More on Hello Pages... or why LinkedIn sucks

Image: Rostislav Valouch at Pixabay

As they used to say in those adverts... 

"We asked 13 people about their use of LinkedIn."

Well, no one asked anybody, but as people have shared their own Hello Pages with me, I've read their comments about various social media platforms, and noticed a bit of a theme around LinkedIn.

Their responses ranged from, "I’m still not sure how/why to use it, but I’m too afraid not to have an account " to "I only use {LinkedIn} to share updates. I won’t see your comments or direct messages in those spaces promptly, if at all."

I'm trying to make the world a better place, one small thing at a time. One of those ways is encouraging people to have a Hello page, to make the online world just a little bit more human.

You see I remember when the internet was young. People made web pages, they started blogs and they wrote about all manner of things. They emailed and commented one to one. Life in all its diversity was there. And it was mostly pretty friendly and driven by people, not algorithms. 

Nowadays, I often feel that we are slaves to following the rules of the sites we think we need, in order to prosper. To make friends, do what Facebook wants you to do, follow the algorithm rules. To be popular do what Instagram wants you to do, follow the algorithm rules. To shout at strangers, do what Twitter wants you to do, follow the algorithm rules. To be employable do what LinkedIn wants you to do, follow the algorithm rules.

But none of this is communication. Me, talking to you, as a human. Sharing. None of it.

It's a con. Everyone thinks they are making progress, but most of what they are doing is of little to no value to themselves.

It was so interesting hearing from the initial taker-uppers of my Hello page idea, how many of them said on their pages that as a communication medium LinkedIn sucked. They either did not use it for correspondence, or only begrudgingly did so as a first way to make contact, because everybody else seemed to be doing it.

Which makes me think that the more of us who are honest about how people can get in touch (hint, email!) and have an actual meaningful conversation with us, as two humans, virtually sitting down and sharing ideas, without an algorithm or "platform" sitting in the middle filtering, listening and trying to monetise the conversation, then the better.

So set up a Hello page and tell me, I'll happily share it.

Here's to more human conversations.

You may also like:

Introducing Hello pages

How can we be more social, without relying on social media? For a while now I have been thinking about this problem. So I decided...