Back when I started the Recruiter LinkedIn group, I had no idea that it would grow to almost a million people. I did however have a rough idea of what I wanted it to be – a professional community centered around one topic: recruiting and talent acquisition.
We allowed it to be fairly loose in terms of membership, including everyone associated with the business of finding people. I pictured free-flowing discussions on-topic, and participating along with everyone else and adding to the conversation.
Things are different now. Online conversation has largely moved from LinkedIn on to Facebook and various private messaging platforms. I no longer think that most positive professional discussion is going to possibly happen within a large public forum, especially on LinkedIn. The vast majority of people who participate in such forums are doing so to either a) create certain signals about themselves professionally or b) sell something.
I see forums like LinkedIn groups now as being highly directed and managed by their owners – essentially the moderators as the primary content contributors. This is going to change how we run our groups to be much less quantity, much more quality, and probably a lot more from Recruiter.com versus from tons of other members.
It’s a bit like pulling the plug on blog-comments. After a while, you have to ask where the real value is & how to best increase that value to members. Promotional discussions definitely don’t give value to anyone, so we’re nixing them all and tightening everything up.
Conversation on the Internet is very much alive! But it has changed and I want to be sure to acknowledge that.