Somewhere along the way I seem to have lost out on the many advantages LinkedIn claims to offer.

Several years of membership and I am none the wiser.

It’s like being admitted to one of those exclusive London clubs and being allowed to enter no further that the lobby.

Am I wearing the wrong tie? Sandals when only leather Oxfords are required? In need of a shave? Hair too long? So many rules and pecadillos to hurdle.

As a result being politely but firmly told to take a seat in one of the deep leather armchairs scattered under the porter’s watchful eye.

There to sit and ponder the mysterious inner workings of this Facebook for the managerial classes.

Like so many of the allegedly wonderful apps, add-ons and other gizmos we are urged to download, LinkedIn is long on promises but short on explanations.

Quite simply (which is a word unknown and unspoken in the world of tech), how does it work?

And to what purpose?

Understanding and navigating the basics is a gargantuan and time-consuming task.

So many tags, drop-downs and labels.

Plus numerous demands and “invitations” extended without rhyme or reason.

Complete strangers, mostly in fields of endeavour totally remote from my own, wish to “connect” or, worse still, to “reach out”.What, I daily wonder, is it all about? The raison d’etre and purpose.

Owned by Microsoft (no surprises there) it is described as “a business and employment-focused social media platform that works through websites and mobile apps” (thanks Wikipedia). Apparently it is “primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows jobseekers to post their CVs and employers to post jobs”.

It counts its membership and its revenue in billions. 

More than a billion people worldwide are on its books and recent figures state an annual revenue of more than $13 billion.From doing what? 

And there’s the rub – and surely a good reason to handle with care and caution as most of its revenue since 2015 has come from selling access to information about its members to recruiters and sales professionals.

In 2022, LinkedIn earned $13.8 billion in revenue, compared to $10.3 billion in 2021.

 And presumably its more than one  billion registered members (in more than 200 countries and territories) are content to being used (or rather misused) in this way.

In much the same way as people gather “friends” and “likes” on other platforms LinkedIn users seem to judge their self-worth and success by amassing “contacts” regardless of their initial relevance. These are ranked according to “levels” as decided under the six degrees of separation principal first outlined in 1929 in a short story by Frigyes Karinthy.

His idea was that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. A chain letter type of human connection, and about just as useful and sincere. The old “a friend of a friend told me …” style of come on.

Which goes a long way to explaining why our inboxes are plagued with incessant messages from LinkedIn suggesting we connect with people who are mostly strangers and working in fields totally remote from one’s own.

In a world where everyone seems prone to being triggered, these are my triggers. “Delete” is the instant reaction. Especially if the invitation comes from the sub-continent – that land of the inveterate salesman with cheerily insincere greetings and offers too good to be true. 

Thanks LinkedIn, but no thanks. Go and hassle someone else.

Even without these irritations the whole site is a chaotic maze. Created by people unversed in the concept of “user friendly”.

And, of course, there are no instructions on how to navigate through the chaos. Like striding through a woodland thick with stay-awhile vines. With no machete to chop a way out.

But a billion others have succumbed to its charms.  Seduced by its invitations and competent with its complexity.

Or is this a massive global example of  a supreme display of another modern phenomenon – the acronyn, the diminution of our language to initials instead of entire words?

LinkedIn and FOMO seems like a marriage made in … er … hell.