LinkedIn is VERY oriented, apparently!

This morning, as I was tackling my to-do list at Starbucks, I remembered reading LinkedIn's Wikipedia page many years ago and being amused to see “oriented” in the first sentence.

Curious to see if it was still there, I googled “LinkedIn” and “oriented”, thinking it would immediately come up in the search results.

Instead, this pops up:

See what I mean?!

There is no escaping it!

🤷🏻‍♀️

But back to its Wikipedia page.

At the time of this writing, the first sentence does in fact say,

'LinkedIn (/lɪŋktˈɪn/) is an American business and employment-oriented social networking service used globally.

And per Archive.org, “oriented” has been in the first sentence for a long time.

Linkedin's 2014 Wikipedia page:

LinkedIn /ˌlɪŋkt.ˈɪn/ is a business-oriented social networking service.

In other words — no pun intended, get it? — LinkedIn has been oriented on Wikipedia for a good 12 years.

Fact #1:

In 2008, I used LinkedIn's InMail to contact Reid Hoffman about an ORIENTED LinkedIn partnership.

• Reid never responded, but if I remember correctly, he did have a colleague reach out to me, and we did meet in person to discuss. I'll need to dig through old records for who it was that I met with.

Screenshot of my message (partial):

Looking back at what I had written to him in that message, I don't blame him for not responding. Lol…

Fact #2:

Three days after I reached out to Reid, I also messaged Scott Roberts.

• Scott was LinkedIn's Senior Director of Business Development at the time.

• He also didn't reply, at least not through Linkedin messages.

But the key thing to note is that - according to his LinkedIn profile - he too is oriented in his current position.

Fact #3:

Had they agreed to rope in ORIENTED, I was prepared to just give them the whole thing — my domain names and all — for basically nothing.

• It was more important to me that the high-value network, which I worked so hard to create, could have the best chance for growth and sustainability — at a time when the ORIENTED Happy Hours were seriously hopping worldwide — than it was to make money from a sale. I felt strongly that LinkedIn had the resources to do it, and that it was very much a strategic fit.

• But the person I met with said that a) ORIENTED members were likely already on LinkedIn, which was true, and b) we could just set up a private LinkedIn Group and utilize the community features there.

I couldn't get him (her?) to understand why a more integrated partnership with ORIENTED — via co-branding / platform integration / market segmentation — would be very advantageous to LinkedIn.

Writing this post is bringing back a sh**load of memories that I haven't thought about in almost 20 years!

The whole thing is so WILD, especially since I have a terrible memory!

Last but not least is this speech that I made with Linda Kong at a joint event with AAMA Silicon Valley when Kyung Yoon was at the helm (2007).

LinkedIn was referenced, as we clearly understood the strategic fit.

Ahh the memories…

Hmm. I wasn't planning to try and pitch to LinkedIn, as a lot has changed since then, and there are other companies for which ORIENTED.COM is better suited.

I'll think about it.