The Benefits of Being a Nobody

My Experiences on LinkedIn VS Facebook.

I recently wrote about completing my facebook experiment. One of the results was that much less than 1% of the strangers that initial approached me on Facebook that I spoke led to conversations worth having.

Until last week, that number was identically 100% for LinkedIn. I value each every conversation I had had with stranger on LinkedIn.

This is not about whether one is better than other and for what, it is rather about my being a nobody and that being good.

I complained at breakfast about how I had to block a pair of spammers on LinkedIn for the first time. And commented on how wonderful the people I met there have been to me even more so than on the net in general.

Apparently the person on the other side of the table was have about as many good conversation with strangers on LinkedIn as I was in absolute numbers, but her ratios were more like mine on facebook. Perhaps worse.

Maybe it’s because she a woman and I’m a man. But I think it is because even by the standard of LinkedIn she’s a somebody and there I’m a nobody. Maybe all it takes to be mistaken for a somebody on Facebook is to be American and the LinkedIn has a higher standard.

I don’t know exactly what it is.

But the more I think about it, the gladder that I am that I’m a nobody.