LinkedIn Top 10% – Really?

I recently received an email from LinkedIn that my profile was in the top 10% most viewed for 2012. I thought to myself, nice – look at me and how special I am – (right?), but what does this really mean? Am I really that special? Seriously?

Then that skeptical side of myself surfaced, thinking what are they after, is this spam? Has my information been compromised, you know all the usual stuff given the nature of the web, the number of scammers out there, and the negative energy which surrounds anything that looks like “this is too good to be true feeling” … you know the one, “Johnny, we have some good news and bad news, the operation was a success but the patient died… “, that sort of feeling…

Turns out there is allot of buzz around this tactic in the general online community. Posts range from “LinkedIn Tricking Members”, to “Holy Smokes Am I Special or What?”. Bottom-line, stats are stats, as it turns out, that is exactly what this is, the statistics which LinkedIn calculates the number of hits to a given profile within a one year period. That being said, considering there are over 200 million people who have profiles on LinkedIn, each with a profile listed – being viewed that many times means that the information you posted about yourself, your skills and connections all contribute to this statistic.

I have noticed that several of the negative posts are from people that are either upset that they did not get this email, or from people in the top 5% offering negative feedback – which is surprising to me given that their mention equates to their profile being viewed millions of times. I mean, seriously, is that not the whole reason people publish their profiles on a professional services market place?

Interesting, that Wikipedia defines LinkedIn as:

“LinkedIn Corporation (NYSE: LNKD) (pron.: /ˌlɪŋkt.ˈɪn/) is a social networking website for people in professional occupations. Founded in December 2002 and launched on May 5, 2003,[6] it is mainly used for professional networking. As of January 2013, LinkedIn reports more than 200 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories.[5]

The site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Czech, Polish, Korean, Indonesian, and Malay.[7][8] Quantcast reports LinkedIn has 21.4 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and 47.6 million globally.[9] In June 2011, LinkedIn had 33.9 million unique visitors, up 63 percent from a year earlier and surpassing MySpace.[10] LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering in January 2011 and traded its first shares on May 19, 2011, under the NYSE symbol “LNKD”.[11]”

Again, validating the shear number of users and the overwhelming success of the company – their stock is trading at around $125/share – not bad all things considered in today’s market for an e-company.

In my humble opinion, I think that LinkedIn did a “good deed” in the grand scheme of things, making millions of people feel very special. I think that positive energy goes a long way, especially given that so few corporations actually do something that costs them virtually nothing to make so many people feel special.

As for me, I take it for what I think it is…

My LinkedIn profile was hit millions of times because my resume contains a ton of information and the right buzz words, but most likely it is because I am so old and have been in this industry so long, it is shear math, more projects equates to more hits because more words are published and therefore more data indexed and searchable, simple! But yes, I am special as well – 🙂