Deal Maker on LinkedIn: ‘What Do I Do With It?’
What is a tech blog? What do you do on LinkedIn? Are but some of the refreshingly direct, real world questions that real world business networking engenders.
The International Council Of Shopping Centers (ICSC) 2007 National Conference and “Deal Making” is underway in New York City. The global trade association of the shopping center industry “promotes the prestige and standing of members as reputable specialists in the field of shopping center development and management,” among other things.
At a reception hosted by a high-profile ICSC member last evening, I chatted with a principal of an award winning architectural firm. In describing my editorial coverage here at Insider Chatter, I mentioned my interviews of Craig Newmark, Craigslist, and Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn.
“LinkedIn, what do you do with it?” the senior executive interjected. Good question, I replied.
The architect is a reluctant Linkedin member. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” he expressed.
Reid Hoffman has told me that LinkedIn is for “professional problem solving.” The senior design executive I chatted with, however, not only has found no problems that LinkedIn can help him solve, but finds LinkedIn to be an unwelcome nuisance, rather than a business enhancer.
Upon receiving several Linked in “connection” requests from direct reports, the architectural principal felt obliged to accept his staffers’ invitations, but did not look forward to potential impacts on working relationships.
The senior executive “only” has about two dozen LinkedIn “connections” and is dismayed that some people have 200 and more. More perplexing for the architect, “What actually happens at LinkedIn?” Despite having accepted invitations to “connect” on LinkedIn, the design principal reported no connecting is transpiring beyond his initial network acceptances.
The real-world, non-techie, non-reaction to LinkedIn membership is not surprising.
The LinkedIn pitch promises:
- Find potential clients, service providers, subject experts, and partners who come recommended
- Be found for business opportunities
- Search for great jobs
- Discover inside connections that can help you land jobs and close deals
- Post and distribute job listings
- Find high-quality passive candidates
- Get introduced to other professionals through the people you know
A professionally run, online “gated referral network” is invaluable in the real world of high-stakes business, Hoffman has indicated to me. In Web-based social networking, six figure Fortune 500 execs seek the discretion and confidentiality that LinkedIn uniquely offers, Hoffman said.
Nevertheless, desire for discretion and confidentiality is exactly why the (undoubedtly) six-figure design principal does NOT want to be on LinkedIn!
LinkedIn proclaims “this isn’t networking, its what networking should be.” High-powered organizations such as the ICSC, however, are the ones that are really facilitating real high-stakes business.
ICSC 2007 is unabashedly called “National Conference and Deal Making” and brings thousands of decison makers from around the world to the deal making capital of the world to actually do big deals, in the Big Apple.
SEE: Reid Hoffman On How LinkedIn Beats Facebook for Business, INTERVIEW and Beacon Privacy Solution: STOP USING FACEBOOK!
PLUS: Facebook is ‘Sorry’? Savvy Users Will Forget, NOT Forgive, Mark Zuckerberg and Henry Blodget Slams eBay’s Whitman: Yahoo’s Yang Next?