceptive business models to make a living.
As more people pile on the big train to La-La-Land the more desperation these people hitting hard times develop. By the time they have spend their last investable dollar on a business consultant who is stuck in 1990 internet marketing schemes they are ready to do, or say, anything to anyone that would lead to them to making a dollar.
Most of the lost souls I can catch before they pull the trigger on a worthless email to a list of LinkedIn Groups, tell me they are getting information from the old traditional business consulting groups who spew out instructions on how to go about spamming LinkedIn.
Right now, as a result of all the deceptive business models, black hat entrepreneurs and spammers residing on LinkedIn, all this once giant of a business networking site is worth now is being a platform to validate a person’s existence. However, the remaining members of LinkedIn are now so skittish of any unusual contact from anyone from LinkedIn the value of a person’s existence maybe questionable at best.
LinkedIn is not alone with this problem. The other icons of social networking have been experiencing the same problem long before LinkedIn. It is the fact LinkedIn now houses the individuals who are holding up what is left of the world’s economy is why it now is the prime target for the people who feel if they put out enough emails for whatever they are selling someone is about to buy. I have not run into anyone who is falling for that scheme anymore, so who is it that is buying from these people that keeps them going?
I hope this fog that is hanging over LinkedIn moves out soon so we can get back to networking business leads instead spending the day deleted spam emails.
Let me know how I can help.
