In 2007 I joined LinkedIn. My situation was that I had promises to fund 50% of any of my film projects; I was without any income and money trying to live in UK and had frustrated experiences dealing with female CV people to get any work. They really where incompetent arrogant idiots.
I had two objectives. To find remaining funds and team up with film industry professionals; and to find any gigs that could pay me money. Then I found LinkedIn to be networking site for professionals, where you had intelligent people compared to some forums I had tried before.
I was even nominated as first 1M person joining to LinkedIn from UK.
After five years I got used to it, increased my network of people to nearly 300 and spent some hour a day in it and was happy to help others in “Answers”, expanded my network and had fun as well.
However, I wasn’t able still reach my objectives. Most of the film financing partners where interested to finance something $5M budget projects while I was seeking only $150K-$250K.
Having seen several similar low budget projects seeking funding, I presented an idea to establish such kind of fund without much interest. There were several Venture Capital offers starting from $10M to $100M, so obviously one of such kind of fund could lower the investors’ risk. Seems, that lot of filmmakers either doesn’t understand the financial reality or are too much inside in their views.
Trying to raise small amount from hundreds or thousands small investors will create a lot of problems in future on accounting and reporting plus could create a lot of court cases with unsatisfied ones. That’s why I was looking a one source funding with a prospective of buyback.
At start I got some work by writing articles to MyTestBox.com site, but nothing much later from that person as he sold the site for profit but wasn’t much getting any gigs there so had just fun.
And one day I was banned to login to my account. The reason they found was my private answer, taken out from a context and from a person that even wasn’t in my network.
When I asked some Internet related work to do for $50, some female contacted claiming that she have lot of such kind of work to offer. When I answered with my interest and to be more specific, she immediate answered that she has better persons to do it. So I answered: “good luck, I haven’t found females to be reliable business partners as well”. And that was reported as sexual harassment???
Anyway, unable to login to my account to provide evidence what kind of conversation we had before I wasn’t able to protect even my case. So, I contacted to technical support to have my contact list back. When joining, LinkedIn asked my contacts from my MSN and Yahoo account which I provided and afterwards I had used their service to manage my contact list. Obviously I didn’t want to loose it. What “Trust and Safety” team they have to kill any trust I could have with the service that refuses me to use my contact list anymore?
In the first LinkedIn page there they ask your Hotmail and Yahoo mail details claiming that “your address book will be safe with us”. That’s a lie as I found out.
So, after going over to first person originally banned my account I was able to open the access again. But because my shocking experience, I decided to close my account and start to use more reliable service in future. Seems, that LinkedIn is victim of the success where instead mature professionals, some teenagers are joining with the reason to have fun to ban someone.
Besides, I’m not happy with the direction LinkedIn has taken as well. For example their game of “Endorsements” where you can list your skills and then LinkedIn pops up everyone to “Endorse” those skills until everyone have “Endorsed” all your skills. Facebook “Farmwille” for example is much more professional game to play that LinkedIn “Endorse my Skills”.
I spent lot of time in “Answers” helping others out and asking my questions to get interesting viewpoints. And you could choose the good and best answers, so people like me built their reputation using it. Now they are even closing down this section?
As LinkedIn forums went to be more spam than useful posts (I was mainly member of Film financing ones), I left several of those. And afterwards LinkedIn started to SPAM me to join those forums which I just left!!!
So obviously LinkedIn isn’t anymore a place for the professionals.
Related Posts: