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Part 2: The LinkedIn Experiment

By Alicia Wanless on 16/12/2013 2 Comments

Premium Accounts

Sales can be tempting. LinkedIn lured me into a premium account with a deep discount for the first month.

Without a monthly contract and instead offering terms that allowed for cancelation anytime within a billing cycle, there really didn’t seem like a good reason to say no. Well, except for the feedback of friends who had also upgraded and found little use for the service.

Curiosity, it’s an expensive habit, ($31 monthly for a Job Seeker Premium Account, $26 for a Business upgrade). Thus, earlier this fall did I upgrade.

TheLIExperiment

Other than letting me see who was looking at my profile – which really just feeds a mixture of vanity and paranoia – all a premium account offered otherwise was a limited number of InMails a month.  The InMail program allows a subscriber to send messages to people outside their network – if the intended recipient allows for such stranger danger (many so-called influencers do not).

Conan

There were other features too, but none that really applied to my needs, which were to simply grow an existing network beyond the people I already knew.

Perhaps the limited number of targeted searches are more useful for head hunters, and likewise the featured candidate offering might help some job seekers who do well on those blind applications in a pool of thousands.

All I discovered in this experiment was that criticizing the LinkedIn influencer program on a post by Conan O’Brien will garner more interest in a profile than any paid-for service offering.

This, and the overwhelming majority (90+%) of strangers who look at my profile are men – which might account for the LinkedIn suggestion to use pictures of women in paid ads on the network.

Have you upgraded to a LinkedIn Premium account? How has your experience been? What do you see as the main benefit?

About Author

Alicia Wanless
Alicia Wanless
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La Generalista is the online identity of Alicia Wanless – a researcher and practitioner of strategic communications for social change in a Digital Age. Alicia researches how we shape — and are shaped — by a changing information space. With more than a decade of experience in researching and analysing the information environment, focusing on propaganda and information warfare, Alicia conducts content and network analysis, and has developed original models for identifying and analysing digital propaganda campaigns. Alicia is currently a PhD Researcher at King’s College exploring alternative frameworks for understanding the information environment.

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2 Comments

  1. Avatar
    Dietwald Claus on 19/12/2013 6:49 am

    So, basically – it’s a great service for women looking for a date

    • Alicia Wanless
      Alicia Wanless on 24/12/2013 8:38 pm

      Could be! Of course, to the best of my knowledge, no one has tried to pick me up yet. They just look…

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    Alicia Wanless (A.K.A. La Generalista) studies influence and propaganda in a digital age, applying her research to strategic communications campaigns.  Learn more about her work here or connect with Alicia via social channels linked here below:

      

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    La Generalista is the pen name of Alicia Wanless - a strategic communications professional who studies how we shape the information space and it, in turn, shapes us.

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