Don't follow me on LinkedIn

Firstly, this is not a negative article about LinkedIn. I joined LinkedIn in 2004 and will continue to post or share original content (like this article) on LinkedIn.

Now back to the premise...

I am a content creator and a contributor, committer, and maintainer of several open-source software projects. My motivation in sharing content around these projects is to foster a community for them, including end users and other developers for which the software helps make their lives easier.

Likes on LinkedIn posts (while they are greatly appreciated) don't necessarily do this.

As an open-source publisher, following the project or myself on GitHub is far more valuable.

Here's why

The Network Effect

Developers are constantly seeking ways to be more efficient and productive. They keenly watch and pay attention to what other developers are doing.

One of the ways people find exciting and valuable projects is by seeing what is of interest to other like-minded or notable developers. This is the network effect.

Sometimes this is organic and works over a more extended period; take Terraform, for example, a great product that most people are familiar with now, but this network effect took place over 8+ years, as you can see from this chart.

Impressive, but now look at Vite (apples and oranges, I know):

Exponential growth out of the gate, over 1000 stars on day 1. Why? The project was created by Evan You, the creator of Vue; he has approximately 90k followers. To put this in perspective, this would be the equivalent of 1M or more on traditional social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc.

Evan is a prominent, notable developer; when he starts a project or stars a project, 90,000 developers see this and are also curious/interested. This is the clearest example of the network effect.

This is certainly not to say that LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., aren't essential mediums - they are. But as an open-source developer, consider the network effect and ask people to follow you or your organization on GitHub.

I wish I had known this earlier.

While we are on the subject, if you have a GitHub account, follow me and my project, StackQL; stars are always appreciated. And please follow me on LinkedIn as well.

Special thanks to James Hegedus for the inspiration for this article.