I'm withdrawing from all LinkedIn discussions and have ceased interacting in LinkedIn groups. Why?
Two words: email notifications.
No, it's not that I hate receiving email notifications for discussions in LinkedIn groups. It's that the emails are now next to useless.
Not long ago, discussion notifications would contain the full text of someone's discussion comment.
Clicking “Comment” would take me directly to that comment on the LinkedIn discussion page, making it really easy to continue the conversation.
Now, discussion notifications barely contain any text from someone's discussion comment. Even this text is confusingly buried under the heading and description of the discussion. It's practically as small and insignificant as the post meta info!
Additionally, clicking “Respond Now” doesn't take me directly to the comment, anymore. It now takes me to the top of the discussion, so I have to scroll down to that specific comment. What is there even to respond to?
Even worse, LinkedIn discussions are now lazy-loaded via Javascript. That means content doesn't load until I scroll down to it. So if a discussion has a lot of comments, I have to scroll down, wait for content to load, scroll again, wait again, scroll, wait, scroll, wait.
GAH!
Seriously, this killed my enthusiasm for participating in LinkedIn discussions—I can't tell what someone said from the tiny excerpt of their comment, and I can't quickly get to their full comment.
This has made me cease all participation in LinkedIn discussion groups (even discussions in which I previously participated).
What do you think about this change?
So far I haven’t used LinkedIn hardly at all except to connect with a few people in my field. Somehow I turned off email notifications completely and don’t think about them except every few weeks. Besides, I don’t run a B2B, my audience doesn’t hang out there.
It’s amazing how big a difference little changes like you describe can affect things, isn’t it?
I view them more as “announcement” groups. In the biotech groups I am a part of, there isn’t a lot of discussion, but I get more people clicking through to content I post in those groups than I do from Twitter and sometimes more than Facebook. So I don’t participate in discussions there, but I do post there. Poor email notifications are still a problem though, as they don’t display properly on my phone.
While the technical issues with Groups are definitely a frustration these days, I’m more tired of how all the marketing groups I’ve signed up for have now little to no interesting discussions about marketing. So many links.
I wonder if that’s because too many other people are also not participating in the discussions for my similar reasons.
Could very well be that kind of negative feedback loop.
I forgot how frustrated LI has made using their groups (because I also stopped paying attention to a snippet of a snippet enticement to pain of waiting). The other dimension I hate is the amount of leaking of LI tabs in my browser. It is a shame because groups were really one of the best ways to give value and build relationships on most of social media, and they killed it. Probably for more page views, greater tracking, reduced bandwidth. Short term profits over customer functionality.
Joshua Bush does point out a good point for LI – their new stripped down notifications make it easier to deal with the many different lenses that people look at LI through (desktop, email, tablet, phablet, phone, notebook, within another app….). It does not excuse LI for destroying groups, but helps to explain it. Basically they keep trying to keep control and drive away the audience. Oh well.
When I look at a lot of the “Group Statistics” of groups I belong to, almost all of them were very active in 2012 or so then not much activity since. I am starting a new group but wonder if it is worth it? Or maybe a better place to have a group thank on LinkedIn? Any alternative suggestions. Want a forum like atmosphere where things can actual get done based off of discussions.
Yeah, LinkedIn groups now seem to be where communities go to die.
The best alternative is either owning your own platform—which can take a lot of work to make it easy for people to participate—or a Facebook group. Alternatively, Google+ Communities are really good, but there are unsubstantiated rumors that Google+ may shut down some day.
Thanks Daniel.
Trying not to get the cart before the horse as I need a place to build the community before launching a standalone one!
FB would definitely be a more user friendly tool as it is much easier to use the LI but the group revolves around more of a work related topic. Wondering if I should launch both places with duplicate content then merge to a buddypress or similar standalone?
I don’t recommend splitting your audience.
I’m sure Google WILL shut down Google+. I mean, that’s what Google does, right?
There’s no evidence of it yet. In fact, Google continues to update Google+.
Well, that’s a big plus!
i think you should participate on them :p
http://www.aqweeb.com/
Very poor design and programming. Way to kill the service!