- The general goal of LinkedIn (the game) is to find and connect with as many people on LinkedIn (the website) as possible, in order to secure vaguely defined social capital and potentially further one’s career, which allows the player to purchase consumer goods of gradually increasing quality. Like many games, it has dubious real-life utility. The site’s popularity and success, like that of many social networks, depends heavily on obfuscating this fact. This illusion of importance creates a sense of naive trust among its users. This makes it easy to exploit.
Those people get un...linked (?) if I notice it happening. I hate that crap - I stay away from Facebook intentionally, I don't want it on L.I. as well. Especially as I'm already uncertain that it's giving me any professional benefit given the info-privacy tradeoffs.
More than anything it's impressive how little attention its users, especially recruiters who are allegedly screening for candidates, actually pay to what you post on your profile.
I wrote a very long comment and now i removed it but basically i think this article's more funny than it is a functionally effective satire; the idea's more interesting than well-executed -- BUT ALSO it's smart, and it's funny, and it's got an interesting premise and closes strong. so it's not bad but really, anyone else feel the argument (the actual argument being made) leaves a little to be desired? points #3 and 4 don't seem to align to the article's premise/thesis : it seems more like the author wanted to satirize those elements of linkedin than had considered whether those steps would actually help a user 'win' (as defined so vaguely, once in the article) at the game of linkedin the win-case presented for the game is so generic i don't understand what it has to do with linked in (except that the author wanted to write about linked in) Anyone else see what I'm seeing? Any little bit? At all?