With all the talk of migrating to either Bluesky, Mastodon, or Threads, I’m happy that I “migrated” to LinkedIn two years ago.

I joined LinkedIn in 2003, but it was mostly a place to keep my resume for job searching and to message former co-workers.

But, now I use it more like a combination of a social network where I want to stay connected to real-life colleagues and a place to try to get business by networking with potential clients.

My goals with LinkedIn are:

1. I want to be ambiently aware of which of my ex-colleagues might be looking for jobs and which might be hiring, so I can introduce them to each other. LinkedIn (for whatever flaws it might have) is the best way I have found to do that.
   
2. For my business, I want to reach software developers when they are thinking about work and career growth. I want to reach software company tech leaders when they are having problems that I might be able to solve. That happens on LinkedIn and not many other places.

To do those things, LinkedIn has several advantages over other social networks for me:

1. I see no political content or ads. I checked the box in Settings to turn off political content, and that’s been effective.
   
2. LinkedIn shows a normal, time-based (non-algorithmic) feed if you request it in Settings, and it stays that way.
   
3. People here seem to be real, not bots. If someone auto-posts their work’s content or is posting a lot that I don’t want to see, I unfollow them, unless I know them well.
   
4. Comments on my posts, even by strangers, are civil. Generally, people are positive and casually professional.
   
5. My ex-colleagues are here in large numbers, and mostly they talk about work/career things.
   
6. There aren’t a lot of posts, and almost every one of them is an update from someone I care about talking about what’s going on in their career. When I read them, I don’t think of myself as doom scrolling — it’s the opposite: it sparks joy to see my friends succeeding.

Twitter was never any of those for me, and so it was easy to give up. It didn’t help me accomplish my goals for using a social network, but worse, it was addictive and a waste of time, so I had to block it. I’m sure Bluesky and Threads are a better Twitter, but I doubt they are a better LinkedIn for how I use it, and as bad as Twitter in all the ways that matter to me.