BeBee V. The Lumpy Kingdom of The Mighty Hamsters. One Writer's Opinion.

A few days ago I was notified of a post from BEBEE CEO Javier Cámara Rica that was soliciting opinions about the differences between beBee and Linkedin.
https://www.bebee.com/producer/@javierbebee/differences-between-linkedin-and-bebee
I didn’t respond right away because as one of the victims of LinkedIn’s anti-independent blogger behaviour over the past year, I didn’t want to come across all bitter and twisted. Although I had gotten quite adept at it on LinkedIn.
I have learned from this experience, as I am sure many of us BeBee LI Refugees have, that most of my frustration came from something I could do nothing about.
So there’s really no point in throwing knives at LinkedIn. Because the people who need to listen to their members there, simply don’t.
I don’t know if that’s through ignorance, arrogance or just a lack of understanding of what social media actually is about. But then again, I no longer give a shit.

Forward Motion Starts Here

And so you move on, and you use that experience and you build on it.
Fortunately, and file this under ‘perfect storm’, at virtually the same time as my frustration with LinkedIn was starting to actually affect my mental state, John White introduced me to beBee.
It took a little while to adjust to a site where the level of pontification was extremely low, where the levels of participation were at least 10 times higher than that of LinkedIn, where the site’s management was open and responsive, actually wanting ideas on how to improve the site and where the overall ‘vibe’ was extremely positive.
Born Again
Gradually I got back to being ‘myself’ again. And by that I mean, back to my original agenda ,which was to build my perceived expertise through creating posts with useful actionable insights and ideas to help people improve their communications skills.
I am also in the process of signing up to become a beBee Ambassador, because as a marketer, my spidey sense tells me that beBee is very much on the leading edge of where social and business media need to go to remain relevant.

My Comment

What follows is the well-considered comment I wrote on Javier’s post.
“Over the past year, I spent a lot of time and emotional energy trying to figure out what had gone wrong with LinkedIn through futile attempts to communicate with the Mighty Hamsters who ran the crazy algorithm that appears to have gone out of control in a number of key areas.
Hindsight being 20 20, I have come to the conclusion that the junior management of LinkedIn is trying their best to plug all the holes in the dyke, while the senior management was busy trying to package up all the data they control in order to sell it to some cash rich company. (Like Microsoft).
I was at the point where I was starting to get depressed about what a cynic this whole process was making me when John White let me know about beBee.
I immediately signed up and when their publishing platform got going, started posting there. I joined a bunch of hives read and commented on a lot of interesting posts, and started noticing that many of my friends from LI were doing the same thing.
To me, it's not so much about the differences in appearance or concept, which are considerable, but about the character of the site.
About the intellectual freedom I have here to get back to the kind of blogging I used to do before I got pissed off with LinkedIn, after they started limiting my ability to grow a following.
I feel confident that, in one hive or any number of hives, there will be people who are genuinely interested in what I'm posting.
And that's really a core positive quality of beBee and, to me , what sets it apart from pretty much every other social media site that matters.
But there's also something contagious about the good feeling you get here, and that has a lot to do with the management of this site.
Javier has a great team who are committed to making beBee a real success. And since I have found a new home for my blogging, I have a vested interest in beBee's success and so am happy to promote it whenever I can.

BeBee kinda makes LinkedIn look a bit dowdy and old school.”
So there you have it…my perception of BeBee Vs The Lumpy Kingdom.
Buzz in if you agree or disagree. It’s all good. Feel free to forward this into hives that it’s not already posted in.
And feel free to love beBee….because what’s not to love?

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