I've tried, really really tried to get some benefit out of LinkedIn. I never could get any traction out of it, and apparently I am not the only one.

None of my circle of friends has never found value in linkedin ... and that's not a small circle. :)

As the world shifts towards Programmatic, they were building a captive Ad Network. They should sell their ad space on exchanges, they'll get far more traction, and spend far less, and take less time to get there. But to me, what they have is relationship information, this has far more value than their ad space.

I've found that LinkedIn as a means to culture or maintain business relationships is highly effective. The fluff they've built around it - groups, posting to LinkedIn, share to LinkedIn - these seem to be failed monetisation strategies, and the audience has broadly recognised them as such. At its core, though, I think they have a great website.

It sounds like horses for courses, but it appears there are not the right horses around, or the course needs improving.

Either way, that valuation drop is huge.

Trust me, that $10B never existed in the first place.

It's all funny money inflation values, it's not real money, nothing was actually lost.

LinkedIn has a lot to offer but its ruined by users who just don't get it or want to abuse it. Too many random connection requests (do they think they're on Facebook?), and too much low quality content is allowed to be published. Its a real pity.

Before addressing the central question, I would first like to begin by thanking you all for your many LinkedIn endorsements. I am particularly grateful for those of you who have endorsed me for a skill that you would have had to look up in the dictionary had you wanted to know what it actually was, but since that was too much trouble, you endorsed me anyway.

Next I would like to thank you for the valuable opportunity you have provided with your groups to enable me to promote my unoriginal a regurgitated blog posts.

With those thanks out of the way, I will also thank LinkedIn for providing a few things of actual value: a Rolodex, Slideshare, a few of the core features of a listing and a resume in a standardized form (I recently saw a job announcement that allowed you to submit a resume or your LinkedIn profile).

[translation]What IncrediBill said[/translation]

Linked in does seem to be very useful to some people. I think they may be suffering from the same disease as Twitter - rather than thinking "we are the most successful site in our line of business" they think "we are a social networking site and smaller than Facebook" and they then get over-ambitious trying to match FB.

@ergophone, well put. If you can see it, why are LinkedIn's management unable to see it?

Nice one ergophobe, and perfectly put!

I was thinking of giving LinkedIn another go this month, but when I logged on i found a whole bunch of people wanting to connect that were, well, not the sort i wanted in my connection list. A few clearly stood out as spammers.

The only value I see in LinkedIn is the opportunity to put a face to some of the webmasterworld forums. Everything else is total BS. Let me tell you why. It is a funny story really.

Two years ago I decided to experiment with my LinkedIn profile. Make it more appealing and professional. So I did all the recommendations but it did not matter. Then I did the following (it might sound weird but trust me I had no cruel intentions). I started connecting with all women with attractive picture or heavy title that were suggested in my connection suggestions page. I added until there were no more suggestions. At first there were like 10 responses. So I went - WOW 10% conversion rate? That's HUGE. So I repeat the process every week (when the list refreshes pretty much). It became sort of a ritual. The funny part was that the more women if statue or looks I had in my profile the more of the same kind started proposing connectivity to me. After that was over with, their less attractive or titled colleagues proposed and later on their bosses. After 4 months I had over 1000 new connections. After 8 almost 2000, with couple of SEOs and C-suits at fortune 500 companies. Even after I stopped the practice there is a never ending stream of people wishing to connect with me. Now I have close to 4000 connections and invites to some "high profile" closed groups.

If you read the above story, you by know guessed why LinkedIn in its current state is a failed and overly abused excuse of a professional social network.

Thanks engine and graeme_p - regularly reading of The Onion and The Borowitz Report prepares one for such situations ;-)