Endorse this

The first time I ever heard of LinkedIn was about ten years ago from my good friend and sometimes art director partner Imke. She told me about it right after I’d come back to my desk after having been laid off from the agency we were working at.

By the way, if you’ve never worked in advertising, all getting laid off means is you showed up one day.

Anyway, Imke explained what LinkedIn was, how it worked and suggested it was probably a good idea if I listed myself on the site. It's probably still a good idea.

But here's the thing: the site has gotten as annoying as Facebook.

I used to draw a line, a thin line but a line nonetheless, between Facebook and LinkedIn. The former was strictly for friends in the real world. The latter was solely for professional relationships and contacts. Admittedly, sometimes they overlap.

What's happened is that the difference between the two sites grows narrower by the minute.

I attribute it to the fact the gang over at LinkedIn has seen the runaway success of Facebook, and they want a taste of it. So they’re constantly revamping their site to be more like FB. Now on LinkedIn, you can post. Leave comments on posts. “Like” a post. Does this sound familiar?

But in the contest for useless features, the winner by a clear margin is the one that lets you endorse other people on your contact list.

Now, let me just say up front, I appreciate and thank everyone who’s endorsed me in all the various categories I didn’t even know I was an expert in. This includes squirrels and plumbing.

And that’s my point. What does an endorsement really mean? What is its value?

Self-esteem wise, it’s a win. I feel great when I see someone has endorsed me for something. Professionally, I just have to believe that while HR people and agency gatekeepers are looking at my LinkedIn profile, they’re not spending a whole lot of time, as my old art director Doug Morris used to say - sorting the fly shit from the pepper - looking through all the little endorsement squares to find out who, for what and why.

After all, endorsements really only mean something if you know who’s doing the endorsing and the weight it carries. Still, always nice to be recognized, even if it is mostly by friends returning the endorsing favor or asking for one.

I'd like to talk about this more, but I have to go fix a leaky pipe in the squirrel cage.