Skip to main content

Far Cry

Interesting to read Reid Hoffman's take on LinkedIn connections and the pointlessness of that number beyond a point:

So, for example, early in LinkedIn we created a connections game. The number of connections you have with other members was your score. We put that score front and center on your profile so that people would play the connections game. It was an excellent way to drive user growth — and we could have just let that game go on, ad nauseum.

There was just one problem: As users got a bit too hooked on the game — and inevitably, some of them would — then that connection score would signify nothing. It would represent a pointless tally of how many hands a user could shake a day. In fact, I remember one person on LinkedIn who amassed 32,000 connections. There’s no way he knew 32,000 people. So we capped the score at 500. After that, the score remained fixed and you got stuck with a boring old “plus” sign. 500-plus. Game over.

Being among the early adopters of LinkedIn, I have been able to observe the changes over time - in my own behavior and those of others. When I had just a handful of connections, invites often came from people I had known for a while. They would often include a thoughtful message with the invite. There was an expectation that we would meet in real life if we had not already and that we would introduce each other to people we were connected with. All of these expectations were routinely met.

That is such a far cry from where things are today atleast for me. Getting value from my feed is all but impossible - there is an overwhelming amount of self-promotion and people cheering and celebrating it. After a point, it does get old. First time my buddy posted that he had achieved some important certification, I congratulated him. Second time, it was a Like and by the sixth time I had to unfollow him. So if some day in the future C has something interesting to share (which he likely will), I won't know about it. 

So, for example, early in LinkedIn we created a connections game. The number of connections you have with other members was your score. We put that score front and center on your profile so that people would play the connections game. It was an excellent way to drive user growth — and we could have just let that game go on, ad nauseum.

 

There was just one problem: As users got a bit too hooked on the game — and inevitably, some of them would — then that connection score would signify nothing. It would represent a pointless tally of how many hands a user could shake a day. In fact, I remember one person on LinkedIn who amassed 32,000 connections. There’s no way he knew 32,000 people. So we capped the score at 500. After that, the score remained fixed and you got stuck with a boring old “plus” sign. 500-plus. Game over.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
111 comments
Read more

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha
5 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques
6 comments
Read more