Linkedin: The Future of Professionalism
Have you ever joined a professional group that looks forward to helping others from a business standpoint? From motivational posts to tips and tricks on how to do a better job, Linkedin communities are all very mature and serious in what they do. All communities have specific core beliefs, rules, rituals, vibes, and speech that differentiate one group from another.
I chose the Software/Technology: AI, Marketing, Social Media, Startups, Blockchain, Human Resources & Metaverse community as my online community. The main platform is on Linkedin and some other core beliefs include professionalism, career development, improvement in management, creativity, and technological advancements. Their rules include but are not limited to being respectful, bringing value to the discussions, being helpful, encouraging one another, highlighting trends, sharing case studies and resources. A daily ritual that everyone contributes in the community involves posting a daily motivational quote, such as “Opportunities don’t happen, you create them.” Whenever there’s an event that could lead to a job opportunity or internship, we receive emails or posts about it. There is mainly a professional and friendly vibe within the community.
This community uses words in specific ways in order to promote their profile. Word choice consists of, but is not limited to, revolutionary, decentralized, and revenue in order to maintain not only advanced vocabulary but professionalism as well. Everything that is being said is related to technology, business, and society in a way. Everyone speaks in a friendly yet serious tone. Examples of how they talk include: “YOU HAVE POWER AND CHARACTER TO CHANGE, YOUR LIVING CAREER, A NEW WAY OF THINKING”. The reason why they use capital letters is perhaps to draw the viewer’s attention and to make sure they read it in an emphasizing way.
Everyone in the group are mainly adults with a specific goal in mind and ready to pursue it. Their major or career are related to AI, Marketing, Social Media, Startups, Blockchain, Human Resources & Metaverse. In terms of race and gender, everyone is allowed and I’m positive that there are people of all races and gender in the group. I am positive of this because I looked at the list of members myself and noticed the diverse age and gender between all members. Also, there are no rules stating that a specific race or gender are not allowed in the group. The group consists of completely diverse people who share similar goals.
Everybody addresses each other by username, which is the majority of the time their real name. This is because this media platform is a professional setting where they are searching for a company job and it is better to be transparent. Eventually they would be sending their resume and it must match with the name on their profile. If their name does not match, it would give a bad first impression and the company they are interested in applying for may reject them. Each conversation must have a serious, friendly tone because this is the best way that help can be offered. People conceive themselves by bringing upon a more serious side of themselves, opposite to other social media platforms where people are open to not only professional talk but enjoyable talk that expresses personality.
Sometimes I do wonder if I was to make a post expressing my emotions or thoughts on some irrelevant topic, would I receive support, backlash, or would the post be ignored? Eventually, I found out that at first, you would receive a warning but if it continues a ban would be placed. The reason being that everyone who is part of this group has a goal to grow as a professional and some may be applying to jobs and wanting advice. Therefore, if irrelevant topics show up, it will serve as a distraction for the members of this community. If they wanted to talk about a different topic that does not regard building professionalism skills, they can create a group chat outside this platform such as a facebook group or whatsapp chat.This group seems to be a part of an even bigger blog that consists of many topics like NFTs and life advice. I begin to wonder how big the blog can get. As I haven’t explored the entirety of the blog, I wonder if there would be any more topics that would peak my interest.
While making observations on the group, I was mainly shocked and amazed by how much there is to explore. There are so many amazing people with unique interests. There are also some posts that somewhat confuses me because I don’t understand every single topic within the community. On a recent post, a member posted a link to a website that stated this, “Apple is giving these improvements a test run on Apple TV, Currently, features are only available on Apple TV, but code for these features exists across iPhone, iPad, Mac, HomePod, and Apple TV, People have been wondering whether Apple is trying to make a bot like ChatGPT, but it seems they’re just focusing on improving Siri, Yet to see a set timeline for expanding NLG technology beyond Apple TV.”. AI always seems to amaze me and I’ve been noticing on social media how impressive they are at generating pictures. Some of the ways AI were able to be so powerful is by making adjustments. The website stated some key features, “Text to Video: Generate videos in any style using a prompt. Text + Image to Video: Create videos using a driving image and a prompt. Image to Video: Generate videos using only a driving image. Stylization: Transfer the style of an image or prompt to every video frame. Storyboard: Turn mockups into fully stylized and animated renders. Mask: Isolate subjects in a video and modify them with simple text prompts. Render: Convert untextured renders into realistic outputs using an input image or prompt. Customization: Customize the Gen-2 model for even higher fidelity results.”
The nature of a Linkedin community requires a serious and mature tone when speaking to one another or positivity that brings upon nothing but motivation to other members in the group. Unlike many other communities on different social media platforms, this Linkedin community lacks the toxicity and goofiness that many other communities on Discord or Reddit have. With every member having the intention to learn something new and develop their futures, it is no wonder why this community is the way it is.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Choosing my topic was actually the most challenging part of this assignment. It was deciding what group or organization would be the simplest to discuss. I was debating with myself on whether I want a topic that would be more fun or more efficient. I ended up choosing one of my most informative and complex online communities. A topic or assignment like this was extremely unique to me because of the wide range of options every student possessed. Almost every student is guaranteed to have completely different topics and receiving help from another student seems difficult. As I go more in depth with this community, I begin to learn more information about the community that I haven’t even noticed, like specific posts that I may have accidentally skimmed past. I consulted to some of the most iconic members about some what-ifs that I found interesting like what if I was to post irrelevant content. I ended up learning so much about the website as well, going through many of the members in this community truly gave me a grasp of what the real world is like. I encountered the course learning objective of having to practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects. Naturally, it would also mean I encountered another course learning objective which is to strengthen your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources) because as I improve on locating sources, I would also have to improve on referencing them as well.
REFERENCES
BIG blog (2018)
Our Blogs | Blockchain Industry Group (BIG)
LinkedIn Community website (2009)
Sam Altman (2023): Website on Ai and apple
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