Dave: … I mean I have a couple of hundred Facebook connections, and oh gosh, well into the multiple thousand connections at MySpace and it’s just so interesting to see how they’re different.
So on Facebook, for example, I’ve tended to try to only connect to people I know, but it’s really really hard to hold that line, and if I go and look through my Facebook connections, there are many people where I just look and say “Who is this person?”
On MySpace it’s way out there, on MySpace honestly the vast majority of people I’m connected to I have no idea who they are nor would I particularly want them knocking on my door.
And that is just part of that culture. And you know, so what I’ve been writing about on from LinkedIn’s perspective and such it’s just what differentiates all of these. And from a business perspective, where should you be and what should you expect and how can you most successfully interact, you know in other words what are the best practices.
And that’s one of the reasons I was so intrigued by your story from a couple of weeks ago, too. Because it seems to me that for some subset of the LinkedIn community, what you’re doing IS the best practice, it might not be what they want, but that’s not really the issue, you know at some level it’s their site and they can run it the way they want it and kick you off if they don’t like you.
But on another level you know, it’s a public service out there, and if you want to use it differently, as long as you’re not actively spamming people, or doing things that overtly violate your terms of service. I think that they have at some level an obligation to let you use it the way you want.
Marc: Well well said, and I certainly don’t argue with that. I want to invite our chatters and our listeners, if – we will be taking your calls if you want to talk to Dave or myself or Heidi . Feel free to call in, or you can submit questions or comments over chat. Dave you mentioned Facebook, and I’m interested in your opinion on Facebook as a place for business executives and professionals to do business, how do you compare that and how do you use that in comparison to LinkedIn?
Dave: Well the thing I really like about LinkedIn is I like the fact that they have as best they can try to stay true to their original vision, if you look at Facebook, Facebook is drowning in stupid add on widgets, so you get like people throwing you zombie sheep and asking you to join their “Let’s compare movies club” and all this stuff, and every time you get involved in any of these. All of your information gets broadcast out to these third party companies and goes into their database.
And you know Facebook had a lot of problems with their beacon advertising system which ostensibly was supposed to be something where we’d be able to intelligently look at your usage patterns and give you quote recommendations from other users that you’re friends with – to check out new things, new movies, new books, you know, and other things that would be advertised and e.g. would generate revenue for the company.
But LinkedIn hasn’t really done any of that, and in a lot of ways I really appreciate that, I love that they just have a paid service, that I could opt to do if I needed, you know, the greater power, and I love the fact that they just use simple straightforward ads like Google adsense, and banner ads, and text link ads, and stuff.
Because then I can see what’s going on, and I don’t have this sense of the information I’m getting being polluted by questionably identified advertising. I mean on Facebook you get this stream of news about all your connection and they just inject into that information about things like a movie, that they’ve been paid to promote and it looks the same.
It’s very very subtle how it’s identified as a sponsored message. And I find that offensive, and so many kudos to LinkedIn for saying we could probably make more money doing things that are little more sneaky but what we will do is we will then violate the trust that our users have with us to be an above board professional environment.
Marc: Well that’s a good point, and there’s something to be said for not on the leading edge of internet Marketing and advertising where ethics and customer perceptions may make that participation questionable. Are you a free or a premium LinkedIn account holder?
Dave: They had upgraded me to premium for a while, but I am back to the world of the free as far as I can tell, and you know, for the usage that I have of LinkedIn I think that’s fine, and frankly I don’t know the numbers, but I’m guessing the vast majority of LinkedIn users are free users, and so given my purposes on you know joining a lot of networks. I guess it’s best for me to be a free member, because then I can see if you will have the other half lives, or how the other 92…
Marc: Well I am a business member, simply because I actively use its Market, Dallas Blue to local Dallas Fort Worth residents who are LinkedIn members. But one of the things I admire about LinkedIn, for 99% of the users, you’re absolutely right, I mean it provides a lot of functionality at that free level.
Five introductions is really the basic restrictions there which you know for most people who are just casual users is fine. And that certainly led to the service being very popular in getting to where it is today – with 70 million users and by far the largest business social network.
I appreciate your comments, on Facebook, I recently joined Facebook a few months ago myself. And you know, made the mistake of inviting you know my 10 thousand closest LinkedIn friends. And so now I have several hundred Facebook connections. And I just have – I must get 20 messages a day which is a daily stream of like a daily stream of network consciousness.
You know someone’s inviting me to be a zombie; someone’s wants me to be a werewolf, and all of the –
Dave: I don’t know even know what that stuff means and I’m afraid to find out. I don’t want to get all this. I mean gosh, I’m sure you’re on the same boat I am. Please I already get too many things I need to respond to, when it’s hard to actually get my work done.
And I don’t want to be like passing zombie sheep at other people, or something, because I don’t know and I don’t care. It might be really fun if I was I don’t know some horror movie director, but I’m not.
Marc: Well I’m – you know, amused and impressed by these third party applications, but you’re absolutely right, for someone to do business it’s not a strong business environment, and I appreciate that. The real concern that I have is and I just ignore all that crap that I receive, and you know there’s just poke and super walls, and you know, all the comparisons, and it really is nutty.
Dave: Yes that’s weird.
Marc: Yeah I just don’t find it a place where A. you know that’s a minimal you know the basic networking, you know, can I search and find an executive at you know IBM, not that easily, and you know I certainly can’t do robust searches. Can I export my own connections at Facebook, well I don’t think you can do that. And so there are some basic business things that you want to be able to do, to find people and to manage your contacts, which Facebook just does not support and …
Dave: Marc, I agree with you. Yeah and there’s a trivial one that bugs me to no end on Facebook. In LinkedIn I can tell you the URL that you can go to, and then see my profile, you can’t do it on Facebook.
Marc: Right
Dave: Facebook you have to go online and then search for someone, and having a fairly common first and last name, that doesn’t work people can’t find me.
So it’s very frustrating that I don’t have, like you know, Facebookprofile.com/davetaylor where on LinkedIn as you know, LinkedIn.com/in/davetaylor is my URL and I put it in my signature file on my email messages because I want to build that network so why Facebook doesn’t do this I don’t know , you know, but again kudos to LinkedIn for saying maybe people that aren’t members will want to connect with people that are members and that’s how we get new members. So let’s make that easy.
Marc: Well I absolutely agree, and you know for all of the nice and interesting things that Facebook is doing with the open API. It clearly is not a place to be doing business, unless you’re only focusing it on your close friends and you know and then it’s really a very limited service that they provide so let’s get back to LinkedIn.
And I want to invite our listeners and chatters, feel free to give us a call, or chat if you have questions to share with our guests Dave Taylor of Askdavetaylor.com. – Mr. Super Blogger and you know, part of the news from LinkedIn is that they’ve announced, although I haven’t seen any specifications – that they are opening up their service to some extent. Do you have any more information about what LinkedIn will be offering as part of that developer’s service?
Dave: I’m afraid that’s not the kind of area where I’m plugged-in with those guys, but I’m certainly interested in what comes out of it. Again, because watching the explosion of enthusiasm from developers on Facebook is very exciting. You know so far just about everything you’ll see is garbage from my perspective, but that doesn’t really matter.
What matters is that the people are doing lots of innovative things and if we can see that same sort of thing happening in the LinkedIn world, in a more controlled, more professionally oriented, more business oriented way, then I think we might see some really cool features like tight integration between your outlook address book and your LinkedIn profile and stuff. I mean who knows?
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