8 ms·

LinkedIn Problems Run Deeper Than Valuation

199 points by isalmon 11y ago

mathattack 11y ago
I'm not so bearish on LinkedIn. It serves a few useful purposes: 1 - Before any meeting I look to see if there's something I share in common (person, interest, job, etc) with the other person. This was especially important when I was in Sales. 2 - When I was job hunting, I did a lot of "Look up the job, then see if I knew someone who knew someone at the company" that would've been impossible without it. 3 - I use it for recruiting. The response rate is very low when HR uses it, but as the hiring manager it isn't too bad. LinkedIn has the highest value users of any service - professionals making good money. If they can figure out good ways to monetize it, they'll blow through their current valuation issues.
- qaq 11y ago
  You are not so bearish as a user, are you planing to invest though even at current valuation?
  - mathattack 11y ago
    Good question. If I actively invested in individual tech stocks, I probably would. But that's a big if. :-) For now I'm talking like a researcher rather than a trader. My investing strategy has been to invest in large indexes with low expense ratios. For diversification against my human capital, I slightly lean against tech (S&P over Nasdaq) and for personal reasons I try to get some overseas exposure.
  - pfarnsworth 11y ago
    I did at $103 through options and am currently up 45%.
FussyZeus 11y ago
I have a LinkedIn profile because I was led, back in the day, to think that was the best way to put myself out there for businesses to find and hire me. I don't think I've gotten more than 50 views in the entire time I've had the thing, which is blown away by my personal website (which is still a tiny number of views, but swamps LinkedIn). That and every time I connect with someone or make the mistake of clicking on their emails, I end up with 20 more bloody emails over the next few days for job offers I don't want (drywall contractor this past one, no joke) or people I don't know who are trying to connect with me (most likely recruiters). I really don't know why I don't delete the thing.
- dasil003 11y ago
  When you try to delete it, that's when the nightmare starts.
  - milkytron 11y ago
    Would you mind explaining why? I've been considering deleting mine for quite some time now. My google+ profile gets substantially more views, and I rarely use that either.
    - dasil003 11y ago
      Well I've never done it, but my understanding is that they will never stop emailing you.
- eropple 11y ago
  On the flip side, I get a ton of views of my profile. I indiscriminately accept recruiter requests, because it increases the spread of second and third-degree connections who'll see me in searches. I get two orders of magnitude more profile views than does my website, and I've turned off every email LinkedIn wants to send me. But, then, I'm a consultant, and having people find me is important. A lot of the messages I get are useless--but enough aren't that I effectively don't need to advertise.
  - FussyZeus 11y ago
    How much of that communication would you say is useful? If it's not prying too much, how much of that would you say leads to actual business?
    - eropple 11y ago
      It's no worse than most sales channels, but my situation has been complicated in that I haven't really had the available bandwidth for more work. I spend maybe twenty minutes a week on LinkedIn and I ignore every message that doesn't mention a walrus (my profile explicitly says "mention a walrus"), so my effort level is very low.
danielrm26 11y ago
This reads like a hit piece for some reason.
- lallysingh 11y ago
  "LinkedIn is now, at best, a business card holder. At worst, it’s a delivery service for spam." I see that, but I also don't find any of the critiques particularly egregious.
  - magicmu 11y ago
    They're all just a tad limited in scope. I guess it makes sense since I would think TC's primary demographic is technical people (I can't back this up though, may not be accurate). In general though, I agree.
- fullshark 11y ago
  modern journalism
  - laxatives 11y ago
    aka marketing/advertising (usually)
- shostack 11y ago
  It's almost as if the media wants to see the downfall of tech companies so they can continue writing about all the doom and gloom and predicting a bubble popping (when the data thus far does not show a "pop" coming per se).
eitally 11y ago
This isn't a bad article, but it's extremely one-sided, from the POV of tech employees, which are still the vast minority of workers. Yes, it's spammy and yes, they use dark patterns, and yes, there should have been some better ethical governance since the beginning, but it's not as bad at what it aims to do as a lot of people believe. Even if you just consider it a business card holder -- there's actual value there. Add in facilities to empower connections between people who don't know each other, or who only share connections, and it's pretty powerful. I think they can successfully navigate through this critical spot and emerge much stronger on the other side. They just need to refocus on what the core value propositions are.
- gadders 11y ago
  I was coming to say this. From the article: "Spotting the best talent is actually far easier with tools like Talentbin, Stack Overflow, and Github, which aggregate or facilitate positive interactions and allow skilled individuals to display their work — showing why they’re good at what they do." So that covers technical people, technical people and, er, technical people. What if I want to find a PR Agency? Or a company to refurnish my office?
  - paulddraper 11y ago
    Or hire a PM? Or HR? Or marketing?
- Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
  Look no further than the source. Who is TC writing for? Certainly not my girlfriend. Certainly not the founder of my former marketing agency.
  - kevinwang 11y ago
    Yeah, but it's not really about the audience of the article, it's about the audience of LinkedIn. Which is being portrayed as predominately tech-industry, when in reality the tech industry (where stackoverflow and github are relevant) is a small fraction of LinkedIn's market
jdlyga 11y ago
LinkedIn's job search interface is pretty bad for tech employees. There's so many better options out there. But there's nothing better for getting quality recruiters to notice you than LinkedIn.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  It might be great if your goal is to get "recruiters to notice you" which might be OK if you don't already have a job (it's better than nothing). But in my experience, recruiter attention is insufficient if your goal is getting a _better_ job. I tried the LinkedIn thing for a while (and still maintain an account there, because who knows?), but it basically resulted in a lot of recruiter contacts and plenty of interviews, but apparently not a lot of companies that were actually serious about hiring. They seem to mostly be the dog jobs too, the crap "opportunities" that employers couldn't immediately fill so they have to use recruiters. And in this job market, if you can't immediately fill a position, you ought to take a good look at what's wrong with that position. You'll also have a hard time using it to change job function or for a career upgrade. If your profile says "Senior Software Engineer" you'll just get a bunch of recruiters spamming you to be "Senior Software Engineer" at some other company. They'll never reach out to you and say, "hey how would you like to try being tech lead, or managing a team of engineers?" The site's obviously automated "suggested jobs" are also carbon copies of whatever it is you're already doing, too. Needless to say, I don't bother much with LinkedIn anymore.
- xeromal 11y ago
  Recruiters can get very spammy and they immensely difficult to deal with on sites like Dice, Indeed, and Monsters of the web. On LinkedIn, the seem to be far more capable and targeted to my interests. Companies like Google and Amazon have contacted me through LinkedIn as well.
- dkarapetyan 11y ago
  There are any number of other services for tech employees. Interviewing.io and triplebyte being excellent alternatives.
rdl 11y ago
I've never really found LinkedIn useful for recruiting, at least within fields I've ever cared about (startups, security, infrastructure, satcom). It is sometimes useful for sales/partnerships. "Who do I know at BigCo, or who do I know who can introduce me to BigCo".
kfk 11y ago
Yet the alternatives the article proposes are mostly for coders and tech folks. Business people only have LinkedIn. However bad LinkedIn can be, it's still the only tool around for some people. I think the problem is that for some jobs is very difficult to show your skills. A good finance guy has a very hard time showing off vs say, a programmer - there is no github or SOF for finance guys, question is: can there be one?
martinshen 11y ago
Personally, I've used LinkedIn for recruiting tech talent, being recruited and most recently, doing biz dev (aka sales). Stray observations: 1. LinkedIn has too many products like sales navigator that attempt to force you through a specific workflow. While it can work, it feels a lot like a misguided tracking system. 2. LinkedIn is most useful as an online resume. Whenever I am meeting someone new or want a refresher, I check LinkedIn. I think everyone does this in North America. This doubles as a useful social sign in tool for biz apps. 3. Older people (40+) in non tech positions respond surprisingly often to InMail. They respond far more often than young techies (who probably get too many messages). This is surprising and extremely useful for my job. 4. LinkedIn needs contact management in context of career. For example: simply stating when you made this contact is crucial. 5. LinkedIn needs a way to show how active a profile is or at least indicate if a profile is no longer responsive. There are millions of LinkedIn profiles that are inactive but LinkedIn encourages you to pay to message them. 6. There needs to be an indicator for how close you are to a specific contact. 99% of the time your mutual contacts are useless. This is especially true for "active users" like myself who see no major disadvantage personally for adding as many contacts as possible. My whole point is that LinkedIn has an extremely valuable service. It is missing some features and product focus. Many of my above suggestions also help refocus LinkedIn's integrity. Overall LinkedIn falls into this strange low integrity (in this case, spammy) but somehow successful company. The question is are they going to clean up their act. I think they will.
- henrik_w 11y ago
  As for point 6: I only connect with people I know. Every once in a while I get a connection request from some random person , but I always say no if I don't know them (even if we are in the same industry). I think the whole value of connections is diluted otherwise. A connection doesn't mean anything. So that's what I see as the disadvantage of adding as many contacts as possible.
  - ydt 11y ago
    I agree with you in principle and in the past only accepted connection requests from people I know as well. However, I think LinkedIn's promise as professional social network has really diminished over the years and mostly functions as nothing more than a job board at this point. I probably have about 100 recruiters I have never met in person in my network. As a contract dev updating my profile serves as a way to push notify these people that I'm in the market. It's really the only value I see left in the platform.
henrik_w 11y ago
FWIW, I still get value from LinkedIn. The best parts for me: - one place for contact information - job offers (most of the ones I receive are relevant) - being able to "check people out", i.e. see where they have worked before, common contacts etc I'm in Sweden (if that's relevant). I wrote more about it here: http://henrikwarne.com/2013/08/21/linkedin-good-or-bad/ http://henrikwarne.com/2013/08/21/linkedin-good-or-bad/
- jxramos 11y ago
  I concur, most of the job offers I get are relevant and some of the big companies' internal recruiters contact me via LinkedIn: Google, Facebook, Amazon. It may not be perfect but it's far from useless. My impression is that it allows skilled recruiters to make solid connections and lookups. Poor recruiters will always be poor matchers and spam folks.
SixSigma 11y ago
I click on LinkedIn every day. I like the news feed, my network provides useful stuff to read that I wouldn't find otherwise. I have connections that are more appropriate than on Facebook because our relationships are professional social not friend social. I don't want their baby pictures & holiday photos but I do want to hear about their business and comment on their business writing.
- samstave 11y ago
  I've started a private slack group for my most active friends and business associates. I like that better than linkedin.
  - SixSigma 11y ago
    Good for you. Lots of my associations are pretty loose though. I have no way to influence their decisions. I'm connected with them on LI because they were already there. I only joined because my University recommended it but then I found out I liked it.
vadym909 11y ago
I think the author just made this up in an hour with some weak arguments. No doubt LinkedIn is becoming very spammy from all the puzzles and (gasp) personal stuff like 'My son-in-law is having an operation, please pray for him'. However, the value that most people derive from it and the ease with which you can ignore the spam will keep it being used until there is non-spammy, non-recruiter funded and 'open networking' alternate.
ucaetano 11y ago
"LinkedIn is not, in fact, a business network — individuals on LinkedIn represent themselves, not their businesses." Accordingly, business attire is not, in fact, business attire, since people are dressed up as people not as businesses. What a waste of bandwidth...
- samstave 11y ago
  Unless youre a fashion model?
- unclebucknasty 11y ago
  I didn't get that either. What would a "proper" business network look like? Everyone connects with other companies' presences through their own company's presence? Similarly, the advice offered by the article was vague pablum. One example: >The company needs to simplify its number of revenue streams and make sure that they work in concert with its user engagement and growth strategy, rather than in conflict. Sure. How? Kind of like saying "the company needs to increase revenue by making more money".
  - ryanelkins 11y ago
    The revenue thing is addressing a conflict in LinkedIn's approach. The value in the platform is the users but their monetization of that platform tends to drive off users (due to being spammy). So they are saying they need to find a monetization system that encourages user growth rather than detracts from it. You may not agree with that, but that's their logic. It's not quite as tautological as you make it seem.
    - unclebucknasty 11y ago
      I understand what the article was saying and I don't disagree. In fact, I'm saying it's obvious. Your explanation effectively repeated it, using equally vague terms. And that was my point. The author says that LinkedIn needs to find a completely different revenue model in midstream that works for them and that its users love. Do you think there's really a revelation in there? Do you think that's never occurred to LinkedIn (or anyone who's paying attention)? Making vague and obvious statements as a commentator is also easy. For the article to have value, it should have offered some concrete examples of how these problems could be solved.
dkarapetyan 11y ago
I really like how every negative thing is rationalized away until shit hits the fan and then every negative thing becomes a reality because all of a sudden it gets reported. LinkedIn is still the same shitty service it was before. Move along. Nothing to see here. It's just before it was overvalued and overhyped.
maxaf 11y ago
If you think there's a lot of recruiter spam on LinkedIn, I dare you to have a look at my email inbox. :P
rjurney 11y ago
I was in product at LinkedIn, and I thought this was spot on. LinkedIn is a two-sided platform. Increasingly the revenue model undermines user engagement. To some extent, one side no longer builds the other, one subtracts from the other. LinkedIn is a platform for spam more than it is a platform for content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market
- dleesta 11y ago
  The content platform was really engaging when influencers were posting and blogging frequently. Medium now seems to be the platform of choice. Not sure if opening up the content creation experience to all users "devalued" the platform or if it was the acquisition of Pulse or a summation of a bunch of factors that caused the decline. What's clear is that content platform definitely has taken a turn for the worse.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  It sounds like you are suggesting a minimalist version of LinkedIn intended to break even [rather than VC-level profitable] is a good idea. ;)
  - rjurney 11y ago
    Hah, fair point. I just think they've gone a little too far on the greed side. No doubt as part of being public.
Paul_S 11y ago
Linkedin is a necessary evil. HR uses it to check out my references and that's about it. I visit it only when I need to find a job - to update the details on my last job. It's OK, just don't give them your phone number or (real) email address and you won't get hassled.
fanofyan 11y ago
I mostly use LinkedIn to snoop on people I went to high school with.
programminggeek 11y ago
Well, I keep hearing people say things like "I hate LinkedIn" or "LinkedIn is so annoying" randomly at work or in business travel. It's a small data point, but it seems that perhaps there is a negative sentiment growing around LinkedIn.
- HEYGRANDMA 11y ago
  This article actually prompted me to finally get around to deleting my LinkedIn account
autoreleasepool 11y ago
LinkedIn is a great example of how your platform can be useful to people in spite of a horrible UI, bad infrastructure, and grossly inconsistent user experience. I swear the amount of times I wasn't sure if I actually accepted or sent a connection request is way too high. The endorsements are begging to be rigged, and the website is absolutely dismal in terms of social functionality - it pales in comparison to almost every other social media platform. The only reason it's still popular is because it doesn't need to be any better to do the one thing it does best, which is to be a search engine for recruiters. That all being said, I maintain an active linkedin profile and I use it regularly.
- GCA10 11y ago
  I think endorsements are actually a non-product -- sort of like the "close doors" button on the elevator. My sense is that LinkedIn doesn't use endorsements in any other dimension of the site. It's just an engagement tool, so that people are on the site longer. That way they see more ads -- and are perhaps more likely to tweak their profiles.
  - zerozerozeroone 11y ago
    I work at LinkedIn, we actually do use skills in a number of places (like the job pages); typically they are used more of a "here's how your skills compare to other people's" and less of a "you'll get hired if you have skill X listed". We know people can game them, so we try to only use their skills in ways that would be helpful if their skills are actually real to give less incentive for people to lie.
    - fader 11y ago
      As implemented, they're basically useless. Asking "does X know about Y?" without verifying that I have any knowledge of Y myself doesn't do much. My dentist has endorsed me for things like "Cloud", and while he's a great guy and good at his job he can barely work his iPad. I personally view those as noise at best and very skeptically at worst -- if someone has a bunch of endorsements for a particular skill I suspect they actually don't know much about it.
dreamfactory2 11y ago
LI is irreplaceable right now as a business networking and lead tool, but maddening and getting worse daily in terms of UX. I already pay hundreds on it and ready to pay thousands as it's easily worth that to my business. But I'm spending that money grudgingly and always reluctant to upgrade because although it saves me time and effort overall, it also wastes my time every day due to crappy UX, badly implemented SPA type functionality, and hateful mobile experience if you don't want to use their app (LI: I will never use your app if it needs access to my contacts list, particularly given the way you leverage that valuable and private info). That's a really really stupid position for an incumbent to put themselves in as they will inevitably get their lunch eaten by an upstart at some point.
sitkack 11y ago
LinkedIn uses too many dark patterns. I'd like to "link" with recruiters but not have them pollute my graph. They really have pooped up the whole thing.
solidocracy 11y ago
E
the_watcher 11y ago
LinkedIn's best shot at remaining relevant and growing is if they can turn Pulse into something businesses can get real value from.
zekevermillion 11y ago
When I still had a LinkedIn account, I noticed that being an attorney on LinkedIn made me a magnet for scammers -- mostly folks attempting to get me to deposit bad checks in my trust account. They were a couple steps up from the typical 419 scam, though fortunately were still easily detected. Between that and the crappy articles that people would post in my stream, I eventually decided that I got less than zero value from LinkedIn membership.
bigsteve78 11y ago
The very simple reason why linked in isnt valuable is that It doesn't get me a job. PERIOD. If I am skilled and able with no real red flags I should have a dozen interviews coming my way. solve that problem and regain your value LinkedIn.
anshen 11y ago
find something!!<a href="/">t a</a>f
anshen 11y ago
<iframe src="//news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167853"></iframe><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167853" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167853" title="TEst">T</a>s
paulwitte253 11y ago
I would hate it if LinkedIn fails to be successful as I'm a frequent IN user. I agree with the fact that 40+ people tend to reply sooner than others. This is one of the reasons I'm on IN as my target audience is on it.

199 points by isalmon 11y ago

I'm not so bearish on LinkedIn. It serves a few useful purposes: 1 - Before any meeting I look to see if there's something I share in common (person, interest, job, etc) with the other person. This was especially important when I was in Sales. 2 - When I was job hunting, I did a lot of "Look up the job, then see if I knew someone who knew someone at the company" that would've been impossible without it. 3 - I use it for recruiting. The response rate is very low when HR uses it, but as the hiring manager it isn't too bad. LinkedIn has the highest value users of any service - professionals making good money. If they can figure out good ways to monetize it, they'll blow through their current valuation issues.

qaq 11y ago
You are not so bearish as a user, are you planing to invest though even at current valuation?
- mathattack 11y ago
  Good question. If I actively invested in individual tech stocks, I probably would. But that's a big if. :-) For now I'm talking like a researcher rather than a trader. My investing strategy has been to invest in large indexes with low expense ratios. For diversification against my human capital, I slightly lean against tech (S&P over Nasdaq) and for personal reasons I try to get some overseas exposure.
- pfarnsworth 11y ago
  I did at $103 through options and am currently up 45%.

FussyZeus 11y ago

I have a LinkedIn profile because I was led, back in the day, to think that was the best way to put myself out there for businesses to find and hire me. I don't think I've gotten more than 50 views in the entire time I've had the thing, which is blown away by my personal website (which is still a tiny number of views, but swamps LinkedIn). That and every time I connect with someone or make the mistake of clicking on their emails, I end up with 20 more bloody emails over the next few days for job offers I don't want (drywall contractor this past one, no joke) or people I don't know who are trying to connect with me (most likely recruiters). I really don't know why I don't delete the thing.

dasil003 11y ago
When you try to delete it, that's when the nightmare starts.
- milkytron 11y ago
  Would you mind explaining why? I've been considering deleting mine for quite some time now. My google+ profile gets substantially more views, and I rarely use that either.
  - dasil003 11y ago
    Well I've never done it, but my understanding is that they will never stop emailing you.
eropple 11y ago
On the flip side, I get a ton of views of my profile. I indiscriminately accept recruiter requests, because it increases the spread of second and third-degree connections who'll see me in searches. I get two orders of magnitude more profile views than does my website, and I've turned off every email LinkedIn wants to send me. But, then, I'm a consultant, and having people find me is important. A lot of the messages I get are useless--but enough aren't that I effectively don't need to advertise.
- FussyZeus 11y ago
  How much of that communication would you say is useful? If it's not prying too much, how much of that would you say leads to actual business?
  - eropple 11y ago
    It's no worse than most sales channels, but my situation has been complicated in that I haven't really had the available bandwidth for more work. I spend maybe twenty minutes a week on LinkedIn and I ignore every message that doesn't mention a walrus (my profile explicitly says "mention a walrus"), so my effort level is very low.

danielrm26 11y ago

This reads like a hit piece for some reason.

lallysingh 11y ago
"LinkedIn is now, at best, a business card holder. At worst, it’s a delivery service for spam." I see that, but I also don't find any of the critiques particularly egregious.
- magicmu 11y ago
  They're all just a tad limited in scope. I guess it makes sense since I would think TC's primary demographic is technical people (I can't back this up though, may not be accurate). In general though, I agree.
fullshark 11y ago
modern journalism
- laxatives 11y ago
  aka marketing/advertising (usually)
shostack 11y ago
It's almost as if the media wants to see the downfall of tech companies so they can continue writing about all the doom and gloom and predicting a bubble popping (when the data thus far does not show a "pop" coming per se).

eitally 11y ago

This isn't a bad article, but it's extremely one-sided, from the POV of tech employees, which are still the vast minority of workers. Yes, it's spammy and yes, they use dark patterns, and yes, there should have been some better ethical governance since the beginning, but it's not as bad at what it aims to do as a lot of people believe. Even if you just consider it a business card holder -- there's actual value there. Add in facilities to empower connections between people who don't know each other, or who only share connections, and it's pretty powerful. I think they can successfully navigate through this critical spot and emerge much stronger on the other side. They just need to refocus on what the core value propositions are.

gadders 11y ago
I was coming to say this. From the article: "Spotting the best talent is actually far easier with tools like Talentbin, Stack Overflow, and Github, which aggregate or facilitate positive interactions and allow skilled individuals to display their work — showing why they’re good at what they do." So that covers technical people, technical people and, er, technical people. What if I want to find a PR Agency? Or a company to refurnish my office?
- paulddraper 11y ago
  Or hire a PM? Or HR? Or marketing?
Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
Look no further than the source. Who is TC writing for? Certainly not my girlfriend. Certainly not the founder of my former marketing agency.
- kevinwang 11y ago
  Yeah, but it's not really about the audience of the article, it's about the audience of LinkedIn. Which is being portrayed as predominately tech-industry, when in reality the tech industry (where stackoverflow and github are relevant) is a small fraction of LinkedIn's market

jdlyga 11y ago

LinkedIn's job search interface is pretty bad for tech employees. There's so many better options out there. But there's nothing better for getting quality recruiters to notice you than LinkedIn.

ryandrake 11y ago
It might be great if your goal is to get "recruiters to notice you" which might be OK if you don't already have a job (it's better than nothing). But in my experience, recruiter attention is insufficient if your goal is getting a _better_ job. I tried the LinkedIn thing for a while (and still maintain an account there, because who knows?), but it basically resulted in a lot of recruiter contacts and plenty of interviews, but apparently not a lot of companies that were actually serious about hiring. They seem to mostly be the dog jobs too, the crap "opportunities" that employers couldn't immediately fill so they have to use recruiters. And in this job market, if you can't immediately fill a position, you ought to take a good look at what's wrong with that position. You'll also have a hard time using it to change job function or for a career upgrade. If your profile says "Senior Software Engineer" you'll just get a bunch of recruiters spamming you to be "Senior Software Engineer" at some other company. They'll never reach out to you and say, "hey how would you like to try being tech lead, or managing a team of engineers?" The site's obviously automated "suggested jobs" are also carbon copies of whatever it is you're already doing, too. Needless to say, I don't bother much with LinkedIn anymore.
xeromal 11y ago
Recruiters can get very spammy and they immensely difficult to deal with on sites like Dice, Indeed, and Monsters of the web. On LinkedIn, the seem to be far more capable and targeted to my interests. Companies like Google and Amazon have contacted me through LinkedIn as well.
dkarapetyan 11y ago
There are any number of other services for tech employees. Interviewing.io and triplebyte being excellent alternatives.

rdl 11y ago

I've never really found LinkedIn useful for recruiting, at least within fields I've ever cared about (startups, security, infrastructure, satcom). It is sometimes useful for sales/partnerships. "Who do I know at BigCo, or who do I know who can introduce me to BigCo".

kfk 11y ago

Yet the alternatives the article proposes are mostly for coders and tech folks. Business people only have LinkedIn. However bad LinkedIn can be, it's still the only tool around for some people. I think the problem is that for some jobs is very difficult to show your skills. A good finance guy has a very hard time showing off vs say, a programmer - there is no github or SOF for finance guys, question is: can there be one?

martinshen 11y ago

Personally, I've used LinkedIn for recruiting tech talent, being recruited and most recently, doing biz dev (aka sales). Stray observations: 1. LinkedIn has too many products like sales navigator that attempt to force you through a specific workflow. While it can work, it feels a lot like a misguided tracking system. 2. LinkedIn is most useful as an online resume. Whenever I am meeting someone new or want a refresher, I check LinkedIn. I think everyone does this in North America. This doubles as a useful social sign in tool for biz apps. 3. Older people (40+) in non tech positions respond surprisingly often to InMail. They respond far more often than young techies (who probably get too many messages). This is surprising and extremely useful for my job. 4. LinkedIn needs contact management in context of career. For example: simply stating when you made this contact is crucial. 5. LinkedIn needs a way to show how active a profile is or at least indicate if a profile is no longer responsive. There are millions of LinkedIn profiles that are inactive but LinkedIn encourages you to pay to message them. 6. There needs to be an indicator for how close you are to a specific contact. 99% of the time your mutual contacts are useless. This is especially true for "active users" like myself who see no major disadvantage personally for adding as many contacts as possible. My whole point is that LinkedIn has an extremely valuable service. It is missing some features and product focus. Many of my above suggestions also help refocus LinkedIn's integrity. Overall LinkedIn falls into this strange low integrity (in this case, spammy) but somehow successful company. The question is are they going to clean up their act. I think they will.

henrik_w 11y ago
As for point 6: I only connect with people I know. Every once in a while I get a connection request from some random person , but I always say no if I don't know them (even if we are in the same industry). I think the whole value of connections is diluted otherwise. A connection doesn't mean anything. So that's what I see as the disadvantage of adding as many contacts as possible.
- ydt 11y ago
  I agree with you in principle and in the past only accepted connection requests from people I know as well. However, I think LinkedIn's promise as professional social network has really diminished over the years and mostly functions as nothing more than a job board at this point. I probably have about 100 recruiters I have never met in person in my network. As a contract dev updating my profile serves as a way to push notify these people that I'm in the market. It's really the only value I see left in the platform.

henrik_w 11y ago

FWIW, I still get value from LinkedIn. The best parts for me: - one place for contact information - job offers (most of the ones I receive are relevant) - being able to "check people out", i.e. see where they have worked before, common contacts etc I'm in Sweden (if that's relevant). I wrote more about it here: http://henrikwarne.com/2013/08/21/linkedin-good-or-bad/ http://henrikwarne.com/2013/08/21/linkedin-good-or-bad/

jxramos 11y ago
I concur, most of the job offers I get are relevant and some of the big companies' internal recruiters contact me via LinkedIn: Google, Facebook, Amazon. It may not be perfect but it's far from useless. My impression is that it allows skilled recruiters to make solid connections and lookups. Poor recruiters will always be poor matchers and spam folks.

SixSigma 11y ago

I click on LinkedIn every day. I like the news feed, my network provides useful stuff to read that I wouldn't find otherwise. I have connections that are more appropriate than on Facebook because our relationships are professional social not friend social. I don't want their baby pictures & holiday photos but I do want to hear about their business and comment on their business writing.

samstave 11y ago
I've started a private slack group for my most active friends and business associates. I like that better than linkedin.
- SixSigma 11y ago
  Good for you. Lots of my associations are pretty loose though. I have no way to influence their decisions. I'm connected with them on LI because they were already there. I only joined because my University recommended it but then I found out I liked it.

vadym909 11y ago

I think the author just made this up in an hour with some weak arguments. No doubt LinkedIn is becoming very spammy from all the puzzles and (gasp) personal stuff like 'My son-in-law is having an operation, please pray for him'. However, the value that most people derive from it and the ease with which you can ignore the spam will keep it being used until there is non-spammy, non-recruiter funded and 'open networking' alternate.

ucaetano 11y ago

"LinkedIn is not, in fact, a business network — individuals on LinkedIn represent themselves, not their businesses." Accordingly, business attire is not, in fact, business attire, since people are dressed up as people not as businesses. What a waste of bandwidth...

samstave 11y ago
Unless youre a fashion model?
unclebucknasty 11y ago
I didn't get that either. What would a "proper" business network look like? Everyone connects with other companies' presences through their own company's presence? Similarly, the advice offered by the article was vague pablum. One example: >The company needs to simplify its number of revenue streams and make sure that they work in concert with its user engagement and growth strategy, rather than in conflict. Sure. How? Kind of like saying "the company needs to increase revenue by making more money".
- ryanelkins 11y ago
  The revenue thing is addressing a conflict in LinkedIn's approach. The value in the platform is the users but their monetization of that platform tends to drive off users (due to being spammy). So they are saying they need to find a monetization system that encourages user growth rather than detracts from it. You may not agree with that, but that's their logic. It's not quite as tautological as you make it seem.
  - unclebucknasty 11y ago
    I understand what the article was saying and I don't disagree. In fact, I'm saying it's obvious. Your explanation effectively repeated it, using equally vague terms. And that was my point. The author says that LinkedIn needs to find a completely different revenue model in midstream that works for them and that its users love. Do you think there's really a revelation in there? Do you think that's never occurred to LinkedIn (or anyone who's paying attention)? Making vague and obvious statements as a commentator is also easy. For the article to have value, it should have offered some concrete examples of how these problems could be solved.

dkarapetyan 11y ago

I really like how every negative thing is rationalized away until shit hits the fan and then every negative thing becomes a reality because all of a sudden it gets reported. LinkedIn is still the same shitty service it was before. Move along. Nothing to see here. It's just before it was overvalued and overhyped.

maxaf 11y ago

If you think there's a lot of recruiter spam on LinkedIn, I dare you to have a look at my email inbox. :P

rjurney 11y ago

I was in product at LinkedIn, and I thought this was spot on. LinkedIn is a two-sided platform. Increasingly the revenue model undermines user engagement. To some extent, one side no longer builds the other, one subtracts from the other. LinkedIn is a platform for spam more than it is a platform for content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market

dleesta 11y ago
The content platform was really engaging when influencers were posting and blogging frequently. Medium now seems to be the platform of choice. Not sure if opening up the content creation experience to all users "devalued" the platform or if it was the acquisition of Pulse or a summation of a bunch of factors that caused the decline. What's clear is that content platform definitely has taken a turn for the worse.
fweespeech 11y ago
It sounds like you are suggesting a minimalist version of LinkedIn intended to break even [rather than VC-level profitable] is a good idea. ;)
- rjurney 11y ago
  Hah, fair point. I just think they've gone a little too far on the greed side. No doubt as part of being public.

Paul_S 11y ago

Linkedin is a necessary evil. HR uses it to check out my references and that's about it. I visit it only when I need to find a job - to update the details on my last job. It's OK, just don't give them your phone number or (real) email address and you won't get hassled.

fanofyan 11y ago

I mostly use LinkedIn to snoop on people I went to high school with.

programminggeek 11y ago

Well, I keep hearing people say things like "I hate LinkedIn" or "LinkedIn is so annoying" randomly at work or in business travel. It's a small data point, but it seems that perhaps there is a negative sentiment growing around LinkedIn.

HEYGRANDMA 11y ago
This article actually prompted me to finally get around to deleting my LinkedIn account

autoreleasepool 11y ago

LinkedIn is a great example of how your platform can be useful to people in spite of a horrible UI, bad infrastructure, and grossly inconsistent user experience. I swear the amount of times I wasn't sure if I actually accepted or sent a connection request is way too high. The endorsements are begging to be rigged, and the website is absolutely dismal in terms of social functionality - it pales in comparison to almost every other social media platform. The only reason it's still popular is because it doesn't need to be any better to do the one thing it does best, which is to be a search engine for recruiters. That all being said, I maintain an active linkedin profile and I use it regularly.

GCA10 11y ago
I think endorsements are actually a non-product -- sort of like the "close doors" button on the elevator. My sense is that LinkedIn doesn't use endorsements in any other dimension of the site. It's just an engagement tool, so that people are on the site longer. That way they see more ads -- and are perhaps more likely to tweak their profiles.
- zerozerozeroone 11y ago
  I work at LinkedIn, we actually do use skills in a number of places (like the job pages); typically they are used more of a "here's how your skills compare to other people's" and less of a "you'll get hired if you have skill X listed". We know people can game them, so we try to only use their skills in ways that would be helpful if their skills are actually real to give less incentive for people to lie.
  - fader 11y ago
    As implemented, they're basically useless. Asking "does X know about Y?" without verifying that I have any knowledge of Y myself doesn't do much. My dentist has endorsed me for things like "Cloud", and while he's a great guy and good at his job he can barely work his iPad. I personally view those as noise at best and very skeptically at worst -- if someone has a bunch of endorsements for a particular skill I suspect they actually don't know much about it.

dreamfactory2 11y ago

LI is irreplaceable right now as a business networking and lead tool, but maddening and getting worse daily in terms of UX. I already pay hundreds on it and ready to pay thousands as it's easily worth that to my business. But I'm spending that money grudgingly and always reluctant to upgrade because although it saves me time and effort overall, it also wastes my time every day due to crappy UX, badly implemented SPA type functionality, and hateful mobile experience if you don't want to use their app (LI: I will never use your app if it needs access to my contacts list, particularly given the way you leverage that valuable and private info). That's a really really stupid position for an incumbent to put themselves in as they will inevitably get their lunch eaten by an upstart at some point.

sitkack 11y ago

LinkedIn uses too many dark patterns. I'd like to "link" with recruiters but not have them pollute my graph. They really have pooped up the whole thing.

solidocracy 11y ago

the_watcher 11y ago

LinkedIn's best shot at remaining relevant and growing is if they can turn Pulse into something businesses can get real value from.

zekevermillion 11y ago

When I still had a LinkedIn account, I noticed that being an attorney on LinkedIn made me a magnet for scammers -- mostly folks attempting to get me to deposit bad checks in my trust account. They were a couple steps up from the typical 419 scam, though fortunately were still easily detected. Between that and the crappy articles that people would post in my stream, I eventually decided that I got less than zero value from LinkedIn membership.

bigsteve78 11y ago

The very simple reason why linked in isnt valuable is that It doesn't get me a job. PERIOD. If I am skilled and able with no real red flags I should have a dozen interviews coming my way. solve that problem and regain your value LinkedIn.

anshen 11y ago

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anshen 11y ago

paulwitte253 11y ago

I would hate it if LinkedIn fails to be successful as I'm a frequent IN user. I agree with the fact that 40+ people tend to reply sooner than others. This is one of the reasons I'm on IN as my target audience is on it.