Six or seven years ago a British virtual worlds programmer from IBM invited my Second Life avatar persona to this new platform, LinkedIn, that was just getting profitable. It was so new that when I complained on Twitter (also then new) about how annoying their email notifications were, the lead dev himself got on Twitter to try to sort out why this was happening.
But unlike other MMORPGs (massive multi-player online role-playing games), I haven't enjoyed playing Linked-In, and I never play it. The skill-grinding is horrid; the bosses impossible to beat; and worst of all, there is no digital content to sell so you can monetarize the platform. I don't like the world-building philosophy of its entrepreneur, either.
Reluctantly -- like the way I've been drawn into Cityville by my cousins and friends -- I've been forced to play Linked-In occasionally. I'll go to a conference, a colleague will not only exchange business cards with me, but then IM me from LinkedIn. Then LinkedIn's system nags me repeatedly to come in and accept the invitation. It doesn't go away and people feel slighted. Sometimes they even follow up on email -- how come you didn't answer my LI?
Again, the level-ups there are uber-annoying. I went in finally after a battery of people wanted me to "link" to them (although we were already Facebook-mutual-likers, email-list buddies, Skyped, Twittered and even SecondLife friended). I did some low-level skirmishing and newb-ganking and skilling to level 50 percent or whatever, leaving my avatar AFK, but that only led another avid player to email me now "congratulating me on my new position" -- which only *looked* new merely because it had just been stuck in there in the description game-box.
After a bunch of other fellow university alumnis tried to sell me insurance and some people I barely knew asked me for introductions to people I barely knew, I didn't log in for a long time.
Then the other day when I published a bit of a manifesto I think of interest only to a few people in a rather small pond (although it could have larger waves), I got yet another invitation (a job-seeker feigning networking) so I logged in.
I expected all my LinkedIn crops to be wilting or dead, my artificially-intelligent Linky chickens to have perished, and possibly my avatar to be teleported home and lying in a pool of red mist from having gotten savaged by orcs while AFK. Certainly my Linkland would be covered with newb prim litter and particle blasters.
Instead, I saw there was a new feature that they must have put in with the new patch or maybe it was always there but my graphics card hadn't had the chops for it. It was something that I instantly thought would have absolutely awful yet awesome powers on Facebook -- notices about who was looking at your profile.
Freaky! Creepy!
Apparently it has its own feature-creep within it, because some of the lookers are shown as "anonymous" or only in a generic industry or firm, and there could be lots of those (so it helpfully generates a list of who *might* have looked at you, so you can have the fun of this little game-within-a-game of guessing.
So I clicked on the looker-list, and I saw some editors and then I saw this guy, up above, deputy head of the US Embassy in Tashkent. I don't know this guy. He sounds highly important. His past postings sound incredibly vital to national and international security. Intriguingly, he even had an interest in virtual world simulations.
Somehow, I don't think he was giving me the Linked-In Lookover (TM) because of Second Life, however, although I have some nice old low-lag high-traffic mainland waterfront mature mountain roadside in snow with Linden protection on two sides for only about $32 a month. It's set to "safe" and "no non-group object insertion" but for a little more, not only could I move the settings for warfare but I could talk to Concierge to move it off BlueSteel and roll it on LeTigre for the latest physics. I'm also willing to lose my AI fairies and worm transporter to reduce your lag.
As I was saying, I think he was giving me the lookie-lou, however, because of my statement, and the whole Registan bloggysphere thing.
That's my hunch, although he could have just been trying to level up by building up his friends list with keyword searches like "Eurasia".
If somebody looks but doesn't friend you, what does that mean? I mean, in the LinkedIn game, it means that they are gathering intel on you and seeing what you might have on your profile, like a Googling . I mean, I don't think it's about an offer of employment -- somehow, I don't think anybody's going to be offering me a job at the State Department in civil service.
I bet there's some LIetiquette that says you can never comment on who looks at you or cross-platform it.
In any event, as I said, I'm terrible at LI and it's such a time-suck so if anybody has the cheats and walk-throughs, IM plox kk
AFK.
