LinkedIn is the worst of social media. Should I delete my account?

What is LinkedIn good for, beyond spamming strangers? Do people actually get jobs on there?

LinkedIn is that unlikely contradiction: the social network that’s all business. No one’s up late at night checking out their connections’ connections, or who endorsed who and for what. You log in about once a month, you accept the “invitations to connect” from a handful of strangers, and you log out. And you’re sent, on average, 1.75 emails a day for the privilege.

At least that’s about the extent of my own engagement. As far as social media housekeeping goes, maintaining your LinkedIn is the equivalent of cleaning the cutlery drawers, or wiping down lightbulbs – you do it irregularly and perfunctorily because someone told you to, not because there’s any obvious benefit.

But it seems I may have underestimated LinkedIn – at least by numbers. It has half a billion members, about 180m fewer than Twitter, with 319m monthly active users as of February. And think of all the words, energy and analysis given over to tweets. (One word: covfefe.)

The platform says each new connection extends the reach of your professional network by an average of 400 people, 100 companies and more than 500 jobs. It all sounds like a bit much to expect of my ex-boyfriend’s dad and my high school English teacher, both of whom invited me to connect three years ago – but who am I to close any potential doors?

To use Seinfeld terminology, LinkedIn feels a little like the Bizarro Facebook, where instead of births and engagements people publicise their “microactions” and “thought leadership”. One consultant with a large following described herself as “the Michael Bay of business”. Fleetingly, I wondered: would anyone buy that I was the Michael Bay of journalism?

LinkedIn is that kind of place – “a wasteland of endless management consultants congratulating each other”, to quote one correspondent.

“It’s not a healthy environment,” someone else messaged me. “There’s an excess focus on simulating optimism and excitement, rather than clear-headed discussion on issues. It’s like a giant, living, breathing resume, complete with bad formatting, plasticised optimism and synthetic relationships.

“It’s the worst of social media, combined with the worst of corporate culture, combined with the worst of website design. I hate it, but I have to also pretend to love it for my own work and to communicate with my industry.”

He concluded by asking me not to name him: “I’m actually on the lookout for jobs, and my clients are pretty keen on LinkedIn!”

Many people I spoke to – across a wide range of sectors, including business, finance, energy, startup and television – shared his sense of resignation. LinkedIn wasn’t necessarily their platform of choice, but that’s where their industries were. The user experience was singled out as frustrating – not to mention the spam, with one user urging others to be “super-careful” about invitations to connect: “Press the wrong button and your friends get pestered for eternity.”

“I don’t know any companies that don’t use LinkedIn to spam their products or services,” said someone else, who works in the start-up sector.

LinkedIn seemed important to one industry above all others – but it’s an industry that impacts almost everyone.

“Recruiters spend an insane amount of time on LinkedIn,” said one industry body source, who said the network was to recruiters what Twitter was to journalists. Its functionality, he said, was clunky in the same way Facebook was circa 2009-10. “I try to avoid posting anything with a short shelf life because I can’t guarantee it will appear when I want it to ...

“I can see it holding on for another 12-18 months, but there’s a real risk of it becoming work MySpace unless it steps into 2014, much less 2017.” (One popular post that crossed my feed was four weeks old.)

There was a “strange sense of community” on LinkedIn, he said; the platform says 100,000 posts are published weekly. “Sure, it’s all anaemic and very ‘work’, but there’s some decent stuff on there.”

The platform has been attempting to establish itself as a publisher by cultivating “influencers”, a term that, on Instagram, refers to beautiful young women or pets with genetic oddities and, on Twitter, to journalists or comedians who mistake it for work. Ranked among the invite-only network of “LinkedInfluencers” (see what they did there!) are Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey and the prime ministers of India, Japan and – as of last month – Australia.

A blogging platform for PMs would strike me as one I’d want no part of. But several people, across a surprising range of sectors, said being on LinkedIn had paid off for them with tangible job offers, often after being contacted cold by recruiters. Poaching was rife on the platform, one user told me, with businesses citing rivals they’d like to see candidates from.

Testament to the competition among recruiters and the need for them to try to stand out was the LinkedIn mail received by one woman in IT with the subject line: “Do you like puppies?”

It was written in verse.

I’m sure this isn’t uncommon,
A 5:18pm InMail from a recruiter,
You probably get it e’ry Tuesday,
Convincing you that you’re a suitor.

“I have tried to contact the recruiter as I have a bunch of questions ... but they haven’t written back,” said the lucky lady, who described the approach as “a tad unnerving”.

Another woman told me she’d been recruited – for romance. “Frequently guys I have never met send me messages like, ‘Hey, I really like your profile picture’. Like, dude, it’s not Tinder – is that the first thing you want to mention on a career networking site?”

My investigative foray into LinkedIn suggested it offered more than merely a platform for congratulating friends on their “work anniversaries” for a laugh. That’s not to say you should make it the sole site of your thought leadership, but the proliferation of recruiters on the platform means yes, it is advisable to have a profile with a recent picture, kept up-to-date and fleshed out with more than the bare minimum.

As with anything, the more you put into LinkedIn, the more you’ll get out of it – but a personalised headline and summary elevates your profile above others. Pay mind, too, to what keywords or skills a recruiter may be searching or and try to prioritise them high up.

At that point, unless you’re actively job-hunting, you can relax. You’ve now posted your resume to a bulletin board; you never know who might see it. Though, if my own “Who’s viewed your profile?” page is anything to go by, it’s disproportionately men you’ve matched with on Tinder.