LinkedIn For ... Kids??

I’m a huge fan of LinkedIn but lately some of their moves are leaving me scratching my head. While I’m likely to piss off a few people here, pleasing people has never been one of my top priorities. Sometimes one of the nicest things that you can do for somebody is to be honest with them when it is warranted. I’m going to be brutal.

What have we seen happen to LinkedIn over the past year?

Things I love:

The new contacts interface … rockin’!
The overall new look and feel of the site … awesome!
Enhanced insights on who is viewing your profile and which of your updates are ringing true with your connections … sweet!

Things I hate:

Endorsements. They are meaningless, annoying, and an abortion. What’s worse is that LinkedIn is directly responsible to the greatest extent for the endorsements feature being as lame as it really is.
Connection spam. I am so tired of people sending me requests to connect simply because LinkedIn thinks that they should and then makes it so damn easy to “one-click” send template invitations. IMHO, people should be required to personalize all invitations. Their chances that these requests will be accepted will increase geometrically and those who reside under rocks will be further discouraged.
You killed off “Signals” which means that you killed off updates search. Why?

Everyone of these negative actions has taken LinkedIn that much further away from it’s original mission to provide it’s members with a platform to create business and meaningful relationships with other professionals. Now you are opening LinkedIn up to kids as young as 13?? Welcome to LinkBook. Game channel to follow.

Today, LinkedIn also announced University Pages. I actually think that this is a LinkedIn home run! I love the idea! Of course, this is largely targeted toward those who are considering attending college. That would be … kids. Kids as young as 13? Well, I guess so. Herein lies my quandary. I get that young folks need to learn about professional networking and it is never too early to start thinking about their careers. I think that’s great and I also strongly think that this activity needs to be encouraged. I’m just not so sure that LinkedIn is the place to do this.

LinkedIn appears to be making every effort to protect new teen members and I roundly applause this effort! It is prudent and it is necessary. Here are some links for your review:

As I read these guidelines, I sense LinkedIn’s concern and concerned they should be. The liability issues, the chance of backlash, are potentially enormous! I have to ask the question … why even create this scenario to begin with? It just makes no sense. Furthermore, as a member, where are my rights? Why should I be penalized?

Since I’m already getting spammed with connection requests and meaningless endorsements … now you are going to compound this issue by facilitating, and probably encouraging, additional traffic of this nature coming to me from children?? Gee, thanks.
What about parents? Why can’t they be the ones who are using this feature?
I’m trying hard to not make a blanket statement but, are we maybe trying to move these kids into adulthood a little too fast and into an environment that they are not sufficiently mature to navigate?
Why is it that everything has to be available for everybody? It’s called political correctness and guess what? I hate political correctness.

Now it’s never good to whine without being able to offer a solution and it so happens that I have one that would be incredibly easy to implement …

Provide every LinkedIn member, within their profile settings, the ability to block connection requests from those who are under “X” years of age

Simple. It’s entirely up to the individual. If you want to be a mentor, as an alumni or otherwise, feel free to do so and encourage youngsters to connect with you. If you don’t, that’s your choice. If you are comfortable with somebody who is 16 years old but not with somebody younger than that, no problem.

Of course, LinkedIn will never do this. Somebody’s feelings might get hurt. We know that this never happens in real life and there are no winners and losers which is why we all get participation awards.

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Craig M. Jamieson

Managing Member at Adaptive Business Services

Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. Adaptive Business Services provides solutions related to the sales professional. We are a Nimble CRM Solution Partner. Craig also conducts training and workshops primarily in social selling and communication skills. Craig is also the author of "The Small Business' Guide to Social CRM", now available on Amazon!