Professional networking or cheap trick?

I have been a LinkedIn user for about four years, I think. I’ve not been terribly active, but keeping my profile up-to-date has been useful, and I’ve even received two job invitations via the network. However, I noticed today that LinkedIn has a brave new feature that allows me the option of ‘endorsing’ the skills claimed by the people on my connections list. I discovered this after receiving a notification that one of my connections had endorsed my ‘teaching’ skills. I do mention on my profile that I was once a teacher, but apart from running the odd professional development workshop, (and I’m pretty certain my endorser never attended any of those)  I haven’t actually taught for a very long time, and it’s not a skill that I actively market, so why would I want someone to endorse it?

All of which begs the question, how reliable is an endorsement, and is this really a good idea for LinkedIn? I can’t help but feel that there’s an expectation of reciprocity in all of this: If you endorse my skills in x, I’ll endorse yours in y. Am I expected to endorse the people with whom I work? What happens to my working relationships if I don’t? Many of these endorsements are no better than children who, on the first day of school, offer sweet bribes to make friends and secure that tenuous popularity that might just give them a lift in the social pecking order.

Whilst I am happy to support the claims of many of my connections, I’d like that endorsement to have some validity. If I endorse Donna Thompson’s skills as a Moodle Administrator, for example, it’s because I worked with her for three years and I know she’s damn good at what she does. The endorsement of my teaching skills by someone who has never seen me teach, no matter how well intentioned, has no validity whatsoever. LinkedIn has always allowed recommendations, and I have done those, when requested, for people whose skills I know and respect. The endorsement process is too quick and facile, and I fear it undermines everything useful about LinkedIn.

If the network is determined to continue with this process of unsolicited endorsement, I’d like to suggest a ‘hell no’ button, so that I can respond appropriately to the rather inane endorsement question, “Does [insert person’s name] know about [insert random skill]?” Without that, LinkedIn is simply undermining the reliability of the professional network.

Linking up my social networking

(This blog post is really an experiment to see if I can get my blog to link to my Facebook account.)

Part of this week's assignments for FOC 2010 is an instruction to 'join a social networking group such as Facebook, Ning or LinkedIn'. Well, I already have accounts with all three, so I thought I'd reflect briefly on my experiences of each before trying to figure out how I could link some of my accounts together.

I joined LinkedIn about three years ago, and haven't found it overly useful. Of course I only signed up for the free version which is really limited. One of the major drawbacks of this version was that it would only allow me to link to other members in the same country. As a new immigrant to New Zealand, my local professional network was really small, and because of the account restrictions I couldn't use LinkedIn to connect to my existing network in South Africa, which was a pity because I used to do a lot of freelance work. I have also noticed that lots of people (like me) join but don't really do much with their accounts.

I loved Ning, when it was free. I liked the fact that it was simple and easy to use, and that I could create multiple networks really easily. It is much more user friendly (I think) than Facebook, especially in terms of the privacy settings. But it is no longer free, and I feel duped!

I use Facebook, sporadically... it has certainly enabled me to make contact with long-lost friends. I think Facebook is an interesting tool, but it doesn't really do it for me - I like more depth to my connections.   In the spirit of intellectual curiosity (!!), however, I'm going to try to figure out how to link my blog to my Facebook page. I'd love to see some South African dots on my visitor map!