Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC described LinkedIn as ‘Facebook for losers’, which got me thinking about the reputations which social networking sites have.
I also considered LinkedIn as the social networking website for professionals, not ‘losers’, and I must agree with an astute commenter, Jim_Panzie, on the BBC blog:
LinkedIn is a great way to keep up with Professional contacts, Facebook and Myspace just didn’t work for me they seemed to be for kids
Perhaps LinkedIn is for people who ‘want to put their CV out’, but even that is a form of networking (just perhaps not as social as Facebook etc).
Facebook used to seem relatively sophisticated when compared to MySpace, and it struck me as attracting an elder and better educated audience. TechCrunch ventured to even claim that choosing between the two was simply an IQ test!
TechCrunch, in 2007, stated that the introduction of widgets into Facebook was a fantastic idea but it has lowered the tone of the network. An increasing amount of young people consequently started to use Facebook and it made the site lose some of its social element and made it more into a playground.
MySpace and Bebo generally stir up images of a bunch of teenagers with distasteful backgrounds and music.
I steer clear of major social networking sites; they’re more hassle than they’re worth and make us unproductive.
Different ages, and classes, use different social networks. Class divides, even online.
True – In my case LinkedIn and Plaxo are more biz contact related whilst the others (FB MS etc) are more casual. Your descriptions fit well with my own experience too.
The problem is that it seems hard to maintain a somewhat highbrow image for these sites. Facebook certainly did lower its ’standards’ – whatever those were or what you think of that. But LinkedIn too has moved decidedly towards a less ‘boring’ or at least less ‘business-like’ approach and has added many features, not in the least the blogging applications.
I suppose that in order to gain the greatest reach, you have to target the greatest common factor. And we all know that is a reader/membership with the intellectual powers of a 12-year old… The highbrow, elitist, challenging web, I fear, will have little impact. It’s like the Times Literary Supplement: it’s got style, but who reads it, right?