I have been using the new ability to publish articles in Linkedin for my posts. Until now each has attracted at most a couple of hundred views. This week they promoted my “tinkering” post with the result that it has gone up to 3,000 or so views. It has also attracted forty or so comments.

The difference between that comment “thread” and what happens in Facebook is interesting. In Facebook I “know” the people commenting, know a bit about them, know where they are coming from. Even if we have never met we have a basis for mutual trust. In this Linkedin thread I don’t know any of the commenters and it feels different.

Also the comments are mostly written like mini posts. In fact it dawned on me that the difference is that on Facebook it feels like a conversation in a pub, or as someone else said of my Facebook comment threads “like watching a late night chat show”. The Linkedin thread is like a panel at a conference where each speaker does a mini pitch rather than takes part in a debate and the language and tone is more measured.

This is partly my fault as I wasn’t able to take part at the start of the Linkedin thread, and frankly didn’t know quite what to do with it. I didn’t feel able to influence the nature of the conversation. In fact it didn’t feel conversational at all. I reckon this is what clients feel like when they open up to talk to the public as opposed to internal conversations with colleagues. Not the “bloody good conversations” I aspire to online and worth mulling over why, and what to do about it.