LinkedOut?

Facebook on Wednesday announced its IPO. ‘Twas but a matter of time. Mark Zuckerberg is set to personally earn between $21 and $28 billion from it. Billion. Of course billion. He hasn’t spoken about mere millions in many a year. Million schmillion.

It would be churlish to knock the guy. He took an idea (it wasn’t his idea if the movie Social Network is accurate) and ran with it. Boy, did he run. What a genius to be able to recognise such a moment in time and grab it for his own. Well done, Mr Zuckerberg.

I just HATE the product.

Hate it hate it hate it. Whenever I catch a glimpse of someone else’s Facebook page I despair. I have blogged about this before but I’m clearly not done with the subject yet. This endless chronicling of the minutiae of one’s life … why?

Just nipped out for some milk. Semi-skimmed rules!

Like.

People do that. They “like” the most inane crap. You don’t do that in real life. Every conversation would take a day if you rated every comment someone made to you.

The only good thing I can see in Facebook is that it voids the necessity of ever travelling to see people you really should keep in contact with but don’t want to physically meet up with.

For the freelance writer, it is a practically useless tool. There are far better ways to contact people in the work arena. I prefer LinkedIn, although I have no hard evidence to back up whether that’s of any use, either. I keep adding people, and the odd misguided individual will occasionally add me, but unless I find myself needing to network for work due to unemployment, I won’t know how useful it really is. And I hope that time never comes.

I suspect it will be like a bank cancelling your credit card when you become bankrupt. The bank teller who used to greet you with a ready smile will now look anywhere but at your face. You will be persona non grata.

The old acting adage that you need to be in work to get work may well apply with LinkedIn. The problem is that when you have enough work, there’s not much point touting for extra work that you won’t have time to do.

Despite my suspicions, I am building my network. I think people accept my link requests because I have a good job and I am a published novelist. But I think without the good job bit no one would know what to do with me. Need a novel writing, mister? Be off with you.

“Freelance writer” is a somewhat more useful descriptor, but who isn’t a freelance writer these days?

Does anyone have any experience of finding work through LinkedIn? Or, when you’re unemployed, is it more a case of LinkedOut?