“If I show up at your door, chances are you did something to bring me there.”
– Martin Blank, Grosse Pointe Blank
Yeah, I’m looking at you, Mister “Hey Cool, I Can Link My Twitter and LinkedIn Accounts!” Guy.
(updated June 9, 2010)
What am I talking about? I’m talking about the fact that in the time it took me to log in create this post, add a title, and add those few simple lines, the following updates have been added to my LinkedIn home page:
– Two inspirational quotes. We’ve already talked about you.
– Three random articles, none current…one is actually two years old. And contradicts itself. And is useless to anyone.
– One “check in” from a bar. Really?
Over the course of the day today, I saw about twenty different articles/blog entries. Multiple “check ins” from bars and restaurants around the area. A note about what soup someone had while at lunch after one of those “check in” notes from a restaurant. Three random requests into the ether for someone…anyone…to meet up for a drink after work. A note that someone had added new photos of their kids to their Facebook profile…
Can you see it? The bulging blood vessel in the right-front quadrant of my brain that’s threatening to burst like a watermelon dropped from a 30th floor balcony?
Seriously, the much-awaited aneurysm is nearly upon me. I can feel it.
UPDATE: After much feedback over the course of the day today, it appears that I need to be a little more clear here.
– It’s really okay if you have two Twitter accounts. One for Business use and one for Personal use. Really. It’s okay. Just like a lot of people have multiple Facebook accounts, it’s okay to do the same thing with Twitter. Yes, technically, they say you’re not supposed to. But do you think they really care when it’s just one more number on the pile when they go to advertisers and say “WE HAVE A BAJILLION USERS!!!!!!1!!” I assure you that they don’t.
– I have decided that there are multiple “classes” of Twitterlings. Or Twitterers. Or Tweeters. Or whatever the hell you’re calling yourselves these days….anyway, there are those that use Twitter as a way to share relevant, timely information with people…and then there are Twits. Twits, as the name would imply, don’t understand what the hell they’re doing. CNN actually had a good story about them today (I’m just going to go ahead and assume they have someone watching this site 24/7 waiting for us to deliver one of our profoundly deep thinking blog entries so that they can go cover that same topic…because that makes me feel better about myself, okay? Work with me), and you should go read it: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/06/09/netiquette.twitter/index.html?hpt=C2. It’s called “Don’t tweet that: how to not be a Twitter dork”.
And, really, that’s who I have a problem with here. The people that decide that anyone they’re connected to on LinkedIn needs to know every single god damned thought that comes wafting across their frontal lobe. Every article that they read? Tweeted! Every time they go grab another cup of coffee? Twit with two sugars.
It has seriously gotten to the point where I wonder what in the hell these people actually do all day long. I mean, these people are employed. I know they have jobs. I know they’re supposed to be doing something…and I’m pretty damned sure that it’s not making sure I get a link to the latest “SuperWebColorPaletteGuy” blog or letting me know that they’re having lunch somewhere that I’m not with people I don’t know.
So, with that in mind…if that’s you…
…for the love of all that is good and holy in the world people…STOP LINKING YOUR TWITTER AND LINKEDIN ACCOUNTS!
Go. Right now.
Yes, YOU.
Get yourself to LinkedIn right now and disconnect your Twitter feed. Just do it. If I cared what you had for lunch, or that you had new photos of your child face planting into a birthday cake, I would ask, and I would follow you on Twitter. I would. Honestly.
And yes, I realize that some of this is LinkedIn’s fault, since they decided to go ahead and turn on “follow” by default as one of their cool new “features” that they wanted to roll out…but there has to be some level of personal accountability here. It’s your life, your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter feed…and we’re connected for a reason. We’re connected because we’ve worked together in the past, or you’re someone that I’ve gotten to know through our events. I don’t want to ignore you, and I don’t want to disconnect from you, and, most importantly, I don’t want to start thinking less of you because you don’t know how to keep your various social networking profiles and activities separate. Yes, I could go ahead and go through each and every one of my connections and de-activate things…but it’s a simple matter of time management: “many hands make light work” and all of that sort of thing, right?
Right.
“I’m talking it back to the old school
‘Cause I’m an old fool who’s so cool”
– Tag Team, “Whoomp, There It Is!
Yep, we’re going “old-school” this time, because there’s no other way to say it…and nobody said it better than RUN-DMC:
