About a year ago I gave up on Facebook, it was becoming too much of a distraction and filled more an more with pointless shit. If I didn’t post anything for a week, I would get comments like “What’s wrong with you? You haven’t posted for ages” - which just seems wrong. I still kept my Twitter and Instagram going, but more for their voyeuristic qualities, but I can honestly say that I have not missed being on Facebook, not one iota.

I’d never been one for LinkedIn - yet another social network that bombarded you with notifications all day long, what was the point? And everything centred around your professional life - seemed pretty boring to me.

A couple of months ago I was due to start a new role, and one that would involve a lot more client facing work. Given that I wasn’t on Facebook, I would probably very quickly lose touch with a lot of my former colleagues at iSeekplant, so I thought “What the hell” and created my first ever LinkedIn account.

Maybe my preconceptions were completely wrong, maybe the platform has come a long way since I last paid it any attention - or maybe I’m just older and my priorities for staying connected have changed - but I have been pleasantly surprised by LinkedIn. There’s none of the pointless chaff that littered my feed on Facebook (games, memes, ‘Tag four friends who…’), and none of the allusions of ‘friendship’ - connections are just that.

Yes, my inbox gets carpet-bombed everyday with LinkedIn notifications, but that’s what Gmail filters are for! I’ve connected with so many great people through my network, and jumpstarted interactions with past colleagues that I never thought I would hear from again. So far I’ve still been fairly passive in my use of LinkedIn - just reaching out to connections and liking other’s content, but I fully intend to get more involved from now on.

If we have ever met, spoken or otherwise interacted in some way, feel free to reach out: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phil-stephens/