What I don't post on LinkedIn

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 11:55:10 +0530

I don’t post all my writing on LinkedIn. For example:

Fewer strategy posts, e.g. “Where Enterprise AI is Headed”, “How My Innovation Team Works”, etc. aren’t on LinkedIn.
Fewer developer posts, e.g. my AGENTS.md, my SKILL.md files files, CLI tools, evals, etc. aren’t on LinkedIn.

I also shorten content because of LinkedIn constraints. For example:

No links, e.g. the list of all my AI-in-education resources
Short content, e.g. my full advice for teams using AI is much longer than the LinkedIn post.
Trimmed prompts, e.g. how to convert meeting transcripts into a personalized org-consulting report
Snipped chats, e.g. the full moves of GPT-5.5 playing chess

I filter the LinkedIn posts, sharing what’s most useful for most people.

But some people asked if I can share the full content over email.

So, I’ve set up my full blog, by email (free, via Google Groups): https://groups.google.com/g/s-anand

Preview before you subscribe. Switch to weekly digest if it’s too much.

LinkedIn is hostile to content

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 18:39:33 +0530

It’s incredible how hostile LinkedIn is for reading / writing content.

Posts containing links to external websites (like my blog) get significantly less reach. That’s why you see links in comments, not the post!
You can’t copy content from posts on their mobile app. You can’t even easily select the entire article on the web app! Selecting a part, and then shift-clicking elsewhere (which works almost everywhere) doesn’t work.
Also, the copied text isn’t clean. It’s filled with hidden text (e.g. “Skip to search”), duplicated text (e.g. author name repeated), and other junk.
It’s hard to export content. For example, the export feature does not include the original links in your articles, nor the links to images you posted!
It’s hard to scrape content. LinkedIn actively tries to prevent scraping, and their TOS prohibits it.
No formatting. You have to embed unicode characters.
Search is terrible. You can’t search for posts by keyword, date, or author easily.
No public posting - so you need to log in to read anything.

The only reason I’m on LinkedIn is because of the network. My current approach is:

Write on my blog: https://www.s-anand.net/
Copy paste on LinkedIn, formatted
Link to the original, and to hell with the reach

Over time, … let’s see.

Why I’m blogging less

Sat, 26 Apr 2014 13:39:51 +0000

My blog’s been through a number of phases. Between 1996 – 1999, it was just a website with a few facts about my and some of my juvenile ramblings. Inspired by robotwisdom.com, I converted it into a blog – except that I didn’t know what blogging was and just called it “updating my site every day.” It was mostly a link blog.

In 2006, around the time when I moved from Mumbai to London, I reduced my link-blogging and started writing longer articles talking about my experiences. This was a fairly productive phase, and I was churning a few dozen articles every year until 2012.

In the UK, I didn’t know many people, and wasn’t comfortable going out of the way to interact. My blog was the primary means of sharing my thoughts and work.

In 2012, when I moved back to India, that changed. I started speaking at various events. (Some of my talks are recorded.) I’ve been speaking at one or two events every month, which is roughly the volume of blogging I was doing since 2006.

So, effectively, my output medium has changed. Instead of writing, I speak. Correspondingly, my blogging has come down.

How does it feel? Well, on the one hand, there’s a lot more direct feedback when you’re speaking to an audience. You can interact with them, ask questions – all of which I can do on a blog as well, but this is real-time. When my audience laughs, I steer my talk more towards funny insights. When my audience claps, I steer it towards more impressive techniques. When my audience reacts like dead fish, I switch to Q&A. When my audience is lost in their own conversation, I terminate the talk early.

Effectively, my content is often shaped in real time. And that can be (usually) an exhilarating experience. I used to worry that the talks didn’t have the permanence of blog posts. But like I said, many of them are recorded. I also worried that the audience response would not be permanent, like blog comments. But Twitter fills that void.

For example, yesterday, I was speaking at the Great Indian Developer Summit. Here are the tweets going out as I was speaking.

Kashinath Pai. P.: #GIDS visualising data by Anand »

Naresha: Looking forward for a cool ‘Visualizing Big Data’ presentation from @sanand0 #gids »

ARAVIND CHEKKALURE: #gids watg for a solution in visualizating bigdata..woww »

Raj: Analysis of big data and visualization of big data is very different #gids »

Sundarraj Kaushik: Now to visualize data with Anand at #gids »

Raj: Anand’s session on visualization of big data surly interesting talk of day. I attended previously #gids »

UK Gupta: Another Excitin &Interestin Session “Leveraging #Cloud Services2Build & Integrate Analytics in Ur #IoT Solutions” by @Ragural #IntelDZ #gids »

Siva Narayanan: Doordarshi party is the worst loser in Indian politics #gids »

Siva Narayanan: Very cool viz about Indian Elections from gramener #gids »

ARAVIND CHEKKALURE: Examples for visualiztion that anad took is rally imprazv #gids »

Siva Narayanan: Margin of victory for winner isn’t affected by number of candidates. Affects runner up. #gids »

Goutham G: Enjoyed every bit of information on xls by vinod #GIDS »

Sanaulla: Very interesting facts and presentation by s anand in visualizing big data #gids »

THIYAGARAJAN.R: #gids Hi everyone, Anand session on Data visualization is interesting… happening on Main Hall »

Sanaulla: Visualization helps grasp huge amount of data quite easily #gids »

Vignesh Rajendran: Sanand might be called @NateSilver538 of Indian politics analysis #gids »

45hw1nk5: By far the beat talk so far, visualising data by S Anand from Gramener. #gids »

Rahul Sharma: On the Everest of knowledge with S Anand.. Courtesy - ‘Big Data’ :D #gids »

Sundarraj Kaushik: A very pertinent subject visualization of election statistics at #gids. »

Siva Narayanan: UdayKumar has 1600 cases against him #gids »

Rishi Raj Srivastav: Great Indian politics (data) visualization by Anand. #GIDS »

Siva Narayanan: Singh has been most popular last name in Indian elections every time #gids »

ARAVIND CHEKKALURE: Big data visualization is this much easy..like anand speks #gids »

Sundarraj Kaushik: A very colourful presentation without actual mention of big data or visualization. Wonderful presentation at #gids. »

Govind Kanshi: Gujarat, Maharashtra have longest names fighting in elections #gids powerful story as usual by @sanand0 »

Venkat ramanan v: Data visualization at it’s best. #gids »

Kamlesh ®: RT @govindk: Gujarat, Maharashtra have longest names fighting in elections #gids powerful story as usual by @sanand0 »

brntbeer: Talk about last names and regions of India. I’m definitely an outsider! #gids »

Sundarraj Kaushik: Is the dropout of girls the cause of better results of girls. Anand at #gids »

Sanaulla: Best session of the day: visualizing big data #gids »

ujwala: Visualizing big data session is very very interesting. Nicely done. #gids »

Siva Narayanan: Sun sign has a big impact on exam performance #gids »

Venkat ramanan v: Intriguing session on visualization #gids http://t.co/sezeRP48BM »

Siva Narayanan: Almost nobody is born in august in India! #gids People are fudging birth dates. »

Raj: Thanks #saltmartch for invite such a good speaker. #gids »

ujwala: RT @K2_181: Almost nobody is born in august in India! #gids People are fudging birth dates. »

Vinod Srinivas: @greatindiandev #gids #Anand was at his best in his session on #Visualisation »

Kiran Bhat: Lets get people to SEE data #Gramener #gids »

Sonali Patnaik: #GIDS “lets get people to see data” good session @sanand »

Amol Khanapurkar: Easily the best session at #gids for me by S Anand from http://t.co/1lVuBMpPlW »

isha jain: Amazing facts and awesome session on data visualization by Anand… #gids »

Kashinath Pai. P.: Absolutely mind blowing presentation by s anand #GIDS »

Sundarraj Kaushik: Thanks to Anand S for a marvellous and pertinent presentation at #gids 2014 »

Naresha: @sanand0 Those were amazing visualizations of data. One of the best sessions of #gids. »

Amol Khanapurkar: Data visualization can provide insights that no amount of analytic processing can hope to provide. #gids »

Vijay Singh: Session on big data visualisation was a joy ride #gids »

Mrugen Deshmukh: @Gramener Most entertaining talk yet. by S. Anand #gids »

Kashinath Pai. P.: Wonderful work @greatindiandev . inviting @sanand0 was absolutely amazing. #GIDS »

Sachin: That was an really awesome session on big data visualisation.. Had fun… #gids »

ARAVIND CHEKKALURE: Its reLy gd session by anand on visualizatg Bigdata..but never touch any tools and technologis. DisAptD #gids »

Harpreet Singh: Great session by anand Add visualisation to data to make it information #gids »

Raja Guru T: #gids thing of awesomeness visualization of large data. Lovely session by Anand. Way to go Saltmarch. Loving it. »

Raja Guru T: RT @ujwala: Visualizing big data session is very very interesting. Nicely done. #gids »

Prashanth: #gids data visualization session was amazing »

Subhashish Dutta: At #gids today, awesome visualization of some big data in the Indian context by Anand of Gramener. »

Japesh Thyagarajan: An impressive and fun session from Anand on Visualising Big Data, amazing illustration of Election and Education system , Hats off #GIDS »

Raj: I must say visualization of big data best session of #gids »

Apart from being able to preserve comments, I get to hear of this feedback a lot quicker than on a blog.

What I miss, though, is discoverability. When I blog, search engines index the content for anyone to find. I still get relevant comments on 15-year old blog posts. That, I suspect, will not be the case even for recorded talks.

But in any case, I’m afraid I will continue blogging less and speaking more over the course of the next few years. Please bear with me until then!

Comments

deepan 29 Apr 2014 12:37 pm: My hunch was that since you started your own company, you are engrossed with lot of work. Thank you for the update, do continue blogging.
Shankar V 30 Apr 2014 2:15 pm: I do miss your blog posts though! :) I did check some of your youtube videos and and I liked the ones on data visualization quite a bit. I am working on a product that tries to grab relevant data from twitter feeds and use that as part of its forecasting functionality. I was able to gather some useful insights in those. Of course, my product does not need visualization techniques - like the ones you have used in your seminars. :)
Bargava 15 May 2014 3:12 pm: Really miss your interesting articles. Your talks are brilliant and interesting. It would be good if you would post some link articles/ talks that you attended/ presentations you did/presentations you found useful somewhere (preferably in this blog).
Vasudevan Panhavoor 19 Feb 2015 4:16 pm: Your talk today at Scope international was very interesting.opened lot of new windows of thought and insight.Thanks

Style of blogging

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 11:32:20 +0000

Until 2007, my blog was mostly just linking to stuff I found interesting on the Web. Since 2007, I’ve tried to write longer articles, mostly based on my own experiences.

At the moment, that’s unsustainable. Right now, being in a startup, I doing more stuff than I ever have in the past. (That does not mean working more hours, by the way.)

My posts, going forward, are likely to be smaller, less original, but hopefully more frequent.

Comments

Veera 27 Aug 2012 6:46 pm: Lot of doing implies lot of things to share. But again, time is a real constraint. Anyway, looking forward to your posts. :)

To videoblog or not to videoblog

Sun, 17 Sep 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Scoble on To videoblog or not to videoblog.

content-strategy on S Anand

What I don't post on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is hostile to content

Why I’m blogging less

Comments

Style of blogging

Comments

To videoblog or not to videoblog