Is Calling Someone Desperate, Desperate?

I’m not one for conspiracy theories or starting rumors, but I am one for calling a spade a spade. This morning in my inbox, I got the daily LinkedIn email with the top stories of the day shared and curated for me and my tastes. Sometimes I look at these stories and sometimes I don’t. I’ve typically already seen most of them in my morning feeds, but today’s struck me as funny.

The top two stories, allegedly accumulated by seeing what people have shared with me or my contacts on LinkedIn, happened to be about LinkedIn. That doesn’t surprise me much. LinkedIn users, especially the social media-rati, are apt to spread content about the network they’re on or they love, thinking other network users will find the content more appealing. It’s akin to telling someone on the bus that riding the bus is cool. They probably don’t care, but are likely to agree.

But the top story in this day’s email I found a bit odd when I read it:

The top story of the day is one that says LinkedIn will outlast Facebook. The article, from Inc. Magazine’s website, basically calls Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and act of desperation, ill-conceived, yada yada.

Is it just me, or does LinkedIn driving home a story about a potential competitor being desperate seem a bit desperate? Perhaps its just coincidence and perhaps these two stories (the second was very LinkedIn focused, too) were the top two that met the Jason Falls-wants-to-read-this algorithm, but it caught me as odd.

So how do we know someone within LinkedIn marketing isn’t weighing stories to ensure LinkedIn looks better? Again, I’m not a conspiracy guy — I think Google actually presents the most relevant search results possible at that time and doesn’t weigh things in funky ways to make more money, etc. But when something strikes me as odd, I figure it’s worth pointing out.

What do you think? Are LinkedIn’s emails a by-product of company promotion, or a sad by-product of the incestuousness of our network time and attention? The comments are yours.