LinkedinAnswers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here we go again. Another social media beauty contest, this time among execs who are of course perhaps the least social media savvy group of any.

Problem is, to twist a cliche, we are comping plums and mangoes. Despite its best efforts (cringe), LinkedIn – preferred by the exec class – is a very different kind of animal from Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and so on. There may be some interest among headline writers in how many hundred million users this or that site has. But the totting up becomes effete as soon as interesting questions start being asked. LinkedIn keeps trying to break out of its two useful roles (self-updating rolodex and job-hunt machine), but it will no more turn into Facebook (phew) or Twitter than a food truck.

Curious thing, this continued desire to comp stats for social media usage. It’s yet another example of the fallacy of the new normal (OK, that’s all in my next book).

Far more interesting is the fact that fully 60% of respondents use “social media” as a whole for less than one hour a week.

LinkedIn Is Preferred By Executives – Forbes.