LinkedIn and the Modern Worker’s Wandering Eye

Microsoft announced plans to purchase LinkedIn for $26.2 billion on Monday—its biggest acquisition ever—so, with renewed curiosity, I logged onto the network for the first time in some weeks. On the alert bar, fifteen “pending invitations” had been flagged for me, along with messages I had neglected to reply to and a notice that my profile had been viewed by seventy-one users, two with the title “Customer Service Specialist.” Good news, I guess. Since LinkedIn’s founding, in 2002, many users have approached the network with the same operational knowledge they bring to their microwave ovens: there are many buttons to press, and presumably they do something for knowledgeable people, but most of us just flip the thing on for some ninety seconds of résumé-stalking. Ding! Or, in the case of LinkedIn, Ding! Ding! Ding! The service’s pesky e-mails have become the stuff of comedy and lore.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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