RUN TCP/IP | Morgan Lucas is Tech Blogging

  For a company that sells our data (If the product is free, the product is me...and you), LinkedIn offers Premium,.  One can send 5 messages for $40 USD with Premium...or use hunter.io , finding email addresses of people at companies for free. There are issues with that, but I have a free trial!  LinkedIn put forth effort to make the cost worthwhile, so let's see if the options are worth it.   How Much of LinkedIn's Revenue is Premium? I couldn't tell, but COO Daniel Shapero says in 2024, it was a 1.7$ Billion dollar business . He raves about how Premium users like the AI Writing Suggestions tool - but hold that thought.  (On the payment page, it says "Why do we need your card for a free trial? To provide a seamless subscription experience!" It's so you forget to cancel the trial. To be fair, they do say they'll warn you 3 days before it expires, but we know what it's really about)   LinkedIn Learning  One part of LinkedIn I genuinely enjoy are the ...

 (This is a bit of a departure but I'm still waiting for my cables to use my MacBook Air and finish the Bicep work.) On LinkedIn, saw a post by one of my connections -   " You don't have to post on websites you don't like to build your 'brand'. "  It was so simple and succinct that I went "You know what? Yeah, they're right." -- And, after 6 years of use, hibernated my LinkedIn account on about October 18th 2023 without warning. I don't have to read a bunch of cringey nonsense or watch companies accept bad behavior while "Hey, bigotry is bad" is "not a value alignment with our company". It's great.  I do miss the head-nod-glance acknowledgements of my connections, who have been greatly helpful, as well as watching animators spoil future Dreamworks projects by having them on their profiles and box office news. I do miss being able to send a message to someone to get some insight or let them know of an issue with the...

  When the world's .... strangest networking site when down on Feb. 23rd, people were quick with the jokes. Some of my peers find value in LinkedIn; After 4 years, I see it as a soundboard for everything wrong with the modern workforce, a giant conference for people with no empathy, wearing 16-hour workdays as badges of honor. Besides their abysmal censoring of black professionals and the rampant bigotry of the userbase, LinkedIn (Owned by Microsoft), have been posting more articles that empower the jobseeker.  And, slowly, people on the site have been changing too - For the better. They're being deprogrammed, learning that their job doesn't really warrant a 40-hour week, that their company could absolutely pay them the same for less hours, that they too can have a happier, more balanced life if they push for it. But we still had THE JOKES.  Only my tweets are directly embedded; If you see yours here and would like me to embed them, contact me on Twitter. Society ...

I'm not here to take a dump on the hard working web designers who brought their ideas to life because there are good things, and things that need just a smidgen of improvement. One day in November 2020, I opened my LinkedIn to see this:

You use LinkedIn because it's the biggest 'job networking' site on the internet. If you want a site that accepts multifaceted, interesting people, don't look there, look elsewhere: Twitter ! Twitter has... Great blocking and muting tools, from words to people. Lists to organize and sort. The ability to log into multiple Twitter accounts at once. Newsletter options, for us verbose people. You may be thinking "Twitter? But it's so..." casual? Genuine? That's what makes it great. For people like me who grew up in a wilder internet and find LI's culture stuffy (and racist , oop), Twitter ... can be just as racist, but at least you can call it out without repercussion. 

... But there's nothing there. No header, no content, nothing. How do you expect anyone to take you seriously? You aren't a business. You're a person with Google, 5 minutes, and a dream. Look at my page - Lucas Network Solutions - Do you want something like that? Do you want a start like that? It increases your credibility. Your page views (Not by millions, maybe 10s). Your brand. Go to that page, find me - The one employee - and send me a message. It's more affordable than you think.

LinkedIn is an American business and employment-oriented service that operates via websites and mobile apps. [...] it is mainly used for professional networking, including employers posting jobs and job seekers posting their CVs. - Wikipedia LinkedIn seems to have gotten a little left behind in the always-connected, faux-intimate world of social media - as well as missing potentially helpful options for the job seeker.  Here's 7 potential ways it can improve.