People add me all the time and I have no idea why. I've never used it for anything. Today I asked someone why he added me and he couldn't come up with a reason and agreed that there was basically no point to it.
Oh shit, my laundry. I got drunk and forgot it's down in the dryer.
I find it useful when trying to locate people, mostly those I'm naming as defendants in lawsuits. Other than that I've never used it for anything.
Nice kabinett celebrating a two year lease extension. Given some of my history with my landlord this was far from a given. I thank my window frames. Now on to the Armagnac.
3: Ooh, I'm in housing limbo right now. Maybe if my house had more kabinetts, things would become clear.
There is no point to LinkedIn. It's usually one of the first returns on a search for a proper-named person, so it can be helpful if you think that you might be searched, in a professional capacity.
I often use it in my job to track down a location and maybe, if lucky, a contact email and job history to attach to a name. I don't necessarily draw any conclusions if I don't find someone on LinkedIn. Who knows how useful the link-of-link network is?
It seems to be aimed at people who are interested in finding a job or a different job. There's also a "premium" level, for which you pay some money per month. God knows what that gets you.
Black cat's, pissing out a loving lady's milk.
I hate the plaintive cry of LinkedIn in the morning; it smells like failure.
People use it in my corner of the software world. Not very heavily in my experience: some "keeping in touch" with work contacts who are not FB friends, and some recruiting.
Same for the science / drug development world.
I might be mixing up my social networking sites, but I'm pretty sure someone I know claimed to need a LinkedIn account in order to fill out job applications.
I attended a conference last week and a few days ago someone sent me a request to add me as a contact. I'm pretty sure this is not someone I ever spoke to at the conference and I don't even have an account.
I second 11, someone in my group just quit and the first thing my boss suggested was looking at LI to see if anyone in our network would be a good fit. However, I find it heavily misused by some people. Dear salespeople- if I stopped at your booth at a conference it does not mean I worked with you at your vendor company nor does it mean that I know or endorse your work.
It was moderately useful in my previous job, where among other things I covered people changing jobs. Sometimes people would change their LinkedIn profile long before the move was official, so I'd get a pseudo-scoop. But now that I don't cover people moves, not so much.
Well, I got my last two software jobs through my LinkedIn network (including the one I've just started), so yeah, I'd say it's useful, at least in the software industry. It's also proved pretty handy at helping me get back in touch with my references and potential references, so I can find them again when someone I'm interviewing with wants to talk with my last manager from the job I had ten years ago (yes, this has actually happened).
I used to rely on running into people at the big conferences in my field to keep track of where they were working. If they stopped going to the conference, or switched to a different field, they would typically just drop off my radar unless they got mentioned by a mutual friend. LinkedIn is far more reliable. It's also pretty handy at keeping in touch with old friends from school, given that I'm not on Facebook or something like that.
It's useful for two things: what Dave W. says at 17 and for keeping one's employer/cow-orkers of one's back wrt to use any other social media sites as an extension of the office.
That latter use is v. important.
It gets trawled by recruiters so it's probably handy if you're on the job market. I have never derived any value from it whatsoever.
I met with a salesperson / former recruiter signed up for a subscription to her journal and now see stuff about subscribing. Was actually wondering if I should unlock her.
For me, it can be amusing to read colleagues' job descriptions. Joe X is a brand visionary? Who knew?
Who knows what a "brand visionary" is?
21: I wrote that on my ipod. It must have auto-corrected. I meant to write "unlink."
Unlinking is another good way to avoid seeing too many spam-y messages, but not as good as kidnapping.
I like to keep track of where my law school classmates work in case I ever want to move. LinkedIn is most helpful, though, for figuring out what time zone inventors live in for scheduling meetings.
Brand visionary reminds me of this booklet that they mocked on Above the Law. The lawyer is trying to advertise himself by talking about how his former girlfriends were models and Fox News anchors.
The link in 27 has to be taking the piss. No adult human being could write that with a straight face.
Also, a bit cross-thread, but Chase is a worse name for a kid than Jazz or Storm. When he (presumably) is a kid he'll be bullied rotten and when he grows up people will expect him to lend them vast sums of money all the time.
LinkedIn: I call it "PoFacedBook". Like Facebook but po-faced.
It could be useful for job searching - it does occasionally interesting recommendations. I've never encountered anything interesting in the discussion groups.
In the last six months it's gone into a spam spiral - the notifications from it are constant e-mail noise and are 99% parasitic. Also, the web site looks like it hasn't had any design attention since about 2002, and badly needs it.
I have no idea how or why they managed to IPO it and can only conclude we're going into another tech bubble.
Also, if you want to look at somebody's page that you don't have the premium access too? Hit "View Source" and just ignore the div they put in front of the information you want. Could probably hack together a greasemonkey script to automate that...if I actually cared enough.
23: Who knows what a "brand visionary" is?
Like a "product evangelist only" more visionary if you get my drift.
A "product evangelist" is a girl in a bar with a very tight shirt that says "Amstel Light" or something, no?
28: The actual person seems to exist, and I've certainly seen verbiage like that on personal web sites, but this is what his about page looks like today.
The career services person at my school has been really pushing LinkedIn to everyone. I have a profile there but haven't otherwise used it much. My network seems to be filling out well, though, because of all my classmates who keep adding me as a contact.
Having a professional social network distinct from my personal one seems like it would be a good thing if I worked in a job that required lots of connecting to people. I certainly don't want professional contacts reading everything on my FB page.
Having a professional social network distinct from my personal one seems like it would be a good thing if I worked in a job that required lots of connecting to people.
Yeah, I think this is basically the point of LI.
Chase is a worse name for a kid than Jazz or Storm.
"Hi there, my name's Chase. The ladies call me Morgan because I'm too big to fail."
38. I'll have a Manhattan if you're buying.
I am ashamed to say that I think 38 is brilliant.
call me Morgan
Have you got any Stanley in you?
A "product evangelist" is a girl in a bar with a very tight shirt that says "Amstel Light" or something, no?
That's a "product rep". I think a "product evangelist" is someone who posts fraudulent internet comments to create buzz.
He was called Chase, she was called Manhattan.
To begin with, Chase chased Manhattan all over Manhattan but Manhattan was chaste. After a couple of Manhattans, Manhattan was all over Chase.
"Why don't you try a cocktail? We call this one the Federal Reserve Board because it encourages risky, self-destructive behaviour."
42: "Product/corporate evangelist" suggests somebody like Guy Kawasaki, former "chief evangelist" at Apple, on the one hand, and somebody like the Prince of Tools in the Social Media Tarot Deck Tim Ferriss on the other. I recall exchanging a couple of e-mails with Guy Kawasaki when I was in college and so few people had e-mail addresses that pretty much anyone would reply to anybody, and he was very gracious.
I hate hate hate the way Linked In spams you and you can never unsubscribe. Until last month, nobody who has ever attempted to connect with me on it (I'm not on it) was anyone I ever wanted to hear from again. Indeed, it was almost a perfect proxy for somebody I wouldn't want to hear from.
I think this is field-specific, though. My brother, in tech, says he finds it useful and that people with more experience/higher profile than he are listed in it.
I have no idea how or why they managed to IPO it and can only conclude we're going into another tech bubble.
Amen.
We use LInked in to find former employees of the companies we sue for interviewing. It's useful for us, but not much use for the fomrer emplooyees.
Tip for young lawyers: It may be sort of prestigious to do document review for one of the largest corporations in the U.S. in repsonse to a grand jury subpoena. But if the existence of the grand jury investigation is non-public, it is seriously uncool to describe it (naming both corporation and the topic of the criminal investigation) on your online resume.
47.2: After a lawyer reaches 40, it's fine.
||
Happy Eritrean National Day, everyone.
I just shared a dining room with a bunch of folks celebrating that occasion. That's one seriously handsome race, the Eritreans.
|>
For a while, I was getting email from LinkedIn asking me if I knew LizardBreath. I can't even fathom how they figured out that I might know her.
50: Wow, that's weird. It's got to have somehow noticed that I've exchanged emails with Rob at some point, and done the two-step connection to you? Or have I emailed you about anything?
I searched my email and couldn't find your name, so I don't think so (also, I don't remember exchanging email with you). So my only guess was that they connected us through Rob somehow. But the list of people Rob has emailed is pretty long, I'm not sure why your name would float to the top of it. I scrolled through the list of people that it thinks I might know, and nobody else was a friend of Rob or an unfogged person that I know of.
49: Herodotos says the most beautiful in the world.
FB is desperate that I friend my brother. Which is weird, since we have no friends in common, do not live in the same state, have never exchanged emails on the address that FB has for me.
FB suggested that I friend (i) my estranged brother's ex-girlfriend and (ii) Ex-Girlfriend #1's mother. Then I suspended my FB account. One can take only so much of that sort of thing.
That's one seriously handsome race, the Eritreans.
They've got good-looking neighors in Ethiopia, that's for sure.
Let's rank all of the countries in Africa by physical attractiveness of the population. I don't see how that could cause any problems.
I just came across a thread in which a bunch of people were discussing 57 and it got nasty. Let's not.
And then we can all post our income.
63: The thought of actual corners doesn't fit.
At the round breast's imagined corners...
61. Yes, everybody, but they don't talk about it.
53. Was Herodotus actually talking about Eritreans or Ethiopians as we understand them today, or Kushites/Meroites who lived in northern Sudan (and were pretty damn hott if their descendents are any clue)?
You know what we should talk about instead? My huge triumph for today.
I've been trying to come up with a theme for my second beehive. As many of you know, I painted my original beehive to look like a classic red barn, on my theory that livestock need a barn. It is very cute and has been generally well received, but sometimes I wonder whether it works well as implemented. It gets far more traffic than a barn generally does; on the order of 5-6 take-off and landings per second. Cows don't generally step out of the barn and fly away, neither.
I've been looking for another building to paint on the outside of my hive. Something urban, something high traffic. I thought about an airport, but the hive is taller than wide and airports are generally only interesting in planview. I considered the Empire State Building, but have no deeply felt associations with New York City. It would not be authentic to me in this setting.
This morning I struck upon the right idea! A library! A public library should have many comings and goings! Sacramento has a Central Library, now surrounded by tall sycamores. But as you observe, it is not readily transposed on a tall, narrow box. AND THEN! The internet brought me a picture of the first Sacramento Library. It is tall and narrow! It says "Free Library" on the top. It is painfully authentic for my library-visiting self and obscure, so I shall be the best hipster for blocks.
I am not actually any sort of good draw-er, so it'll be a pain in the ass to make four stacked medium supers look like that. I am naturally pained by the parapet. I need to finish it within a week or so, since my friend has offered me bees to arrive soon. But these are as trifles compared to the perfection of the exterior of my second beehive if I can paint it to look like the Free 1879 Library.
Very cute, Megan! I wish I were one of your bees. It sounds like a great life.
I dunno. They work pretty hard and I take their honey and wax. I do plant flowers for them.
I especially loved this Flickr set of Sacramento libraries. McKinley still looks exactly like that. I go to McClatchy all the time, but the sitting room now has magazine shelving in it. My favorite pic may be the one with a much younger Mayor Isenberg, whom I now watch conducting water policy.
61: I'm not on trial here. Wait, am I?
Wait, are you saying that you want to make a library composed of an implausibly large number of hexagonal cells? Not that I'd know how to paint the outside.
72: I've actually just been informed that I've been put on the Sexual Harassment committee here. I'm going to have to get some tips from Apo on stepping up my game.
74: The committee to sexually harass? It's a tough job. The cop in front of the burrito place on my corner probably has to go to the chiropractor once a week from craning his neck every few seconds.
Oh Megan, that'll look great! Can we see a picture of your barnhive?
Grand Central Terminal would also make a nice beehive.
68.2: You know, I have no real clue. He does use the word "Ethiopioi" (and its synonym melainoi [!!!]), but for all I know the referent is totes different.
Well, there are no guarantees on the execution. It'll have be a gridded copying over, because I meant it when I said I have no drawing skillz.
Grand Central Terminal would be a gorgeous beehive. I bet an industrious someone could make such a thing (the boxes are easy to assemble) and trade it to some urban farmer for a lifetime supply of honey. Come to think of it, beehives painted to look like local buildings would probably do fairly well as a niche market, if you didn't want to get paid much for your labor.
Yeah, I'll put the barnhive up somewhere and let y'all know.
79. Yeah, it's tricky. The "Ethiopians" referenced in the New Testament (Acts) were Meroites, as I understand it, because the title, misunderstood as a name, Candace, can be identified the Meroitic Queen Mother - a very big shot in a matrilineal aristocracy. But Herodotus was 500ish years earlier. Who knows who he had in mind.
Oh well, bed time.
71: Irma Grimshaw is a perfect name for a reference librarian. And she has the look down cold.
I was admiring Ms. Grimshaw as well. How come we don't have cool names like that any more?
Megan's bees can use the Honeydewey Decimal System to stay organized in their new home.
Probably never that many Grimshaws around, but I'll bet "Irma" is going to be the hot new name among the grups any day now.
I've actually just been informed that I've been put on the Sexual Harassment committee here. I'm going to have to get some tips from Apo on stepping up my game.
When I was at uni there were posters in the union advertising (IIRC) Tae Kwon Do classes with the words "A great way to keep fit, and useful for everything from sexual assault to street violence".
Mmmmmyes.
87 is funny because Tae Kwon Do isn't useful for anything. Except for flushing urinals without using your hands.
It may have been some other martial art. It's been a while.
I would never have achieved my elite levels of sexual assault if I hadn't done all that tkd training as a kid.
89: Man, Tae Kwon Do enthusiasts must hate those new-ish waterless urinals. Unless they also simultaneously really enjoy peeing on pictures of bees.
I'm going to have to get some tips from Apo on stepping up my game.
This is always a good opening gambit.
The pictures in 88 are fantastic scroll too fast.
The pictures in 88 are fantastic. I especially loved putting those two Carnegie libraries next to each other.
The pictures in 88 made me think what I thought as I watched Spellbound. I cannot believe America is one country.
I cannot believe America is one country.
Oh, sure. Rub it in.
Megan, at least you are only in for a facade. As long as you have a prominent sign, everyone will probably just admire your effort.
For the parapet: would it be at all practical to build out a little 3-d attachment?
Oh my goodness. That'd be way better than I was thinking. I could rig it so it comes crashing down on pedestrians ifI shake the beehive.
Yes, people are sweet and mostly admire the effort no matter the level of execution.
If you're in the Bay Area, you can see a selection of the photos in person at the SFPL main branch. They will still be fantastic and they won't scroll any faster than you move. Plus, wall text.
Hurry before they release all the arsonists or the whole state falls into the ocean.
"but have no deeply felt associations with New York City. It would not be authentic to me in this setting."
I bought some gin called "new amsterdam" or something like that, and the company is out of some little town in california. I thought that was a bit weird.
You could probably de-skew the photo, print it out, and do decoupage. Or make a Lego facade!
Delightful idea.
103: I don't see what's strange about it. Their gin is in the style of the new amsterdam: dry, as opposed to the old amsterdam: fruity and sweet.
The classic English style being of course something in between.
If you have vodka, tonic, and a lime, you could make a gin and tonic.
If you have a lot of automotive parts and some cloth, you could make a gin and tunic.
Geez. Moby. The state doesn't fall into the ocean, it gets flung violently upward.
111: I learned all of my geology from the Superman movie that had Marlon Brando as Superman's dad.
People who are more advanced that I am could de-skew the photo, print it and do that other thing. Is it tracing? Tracing I could probably do.
I posted 113, but it hardly seems worth claiming it.
112: That was a few movies, if you count Brando's voice in Superman Returns.
50-52: I was amazed to see LinkedIn suggest that I add an old college roommate as a contact -- I haven't spoken to her since 1997, and there's no way that email contacts, six degrees, etc. would have led any algorithm to connect us. The only think I could think of was that I had once googled her and looked at her LinkedIn profile, presumably while I was logged into my own profile. Maybe that one hit, plus the fact that we'd attended the same school, was enough to 'connect' us. (I'm now kind of mortified by the whole thing, because she doesn't seem to use the profile much and her "People who looked here also looked at..." sidebar is now full of random relatives of mine. Sorry, ex-roommate! Maybe I shouldn't be this easily mortified.)
I signed up for LinkedIn because I might, within the next year or two, start looking for a job, and because I no longer use Facebook. I'm not sure how I feel about the way it traces your profile-browsing habits, but it's still far more low-key and less irritating than Facebook, which seemed to require a steadily increasing amount of maintenance to suppress all the stuff I hated about it.
Chase chased Manhattan all over Manhattan but Manhattan was chaste. After a couple of Manhattans, Manhattan was all over Chase
Insert "in Manhattan" between the two Manhattans in the second line, and you've got the beginnings of a jazz standard.
i'm 103
yoyo is far and away our oldest commenter.
Oh, I fiddled with de-skewing it, and if you want I'll mail you the results in a few days (on my other computer). The photo is taken from enough of an angle that squaring it up leaves the porch, e.g., still at an angle; you could probably have some fun collaging bits of printouts to get around that, or exaggerate it. Or trace. Still, even if tracing, you might want it somewhat less trapezoidal.
Or you could have a trapezoidal beehive. OO.
Clew, that'd be fantastic! It'd be great to have a de-skewed version. Did it show you what the sides and back look like, by chance?
I'm away for the weekend, so there's no hurry, but yes, please, I'd love a copy of that.
N=1, but LinkedIn did help get me my current job. In my most recent job search (~5 months ago), I got more leads through LinkedIn than through regular word-of-mouth or advertisements online, actually. I was surprised, since this ran against my expectations when starting my search.
