LinkedIn is the worst

Even LinkedIn's slogan, "Connect to opportunity", is nauseating. But it's now worth so much that if everybody in Australia tipped in $1000, we'd still be $10 billion short.

If you haven't used LinkedIn, imagine Facebook if every user had their boss looking over their shoulder the entire time, so that instead of sharing amusing distractions, they instead raved about their passion for generating shareholder value.

LinkedIn is like a school reunion with only the people you didn't want to keep in touch with, boasting about their career accomplishments to try and make you feel inferior. It reads like the fake employee testimonials in a recruiting brochure.

Today I logged into my LinkedIn account to try and understand how it can possibly be worth all that money. The site was up to its usual irritating tricks – before I got to the feed that displayed my contacts' most recent workplace 'accomplishments', it served up the usual series of nag screens, demanding I tell it what my interests are, then insisting that I add people I would gladly expunge permanently from my life, then asked me to grant it total access to my email account so it could hunt down more of them.

And then it demanded I buy a premium account!

I'm told that LinkedIn is handy for "networking", which I think means strategically accumulating faux-friends. And if you're looking for work, it's supposed to be invaluable. Recruiters apparently comb its listings looking for talent to prise away from the current jobs in which everyone claims they're doing so well. (I can't attest to this, never having been offered so much as a floor-scrubbing role on LinkedIn.)

Having a work-based social network makes some degree of sense when our contacts change their work email addresses with every new role, so there's definitely a role for a digital Rolodex out there. And it's true that we are a different version of ourselves at the office from what we are at home, and the division is probably a useful thing.

What's more, the site certainly seems to be popular – most of the people I know seem to have LinkedIn accounts. But I wonder how often they use it. My feed rarely contains anything worth clicking on. Instead, there are links to unengaging webinars, articles about the content strategies of companies whose content I've no interest in consuming, and above all, humblebrags

Whereas Facebook unerringly knows me to a frightening degree, the top article that LinkedIn's algorithm served up for me had the headline "Aurecon's Giam Swiegers brings Big Four thinking to engineering". I've never heard of Aurecon, Giam Swiegers or the Big Four, and all I know about engineering is that I don't know anything about it, and don't especially care to know more.

I'm willing to believe there are people out there that find LinkedIn's offering less tedious than I do, but I very much doubt that there are enough of them to justify a US$26 billion valuation.

What's particularly galling about the inflated value of social media sites like LinkedIn is what those numbers mean for traditional media. As Media Watch pointed out this week, they're devouring the ad revenue that once went to media organisations that pay people to produce quality content. Instead, social sites cash in on the content that we users produce for free.

You could probably buy most of the major news publications in the English-speaking world for $26 billion these days. Sadly, though, our economy values the lily-gilding of LinkedIn's corporate narcissists more than the hard-won facts and informed analysis offered by traditional media.

I can understand why Microsoft bought LinkedIn. It produces the software that still powers most businesses, but free business applications produced by Google and Apple are cutting into its profits. If they can integrate LinkedIn into their increasingly cloud-based Office suite, they may be able to milk healthy profits from the corporate sector for a while yet before the cloud wipes out the market for expensive productivity apps.

But when I log onto Twitter or Facebook or even LinkedIn, the most popular things being shared are content from news websites. When they're dead and gone, will we be left with a world in which the only content consists of press releases and cat videos?

Yes, we definitely will, so I'm going to have to grit my teeth and embrace LinkedIn. "Writer" means nothing in that environment, so I'm going to rebrand myself an "Executive Content Generation Specialist". Would you mind logging on and endorsing my "Content Strategy" skills? In return, I'll gladly give a thumbs up to whatever you pretend you do.

Naked Eye #4

My final Sun-Herald column about Sarah Palin's TV job and Prince William's visit, among other things.

FOX News now Sarah and Balanced

The news that Sarah Palin would join FOX News as an analyst sounded like a (non-gay) marriage made in Republican heaven. She needed a job, having abandoned her state midway through her second term, and Fox needed high-profile Obama opponents. But her first appearance didn't exactly contradict MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who asked how she could be a pundit when "she doesn't know anything". She quickly got befuddled when asked by Bill O'Reilly how a McCain-Palin administration would have responded to the Iranian nuclear threat, and her answer to how she'd combat the rise in unemployment was that the Government should get out of the way of the private sector – the very approach which caused the financial crisis in the first place. Most damagingly, she admitted she thought Saddam Hussein might have been responsible for 9/11 before her Vice-Presidential debate in 2008. Still, at least there is now a clear heir to the Bush legacy.

Where there's a Wills

Understandably, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has cancelled her visit to Australia because of the disastrous earthquake in Haiti. But fortunately no crisis has prevented Prince William from visiting Sydney for a whole two days next week, in what is only his second visit ever despite being our future King. The Premier is taking time out from fixing our crumbling State to meet his plane, and then Wills will be attending a garden-party. It hardly seems worth the fuss, nor the substantial security bill. If he must come here, perhaps he could emulate some of our other young English visitors, and pull some beers or something?

Google and the Great Wall of Conroy

Google's dramatic announcement that it would stop censoring its search engine in China has been praised as a win for civil liberties in a nation where speech is far from free. Its decision has been applauded by the White House, with spokesperson Robert Gibbs referring to President Obama's speech in Beijing in November in which he advocated the "right of a free internet." And yet that's exactly the right that our own government is now proposing to restrict. So will Google refuse to play ball with our government's attempt to decide what its citizens should see? And will President Obama criticise Stephen Conroy's plan to make internet filtering mandatory in Australia? Labor Senator Kate Lundy expressed reservations about the plan this week, and presumably now risks being consigned to some gulag for expressing dissent.

Who wants to see a millionaire?

A big welcome to AR Rahman, the genius Bollywood composer whose compositions even sound good when they're performed by the Pussycat Dolls. He hopes his free concert for the Sydney Festival will help to build bridges between Australia and India at a time of considerable tension. Let's hope so, because the killings in Melbourne have done enormous damage to our image in the region. Rahman says the attacks are the result of drugs rather than racism, though, which seems about as optimistic as a boy from the Mumbai slums trying to win Who Want To Be A Millionaire.

Abbott’s Army vs Rudd’s Regiment

Tony Abbott has tried to seize the environmental mantle from the left this week, promising to create a 15,000-strong Green Army that will undertake a series of conservationist sorties around the nation. They will confront the urgent environmental challenges facing Australia, except of course climate change. But since Kevin Rudd already announced a Green Jobs Corps back in July, we are faced with the thrilling prospect of the two forces joining battle. And since Rudd promised to recruit 50,000 for his programme, Abbott might want to bump up his numbers before the warring sides take up their pitchforks and hoes.

Whan disaster strikes

Amid the flood of responses to the terrible tragedy in Haiti was a statement from the NSW Labor MP Steve Whan headed "New South Wales rescuers on standby following Haiti tsunami". The media release, which was posted on the NSW Fire Brigade website, suggests that our state's Emergency Services Minister doesn't know the difference between an earthquake and a tsunami. Hint: one involves water.

Naked Eye #2

The second instalment of my summer political column for the Sun-Herald. Barnaby Joyce and Stephen Fielding feature in this special wacky Senator edition.

Rudd Scores at the MCG

Unlike his predecessor, Kevin Rudd must dread his visit to the cricket commentary box each summer. Being relaxed and blokey simply isn’t the Prime Minister’s style – he probably had to bite his tongue to avoid suggesting that Ricky Ponting hire consultants from McKinsey’s to produce a report on the best way of defeating Pakistan.

The PM used his recent visit to the MCG to launch an anti-binge drinking campaign, a worthy cause in the Australian summer. But I was surprised the ads were fronted by Richie Benaud and Tony Greig. Surely the “Know When To Declare” message would have been more heartfelt coming from Rudd? Although his preferred social occasion is a working party, alcohol has been known to turn the PM into a wild man, at least relatively. I’d like to see an ad where Rudd warns punters to “declare” they’ve had too much to drink before ending up at a strip club with New York Post editor Col Allan.

A very Family First Christmas

Catching up with endless hordes of family members on Christmas Day can be a bit daunting, but spare a thought for Steve Fielding, who spent the day lunching with 15 brothers and sisters and their families. Being one of 16 kids might explain the senator’s need to stand out from the crowd with wacky publicity stunts, like dressing up as a beer bottle to promote a recycling scheme or marching shirtless through Melbourne with protesting pensioners. There was no word, though, on whether he wore his tree outfit to the lunch, perhaps bedecked with tinsel.

Having to deal with such a huge clan would put almost anyone’s family values to the test, but the Family First leader’s remain beyond reproach. Earlier this year, he warned the nation of the environmental threat posed by divorce, which apparently contributes to climate change by creating unnecessary extra households. These days, of course, Fielding is a climate change sceptic, which presumably means unhappy couples can now divorce without fretting about their carbon footprint.

Yet another Bali high

It’s a happy new year for some of the Tamil refugees from the Oceanic Viking who are now being resettled in Australia. And predictably, the fact that all 78 were escaping a civil war and have now been verified by the UNHCR as genuine refugees has been forgotten in the midst of another unpleasant squabble about whether we’re soft on asylum-seekers. Apparently we Aussies only welcome boats on the horizon at the end of the Sydney to Hobart.

But amid all the hype about border protection, we should acknowledge that Australia’s problems with illegal arrivals are hardly one-way. The Indonesians still lock up plenty of unwanted Aussies, like the union official who was arrested this week for allegedly smuggling marijuana into Bali in his sock. What, aren’t the beaches relaxing enough?

The unleashable Barnaby Joyce

Tony Abbott’s recent reshuffle of the Opposition frontbench contained a few surprises. Not only did he defrost Bronwyn Bishop and Philip Ruddock, but he entrusted the usually boring Finance portfolio to Barnaby Joyce, the Nationals Senator who makes Sarah Palin look like a reliable team player.

Joyce celebrated his elevation by calling for a total ban on Chinese investment, which the Opposition Leader immediately repudiated. So, in light of the concerns over whether the Nationals senator could follow the Coalition line, I was amused to discover Joyce writing for the ABC’s Unleashed website. Joyce was giving the “nasty horrid people” in the media a festive spray for their portrayal of him as erratic and naive. “This is a political lesson to all,” he wrote. “Do not say anything that could ever be contrived as a personal opinion, in fact do your very best not to have an opinion, in fact in fact do not have an opinion that you do not have an opinion.”

Fortunately, there’s not much chance of Joyce taking his own advice. Unperturbed by his previous rebuke, he called this week for the Government to prevent a Chinese company buying the nation’s biggest irrigator.

Naked Eye #1

I filled in on the Sun-Herald's political gossip column for four weeks over summer - not an easy thing to do when not much is happening! This one's about the Copenhagen summit and Kevin Rudd's Twitter, among other things.

The Copenhagen summit may have achieved minimal progress on climate change, but it has certainly produced a satisfying number of conspiracy theories. Was it China that derailed proceedings, like an evil Fat Controller? Or can we blame India for everything going horribly wrong, just as like to we do in cricket?

But the week’s best political conspiracy theory has nothing to do with Copenhagen. A YouTube video has been doing the rounds which alleges that Silvio Berlusconi faked his bonk on the nose from a replica of Milan Cathedral. It’s claimed that the scandal-stricken leader was attempting to boost his popularity, perhaps by adding wacky sound effects and featuring the clip on Italy’s Funniest Home Video Show.

If so, it worked – the Italian PM’s popularity has jumped nearly 10%. I’m sceptical, though – surely Silvio wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble to win sympathy from voters? He must have been trying to win sympathy from nurses.

Driving NSW taxpayers crazy

There’s been justifiable outrage this week at the Herald’s story that taxpayers are shelling out $2 million a year to former Premiers, including a chauffeur to shuttle Nathan Rees to and from that backbench of his. This figure will rise to tens of millions if, as I suspect, every single Labor MP is going to get a turn as Premier before the next election.

Now, our former Premiers should get some kind of victim’s compensation after they’re knifed by Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi. There are too many ex-Premiers nowadays for even Macquarie to employ. But what I can’t figure out is why they would even want a free driver in the first place. Surely they’d rather enjoy the fruits of their custodianship of NSW with unlimited free travel on our trains and buses?

Detailed programmatic Twittericity

Kevin Rudd’s always boasted had a commanding lead in opinion polls, but it’s amongst his fellow nerds on Twitter that his popularity is truly extraordinary. KevinRuddPM now has 844,724 followers who tune in for updates on his exciting excursions to watch Zombieland with his son and buy a birthday cake for “Swanny”. His former opponent TurnbullMalcolm is well behind with 18,683, while TonyAbbottMHR has a paltry 2527.

As usual, our State pollies are of considerably less interest. The official PremierofNSW account, which changes identity more frequently than Doctor Who, has only 2871, a mere 0.3% of Rudd’s tally. The only shock is that Twitter is the one place where Kristina Keneally is more popular than BarryOFarrell, who has 1671.

The Great Wall of Conroy

Despite widespread opposition, the Government is persisting with its plan to adopt the Chinese approach to internet regulation. And honestly, if the thing worked flawlessly, few would probably object. But in the real world blacklisting is riven with problems.

For instance, I’d like to ban Miley Cyrus’ website. As with many of the sites on the Conroy blacklist, it features a young girl alongside an older guy who’s genuinely disturbing, as anyone who remembers Billy Ray Cyrus’ singing career will recall. All I would have to do is persuade someone at ACMA that her work is offensive by playing them ‘The Climb’, and hey presto – she’d be blacklisted.

Actually, wait – that’s an argument in favour of the filter. But let’s not kid ourselves that banning a bunch of websites is going to stop the nasty stuff. All it’ll do is send it further underground, where law enforcement officers can’t find it.

Bangarooting Sydney Harbour

I don’t mind Richard Rogers’ controversial proposal for the Barangaroo site, even if the hotel seems a little high, but the idea of landfill is troubling. A government that’s already uncomfortably close to developers signing away a chunk of our harbour for yet another luxury waterfront development feels like a crossing of the Rubicon. And I mean literally crossing – I bet someone in the Premier’s office is developing plans to fill in the harbour from The Rocks to Kirribilli in a bid to raise some cash. Then again, NSW is the one place where adopting Dubai’s financial strategy would be an improvement.