Who is looking at your profile on LinkedIn?
If you are in the job market, or are an entrepreneur building a new company, or if you create value through business development partnerships, there is a feature on LinkedIn that you should probably know about. It’s pretty powerful and could lead you to explore opportunities that you otherwise wouldn’t have considered. But it might also seem a little spooky, as it did to me earlier today. I’ll explain in a minute.
LinkedIn premium users have access to some cool features. One is called Who’s Viewed Your Profile? I probably only check this every month or two, mostly out of curiosity, because I’m not really in the job market, and I haven’t yet talked publicly about any future entrepreneurial ventures.
Another premium feature is Jobs You May Be Interested, which is clearly in beta because today it suggested I consider applying for a “Nursing Adjunct Faculty” position at the Waubonsee Community College in Sugar Grove, IL. Hmmm. Hadn’t thought of that. But back to the real story…
Today I noticed that “someone at US Government” had viewed my profile. Normally it doesn’t just say “someone” but it actually gives me a name, pic, and company name of the person who looked at my profile. This was a little strange.
When I clicked to see who that someone might be, I was given a list of about 10 US Government employees who may have been the person looking at my profile. I don’t know why LinkedIn can’t be more specific. I find this rather odd. Nevertheless, I quickly saw that none of them were from the FBI or from any other department that might be singling me about because of my anti-political-party, anti-corruption, anti-war sentiments (which are actually becoming fairly mainstream, IMHO.) But I wondered how I would feel if I thought, or suspected, or knew that my personal political views and speech were being monitored by a taxpayer paid employee. (Maybe they are. I just don’t know for sure and I don’t even suspect it.) I wonder if Steve Jobs knew the FBI had a huge file on him. For a moment I truly felt empathy for millions of bloggers and social networkers in countries where speech is closely monitored. I can’t imagine actually living in a country where I felt singled out. It must be very stifling, and would require great courage to express one’s opinion. In the past 2 days I’ve seen references to one country where the death penalty may be imposed for a subversive tweet, and that Indonesia may have a law that imposes up to 12 years in prison for the same.
On the contrary, I feel very safe expressing my free speech online here in the United States, and I feel very empowered using social networking tools to connect with technologists, entrepreneurs, and investors who are trying to build things and change the world. While I’m not as young as I used to be, I’m feeling an increasing sense of optimism that change is coming to world, not top-down change from political leaders or parties, but change inspired by like-minded, technology-empowered, socially-connected citizens of the world who want peace and respect and opportunity and liberty to be available to all.
I’m excited to 1) continue to develop my programming skills and 2) to build social tools that will enable millions of people to improve their lives and improve the world. That’s what’s up next for me, I hope.
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