I love LinkedIn. I do. But lately, my favorite business social medium is ticking me off.
Here are five reasons why. Do you agree? What’s bugging you / impressing you lately about the world’s largest professional network? Share your thoughts!
1. LinkedIn rolls out features to only some people at a time (sometimes for a very long time). For example, most people don’t have the rich media feature that would let them post videos, documents, presentations, and portfolios to their profile in a viewable format. That’s unfair. This image shows you the box with plus sign image that must appear on your profile for you to be able to post rich media.
2. The new combined search box is s-l-o-w and frustrating. I try typing in a name and the letters slowly appear and when the letters do appear (such as a first and last name), the words get smashed together by the slow system. Not only that, but often the search results aren’t as robust as they used to be when you could search by separate categories.
3. LinkedIn’s “simpler” navigation bar (which went from 9 options to 5), makes it nearly impossible to find things like …
- The Groups Directory (I teach LinkedIn and I still haven’t found it),
- Recommendations — To find the Recommendations page, type “recommendations” into the search box (that’s the only way I could track it down),
- Signal — If you can’t find this valuable tool, click on the magnifying glass and then click Updates (I guess that’s it’s new name). Signal (aka Updates) let’s you search any term to see who is talking about that subject anywhere on LinkedIn.
4. Half the time when I try to log out or go to my settings from my mini picture on the right side, the drop down menu “flies” away before I can click on any of the options. So frustrating! I end up clicking my face over and over again until the system will let me log out.
I also find the Contact page unnecessarily complex. Why the system is set by default to show you the people you had your most recent conversations with rather than an alphabetical listing is beyond me. Imagine if you phone book was organized that way!
5. LinkedIn keeps rolling out features so fast and so flawed … and with so little guidance … that even ardent fans like me are sick of trying to figure the changes out. I’m now hesitant to write or teach about new LinkedIn features because …
- others may not have the same options,
- the features don’t work properly,
- the feature will change again … and again (making my post or presentation obsolete), or
- Sometimes even the LinkedIn’s Help Center lacks up-to-date information about how the features work.
LinkedIn I still love you! But when you make changes, please 1. Make sure they 1. work 2. are worthy 3. are easy to find/use and 4. are rolled out to all users at the same time. Oh, and while you’re at it, give us a way to tell you what we think of your new changes!
