Is LinkedIn Moving In MySpace Direction?
June 07, 2007 |
So LinkedIn won Webby awards in two categories (Social Networks and Services). I can definitely say I'm happy about it, it is a well-deserved victory, especially when it comes to ‘Services' category, I think. LinkedIn is really a great service and I certainly use it more than any other of nominees in the category. I guess it was hard to choose between nominated social networks since they are so terribly different (StumbleUpon, Digg, Facebook, Vox) in their purposes. But still I don't think there's any doubt LinkedIn is the best professional social network.
But I'm not writing just to congratulate my own ultimate destination for professional networking. I'm writing actually about the contest they held for their ‘Services' award acceptance speech. Webby awards are famous for their traditional five-words acceptance speeches. And LinkedIn invited the community to offer versions of the speeches for LinkedIn and the winner was to accept the award at the ceremony.
They received over 400 suggestions (I'm too lazy to browse through all of them, honestly). So they chose the best speech suggested by software executive and entrepreneur David Multer which sounded too simple for my taste ("Thanks for the endorsement!") and had the exclamation mark instead of the fifth word (I know brevity is the soul of wit but still). I did like several of the other versions better, though I admit some of them were totally stupid or inappropriate. But I do not intend to dispute the choice anyway (by the way, I did not suggest any version myself so I am not jealous because of not being selected as a winner).
But the thing is that LinkedIn actually had space for two speeches and only one of them was crafted by the LinkedIn community. The second one (in the ‘Social Networking' category) was delivered by Kay Luo, LinkedIn Director of Corporate Communications. And that speech was something I could have expected to hear from MySpace of Facebook but definitely not from LinkedIn. It was "Come connect with me tonight". Can anyone here explain to me what "tonight" means in this short phrase? Is LinkedIn not about business that is mostly done at daylight? Does not it sound too frivolous for a social network that is only and strictly intended for professional communications? Do I get it right that we will soon see some teenagers on LinkedIn meeting for a chat "tonight"? Or am I paranoid?
