I think his post emphasizes that with all services, there are good users and bad users. It seems he encountered enough bad users to post about the experience.

I’m still not familiar with all the LinkedIn features, but I wonder if there isn’t a mechanism to provide feedback when these type of scenarios occur. I didn’t see that option, but this may be my ignorance.

http://www.shoemoney.com/2007/02/02/linkedin-you-had-me-then-you-lost-me/

The tragedy is the info the support rep took the easy way out and didn’t fully address my questions.

The info looked like it had been copied and pasted from a series of questions. There was no greeting or reason as to why it took 2 weeks to answer.

I hope the company will use the latest round of funding to build up support as it looks to me like a serious weak link in an otherwise good concept.

Both can derive value from LinkedIn. The former probably needs one of the premium accounts. The latter makes up 90-something percent of the network, and that can be accomplished with a free membership.

LinkedIn is one of the rare social networking applications I have seen that suits both types fairly well. I believe, in fact, that is precisely why it has attracted 10 million users — because those of us who work 80 hours a week already and can only spend a couple of hours a week “networking” can still derive some value from it and be of service to our contacts without an implicit or explicit expectation of more participation.

But either type of user has to build their network in order to achieve that value. And I don’t mean “build” in the sense of inviting strangers to connect — I mean make an ongoing habit of identifying your connections within the system. Remember, 400,000 people a month are joining. It’s ridiculous to think that all of your “real” contacts were members when you joined however many months ago, or to put the burden on them to find and invite you. At least monthly, you should be doing an update process to make sure you are maximizing your connectedness in the network.

Once you’ve done that, how you use it to help your business depends entirely on what your needs are. I wish I could say more on this here, but there is SO much to say in that regard. For now, I just refer you to the Using LinkedIn category (http://linkedintelligence.com/category/using-linkedin) on my blog for ongoing postings about ideas in that regard. Watch for more upcoming (podcast with John next week).

I co-developed a course and offered it under their brand, promoted on their site, etc., a couple of years ago, and the response was good. But it was a pilot and for a whole variety of reasons, we never launched it full-scale. LinkedIn’s position, which I understand, is that they want to have many people out there training on LinkedIn, writing books about LinkedIn, etc., rather than trying to manage all that in-house, or effectively giving a monopoly to one service provider.

Again, I understand that from their standpoint, but who really ends up suffering in the process is the new user.

There are PLENTY of resources, though, for those who choose to seek it out, which is why it always sort of amazes me when bloggers say they just don’t get LinkedIn — they obviously haven’t really explored it or discussed it with people who know what they’re doing with it.

There are several blogs that talk either extensively or exclusively about LinkedIn, and dozens of LinkedIn-related Yahoo Groups. The help is there for those who seek it — it’s just not as neatly packaged as it could be (yet!!!), and it’s not being promoted to new LinkedIn users — they have to seek it out.

I predict a lot of that to change in the next 6-12 months.

I also wouldn’t ignore those who have few contacts. It may be that the person is selective in who he/she will recommend, not that the person is less valuable than those with 500+ contacts.

Oh, and LinkedIn is good for seeing what kind of competition you’re up against out there.

What has that meant to you or your business so far.