With more than 450-million members, the biggest professional networking site is LinkedIn. While it’s supposed to be a place for users to make career connections and meet people in their field, it’s also become a place where some people troll for dates. And by doing it on LinkedIn, they’re able to be more sneaky about it.
Most of us don’t expect to get hit on there, but many people admit that a LinkedIn connection has tried to use it as a dating site. We’re talking penis pics in their inbox inappropriate, ladies.
And dating app expert and editor-in-chief of Hinge’s official blog, IRL, Molly Fedick understands why. “LinkedIn has the lowest barrier to entry and is the least ‘risky’ social platform to connect with someone,” she says. “If you get rejected, you can always default to, ‘Well, I just wanted to connect for professional reasons.’”
So using LinkedIn is a good way to “test the waters” and is less aggressive than a Facebook or Instagram request, Fedick explains. And it gives people a place to hide behind the idea that their connections are all career-related, so a guy in a committed relationship could avoid his S.O. finding out he’s cheating or looking to, because he’s using LinkedIn instead of an actual dating site to do the dirty work.
But once users have been approached on LinkedIn for non-professional reasons, they stop trusting people’s intentions. Because when you’re trying to network and someone asks to meet for coffee, it’s hard to know if that’s a date or a business opportunity. So can we please just keep LinkedIn for professional purposes and leave the dating to Match.com?
Source: Glamour