Are you ‘LinkedIn’?

LinkedIn, along with Facebook, Google+, and the omni-present Twitter, is part of the daily life of many IBM i professionals, judging from the number of people posting regularly on them. But in our struggle to understand the role of so-called "social media" in a work environment we're becoming less and less clear about LinkedIn's role. Initially its purpose was to provide a vehicle whereby individuals with a shared vocation could get together with fellow professionals to exchange ideas, contacts, etc. We wanted to check our understanding against the website’s mission statement, but it doesn’t seem to have one. This may explain a lot!

As a concept that seems reasonable, and there’s certainly value is being able to communicate easily with a group of professionals in your own line of work--particularly if you are the only accountant (for example) in your shop. So far, so good. But increasingly that doesn't seem to be how it’s being used.

On the one hand it’s increasingly utilized as a marketing tool. Sometimes overtly: "Company XYZ is pleased to announce. ..." Very often covertly: "Does anyone know of a good tool that can. ..." Threads of this latter type often eventually reveal that the original poster was either an employee of a company offering tooling in this arena or is a "satisfied customer." We find these kinds of threads particularly annoying, in part because we feel we’re already subject to enough advertising without having it rammed down our throats everywhere we go. In the long run they may well have a negative effect because they can result in even users avoiding responding to the most genuine of queries.

It also seems to be being increasingly used for the pure "How do I" or the "I'm getting decimal data errors ..." type of questions that we feel are much better suited for Internet forums such as midrange.com or IBM's RPG Cafe. It just seems to us that LinkedIn really wasn't designed for these types of questions. As result, the same question is often asked in multiple groups.

Speaking of groups, LinkedIn seems to sprout new ones ad-nauseum. How many IBM i related groups do we really need? And at the risk of re-starting the whole naming war, couldn't they at least all use the same name for the system? (But then why should they be different?) At least six groups have "AS400" or "AS/400" in the name. Two use "i5" and at least one uses "iSeries." And a number of groups have "IBM i" in the name. It’s impractical to follow all of them and difficult to choose which to follow because the scope among the groups is duplicated in many cases.

At least LinkedIn avoids the constant bombardment of minutiae that comes with Facebook. We do confess that we love the stuff that folks like George Takei share. We have to believe though that Facebook is almost certainly responsible for a greater loss of productivity than any other single source. This makes it even stranger that many employers seem to have no problem allowing their staff to access Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn during office hours but actually block sites like ibmsystemsmag.com, midrange.com and many other work-related websites that could boost productivity rather than stifle it. Why is that? Any thoughts?

Our Thoughts on Social Networking

Well, we still haven't figured out a real use for Twitter in our lives, but Facebook has served us well in recent weeks. Jon's niece was married last Saturday in the United Kingdom and we couldn't get over for the wedding. We were able to participate vicariously in the build-up to the big day, however, by following the FB posts of various family members. We were even able to offer moral support and advice to the bride-to-be in dealing with a supplier who had still not delivered the bridesmaid dresses some four-plus weeks after they were due to be finished. Susan also continued to check FB long into Saturday night in the hope that someone had posted photos of the day. Of course, knowing them, they were probably still celebrating by the time she went to bed! Sunday morning, though, there was plenty of evidence on FB of how beautiful the bride looked. We're even looking forward to the promised posting of a video of our grand-niece singing to her mum to celebrate the occasion.

Facebook has also helped us reconnect with many old friends as we mentioned in last week's blog. We've also found out how to tell it that we don't give a hoot about our friends' activities in Farmville, Mafia Wars or any of the other myriad pastimes available via FB. As a result, the percentage of interesting posts that we see has increased dramatically. We'll be with FB for a while yet we suspect.
 
But, for every happy tale there is a sad one. Another close family member wasn't able to participate in the FB conversations. She has canceled her account because she could no longer stomach the constant flow of vitriolic attacks directed at her and others by a number of individual FB "friends." Sometimes it seems the more vehicles for "communication" we develop, the less civilized that communication sometimes becomes.

It seems to have become acceptable to say things via the social media that you'd never say in person--well, not while you were sober, anyway! We just can't see that as progress, but since this lack of respect for the opinions of others seems to pervade the media in general, perhaps we're the ones who are wrong.

The third of the major social media vehicles that we participate in is Linked-In. The jury is still out on that one. Certainly some of the discussions that have taken place in the various IBM i related groups have been interesting. But there are so many groups and they overlap to such a great extent that it's difficult to know which to look to when seeking advice on a specific topic. As a result, for technical questions we still tend to head for our old friend Midrange.com.

So to sum it all up: Facebook - Yes. Twitter - No. Linked-In - Maybe. Midrange.com - always!