TrendsLinkedIn Business or dating online?

Titty Paternoster9 years ago7 min

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We subscribe to Linkedin and we tell everything about us: who we are, what we studied, our experiences, how and what we like to do.

Linkedin is the social network created to help and facilitate links and contacts among professionals. Eight million Italians have decided to insert their curriculum, portfolio, jobs on this network to increase their professional network, start new businesses, look for a job.

Out of the funny Facebook and the sardonic Twitter, we put our best suit on and we subscribe to Linkedin and here we tell everything about ourselves:  who we are, what we studied, our experiences, how and what we like to do.

While we describe ourselves, we try to do it as best as possible, just as if we were on our first date.   Ironically, we expose ourselves more on Linkedin than anywhere else.

Differently than with other social networks, when we receive a contact request on Linkedin we are proud of it: this proves that we are being appreciated for what we do, for our education, for our knowledge. If when someone contacts us on Facebook we spend a day thinking ¨when did I meet this person?¨ or “is this because of my new profile pic? The one that shows cleavage?”, when it comes to Linkedin, a contact request means a job opportunity.

Or at least it should.

Unfortunately, as for all other social networks, even this has the flaw of being inhabited by human beings, with their flesh, bones and misery.

So it happens that, once in a while, among tons of promotional messages, you receive an ambiguous private message.

Truth is that hearts and kiss emoticons make the message very clear, but being Linkedin a working environment, the result is quite disturbing.

Linkedin and Online Dating  

Generally people subscribe to Linkedin to look for a job, not for an adventure; nonetheless, someone uses it to know other people, better if they have his / her same education and social status.

Now, even if the goal of the dating app target groups is anything but to show their intellectual abilities, even if it’s true that on Linkedin we answer the typical first-date questions (What do you do? Where di you study? Where do you live?), those who use Linkedin to sent ambiguous messages, to invite people out to dinner or for a happy hour to get to know them better, turns out to be more annoying than the hot, half – naked guy that wrote to you on Tinder without even knowing how to write.

This is because that ambiguous message, on a social network created for job purposes, reiterate that pleasant compromise according to which if you want to work, you have to give something in return.

Intellectual Dating, some advice

Technology offers the opportunity to separate work from recreational activities and helps go, culturally speaking, one step further for people like:

  • The narcisist affected by megalomania that strongly believes that he can have sex by mentioning the opportunity to hire you.
  • The digital blunderer, that doesn’t fully understand the different dynamics of the various social networks and that doesn’t have any clue that there are way more appropriate web spaces for this purpose.
  • The selective type, that doesn’t like the target of dating apps.

BeLinked, or LinkedUP, is an online dating application to which you can subscribe only through Linkedin and, even if it doesn’t share anything with the social network created by  Reid Hoffman, it allows people who work in the same field or who studied in specific schools to meet each other.

If explaining that Linkedin is not a good place to make certain propositions,  and suggesting other online dating applications just is not enough, you can always try a good therapist.

Titty Paternoster

"La vita è piena di miserie, solitudine e tristezza e per di più dura troppo poco" (Woody Allen) Scrivere, progettare e intervistare sono le mie passioni, ma riesco meglio nel bere, mangiare e guardare serie TV.

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