Realizing that I’m a latecomer to yet another social network, I decided today that I was going to start making a better effort to get LinkedIn. About 10 minutes into my journey, though, I realized that I only have one invitation left before I have to upgrade my account (and pay.)
So now, here I am, wondering who’s really LinkedIn worthy. I mean, I already wasted two on people that sit within five feet of me half of the day. Then I added a competitor, someone on another continent, two VC’s that office next to us, three people I’ve never met face to face, and that brings us back to my quandary: who gets my last invite?
Why not just upgrade to a paid account, you ask? I’ll give you two reasons: 1. It’s expensive. 2. It’s expensive. Reason one is keeping me from upgrading, and reason two is likely keeping those I want to get LinkedUp to from upgrading. Someone forgot to tell LinkedIn that the freemium model (defined by me as gaining users through a free service offering, then up-selling to paid accounts) works best when the first step from free to paid is really low. Twenty dollars per month ($60/mo if you have two equal business partners) is a tripping hazard, and the last thing you want to do is set up a high obstacle to adoption.
I realize I’m just one guy with a dream here, but LinkedIn could be my own little MySpace (without all the darned smut.) I could troll around and add friends (I mean connections.) I could see how many friends (I mean connections) people I don’t like have. I could say things like “Thanks for the ad!” and “Happy B-Day Z-Dawg!!! Great seeing you last week!” I could upload pictures of me at a recent conferences cajoling with my friends (I mean connections.) If only I could afford it.
Oh yeah, and they need to let me include a flickr photostream.
Update: okay, I see now that the limit only applies to introductions, or invitations, or something else entirely, I’m really not sure any more. Rather than call this a restrictive model, I’ll call it a confusing one. Maybe it’s just poor design, maybe it’s just further proof of my attention deficit.
3 Responses to “Are you LinkedIn worthy?”
You’re so full of shit…can’t afford LinkedIn…
Maybe if you guys would put us on retainer, things would be different. Lots of mouths to feed these days.
[...] Last week I posted about a battle of wit I had with LinkedIn (I lost.) It seems that when I read “You have 1 invitation remaining,” I assumed that I had 1 invitation remaining. But now that I understand that I was wrong, I’m slowly becoming LinkedIn. [...]