15 ms·

LinkedIn is ignoring user settings

380 points by pmlnr 9y ago

webmaven 9y ago
Public not pubic. SMH
- pmlnr 9y ago
  I need to keep a better eye on my typos o.O Thanks.
- sarreph 9y ago
  No need to be condescending about it ("smh") — people make mistakes...
sidcool 9y ago
Honestly, anything you want private should not go to LinkedIn.
- ealexhudson 9y ago
  The article's point is the inverse: you cannot get any info public (without login) e even if that's explicitly what you ask for..
IgorPartola 9y ago
I deleted my LinkedIn profile years ago. The amount of spam I was getting from them was ridiculous (the owner of the pizza joint next door wants to add you, etc.). The final straw was when someone pointed out to me that unless you keep it up to date, it reflects poorly on you. And I had no interest in doing that.
- visarga 9y ago
  I deleted mine too, but recently I wanted to see someone else's page and was not allowed. Not even a detail shown without login.
  - jasonkostempski 9y ago
    Make a fake account using a throwaway email everytime you want to view a page.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    If your referrer is from Google, they actually do allow you to see public detail. So just override referrer header, and you'll see a lot more.
    - pmlnr 9y ago
      Doesn't work for me either, at least not with cURL.
      - BenjiWiebe 9y ago
        Don't forget that you have to misspell Referer.
        pmlnr 9y ago
        !!! I'm having a really bad day with typos and overlooking them. You are correct; it does work with https://google.com https://google.com as referrer. I'm updating the entry. EDIT aaand it stopped working. It was either a glitch or it will lock you out after a few requests.
        OkGoDoIt 9y ago
        It definitely locks you out after a few requests. In the past I built a LinkedIn profile scraper, but they are really really good at locking down their data. If you even somewhat appear to be a bot, you’re blocked.
        flukus 9y ago
        Can it differentiate between a bot and a human opening up a dozen links in tabs? I suspect the tumblr one can't, it appears to rate limit me for using there archive pages.
- kirykl 9y ago
  A hiring manager told me recently I need to work on “curating [my] linked in presence” in response to how I could position myself better for the job
  - nvr219 9y ago
    Sad but true. Clients look me up on linkedin (I know because they mention it to me) and I'll bet if I didn't have a linkedin page they'd think that's weird.
    - throwanem 9y ago
      It also, if you invest a little effort to produce an appealing profile, does a great deal to make up for weak face-to-face networking skills. The "LinkedIn, faugh, who needs it" attitude around here really doesn't do an introvert any favors, I think.
      - IgorPartola 9y ago
        Why not host your own resume?
        throwanem 9y ago
        No reason not to do both. But if you only do one, LinkedIn has discovery benefits that are very hard to equal with self-hosting.
        nvr219 9y ago
        I do both.
        apple4ever 9y ago
        Actually, that's a good point. If you don't want to do linked in, then host one on your own site, and make sure its on your resume.
    - apple4ever 9y ago
      I know I do. If you applied and you can't even keep up a decent LinkedIn, why should I interview you? Or better yet, trust you?
- squarefoot 9y ago
  Same here, I unsubscribed about 10 years ago and never regretted, but although choosing not to receive anything anymore, they kept pestering me with unwanted invitations until I contacted again them in 2014 and finally got completely deleted from their lists (hopefully).
- astura 9y ago
  I've never had a LinkedIn account and I still get spam from them. The "so and so wants to connect with you on LinkedIn."
  - stareatgoats 9y ago
    Technically this is because Linkedin asks to be given access to a user's contacts (phone, email or otherwise) and then displays the contacts as people possible to connect to, regardless of whether the contacts are members already or not. No doubt some manager with shady ethics thought this a very clever way to expand the number of users.
  - robin_reala 9y ago
    I used to just delete LinkedIn emails but started to hit unsubscribe on each email I got, one month after another. That lasted for 6 months before I flipped and said that this was the only warning I’d give that they’d be taken to court if they ever emailed me again. Not a single email since that point, so an internal blacklist must exist.
  - aendruk 9y ago
    You can preemptively add yourself to their "do not contact" list: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/426 https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/426 I did it four years ago and they've honored it since.
    - alxndr 9y ago
      The captcha on that page is broken in Chrome 63.
- enobrev 9y ago
  I did the same and still received spam from them for a couple months. After contacting them, it stopped, but I still get "networking requests" from real life friends and colleagues every so often. I assue those are just because I'm in these people's contact lists or something.
pablostarter 9y ago
It's tied to an IP address, you have a limited number of visits per day. At least in my experience has been like that, really annoying... https://webapps.stackexchange.com/a/106476 https://webapps.stackexchange.com/a/106476 https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/69654 https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/69654
- hedora 9y ago
  I think they’ve completely disabled public profiles. I never use LinkedIn, and my own profile is now locked down (though pieces of it show up in search engine cache).
brndnmtthws 9y ago
LinkedIn is a complete joke, but also somewhat necessary. It's become the new resume. I personally maintain a parody of myself profile (check it out if you want: https://linkedin.com/in/brndnmtthws https://linkedin.com/in/brndnmtthws) but I'm considering deleting my account altogether because LinkedIn seems to only be used as a spam delivery mechanism these days.
- frik 9y ago
  Has Microsoft took LinkedIn over or is LinkedIn still a separate entity? Anyway the quality of the sites gets worse with each site update. Sometimes one has to hit F5 several times to see even the site. Reminds me of Friendster.
- rdiddly 9y ago
  Can't see it without logging in... O the irony.
- kerouanton 9y ago
  "LinkedIn seems to only be used as a spam delivery mechanism these days." I created a dedicated email address for Linkedin. And yes, I do receive a lot of spam on this unique email address. For testing purposes, I regularly update this email address to a new one every 6 months, and spam begins to flow a few days after the address change. So I believe either LinkedIn resells email addresses, makes users emails public and easy to scrap, or regularly gets hacked.
hedora 9y ago
Moving forward, I guess I’ll have to make sure my web server has all the info my LinkedIn profile contains.
- demarq 9y ago
  most people are likely to know how to get to linked in, but your webserver... not so much.
  - hedora 9y ago
    Point taken, though my GitHub page is right under LinkedIn for the common spelling of my name on unbubbled google search. Also, you can figure out the right spelling by skimming the top ten of the other spelling’s results (oddly, LinkedIn is the top hit for both spellings). I mostly just crosslink across reputable, indexable domains and make sure the same keywords show up everywhere that’s possible. :-) But, yeah, nothing seems to think my web server should be in the top ten of any keyword search.
    - demarq 9y ago
      > common spelling of my name on unbubbled google search I think there is a misunderstanding here. Things work the other way around. People do not seek you, linked in takes you to them. A recruiter more often is looking for people with your skillset, than looking for you specifically. In other words they are not typing in your name into a search engine, they are typing "aws architect python" etc. If they were seeking you specifically, they probably already know enough about you and will just get to emailing you directly.
  - asdfgadsfgasfdg 9y ago
    Really? I think most people still know how to go to a website (they might go there by googling the url but that is another matter).
    - demarq 9y ago
      one thing to know, another not to have to know
wslh 9y ago
I always think about LinkedIn as a "light scam". LinkedIn always pretended to help businesses and employees but indeed they don't do anything special to match people except for recruiters, which at the end it is enough with a search. To put it straight, it is not a Tinder for business. I tried many paid services like Ads, Premium, and API. They are subpar. I recruit better via Reddit than via LinkedIn, you can post in a group with hundreds of thousands and it is a ghost town when nobody pay attention. they refuse API access for obvious uses, etc.
- fineng123 9y ago
  LinkedIn (i.e., data.com) is far and away the best tool for recruiting/accessing GTM professionals. And it's in China. That doesn't sound like that bad of a niche to me.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    I spent some time searching but still can't find out what a GTM professional is. What is it?
    - fineng123 9y ago
      Go To Market, so sales and marketing and everything that hangs off that
      - geekamongus 9y ago
        That explains why LinkedIn feels so "salesy" and "markety."
        Yhippa 9y ago
        And why it would be so easy to find a "GTM" person there
    - paulddraper 9y ago
      GTM is an automotive company, though it's European, so IDK why the OP would be recruiting in China. (Though my initial tech-centered recognition was a common reference to Google Tag Manager :)
sarreph 9y ago
I'd like to see this issue get more attention. However, I did think this was already known — anecdotally, I've not really been able to view public profiles ≈50% of the time without hitting an auth-wall. What I'd like to know more, is if LinkedIn tracks non-logged-in viewers somehow. I have an inkling there's some kind of cookie-mongering taking place that informs the person's profile that you viewed who you are (if they are able to ascertain that). It's just an inkling, but strong enough to make sure I'm always browsing others' profiles in Incognito.
- croisillon 9y ago
  there is https://www.linkedin.com/me/profile-views/ https://www.linkedin.com/me/profile-views/ the rule is that if wou wanna see who viewed yours you have to let the viewed profiles know who you are ; conversely if you don't wanna let the viewed profiles know who you are you can not see who viewed yours
- justinclift 9y ago
  It's definitely a cookie wall of some sort. On the computer I used to access LinkedIn from, I use two browsers. One for general browsing, and one for "more sensitive content" (eg things with passwords). I used to log into LinkedIn with the second one. Trying to look at public LinkedIn profiles using the general browser (which has no LinkedIn cookie) never works. Always shows the log-in-wall. Whereas looking at the exact same profile (cut-n-pasting-the-url) using the browser-used-for-secure-content did always work. 100% reproducible.
  - jeromegv 9y ago
    That is so odd. So I use Safari for general browsing. Typically use Chrome in private window but rarely for general browsing (only sometimes). For a while I would always check linkedin profiles from google private window and a google search and it stopped working a few months ago (getting an auth wall). After reading your message, I opened Firefox (which I never use), googled a name, click on the linkedin name, and bang it worked!
    - 9y ago
acd 9y ago
Its an issue private companies are owning the social networks which are the real value for most people. Ie you give away private information which are then sold as targeted ads to you. For example SMTP is an internet standard yet almost none of the new tech is standardized chat, social networks.
- pmlnr 9y ago
  > none of the new tech is standardized chat XMPP? > social networks This is on it's way (sort of) in form of ActivityStreams, webmentions + h-feed, etc. Making something into a standard unfortunately takes a lot of time but with the GDPR it might even get a push, data portability wise.
known 9y ago
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish by MS
lordnacho 9y ago
LinkedIn is a weird, weird place. There's always people wanting to add me, but then they mostly don't introduce themselves. Even half of the recruiters who add me don't do an intro. How is that networking? The articles seem pretty low quality. Sorry to say it, but a lot of them seem to be written as a form of homework, as in "you should write something to be seen". There's rarely any insightful comments on news pieces either. And then there's Oleg. Doing a parody of him is basically the only form of humour on LinkedIn. Do you agree? The endorsements system is messed up. My 6th grade teacher endorsed me for "derivatives" and "investment". That's not quite the same as a colleague or a manager, is it? But you won't know unless you check all those links. The one thing it's good for is as a replacement for a rolodex. No need to have business cards anymore, you have LinkedIn.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tnolet 9y ago
  LinkedIn is going the MySpace way. Total crap “content”, endless amount of people that indeed just want “connect” without intro, reason or anything else than bumping their numbers. Weird thing, I found it pretty useful up to 2 years ago. I guess that’s when the influencers takeover and bullshit blogging began.
  - praneshp 9y ago
    God, you should see the number of 20 line posts, each line in a paragraph by itself, about how someone hired someone that others wouldn't. I agree with you about the 2 years/influencers thing.
    - gnicholas 9y ago
      Yeah, I think the platform is more popular among recruiters, which leads these types of posts to become popular with likes/comments/arguments. I am genuinely curious how they get tens of thousands of engagements though. I can't imagine getting in public arguments about this stuff. Maybe it's a form of networking for recruiters? To us outsiders, it's just plain bizarre.
chimen 9y ago
2 months ago I signed up for a 30 day trial to search for people to hire and then 140 eu/mo if I decide to continue using it. Of course I forgot to stop it (they were pretty quiet also) and they charged me 1400+ eu for a full year because...why not - no refunds (that's what their page says). I know, I know...should have read the whole shebang. Lost 1400 euros for something I didn't really use. I was about to pay for a month and discontinue but now I feel robbed. I do websites myself and I write in `bold - caps - red` when I'm about to charge someone for a full year. Shady tactics.
- WrtCdEvrydy 9y ago
  Call your CC, tell them they charged you incorrectly, include the page saying 140/month.
  - chimen 9y ago
    It's not about that. I'm the CEO. I'm sure it's somewhat my mistake because they wouldn't risk lawsuits for shady tactics. Probably a 0.8px text in gray somewhere on that page saying I'll get charged yearly and not monthly.
    - praulv 9y ago
      Doesn't matter. I recently got suckered into their free premium trial as well which then resulted in monthly charges. I complained quite vocally about their tactics and got it refunded straight away. It is worth a shot. At the very least be willing to pay a minimum of a month's fees.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - delinka 9y ago
      "...they wouldn't risk lawsuits for shady tactics." This sounds like you don't do business often (with US corporations?) They're hoping more people like you just let it ride. That's how they're making money. Hit them where it hurts - have the bank perform a chargeback. Enough of that happens, and their rates to accept credit cards goes up.
kevinconaway 9y ago
The issue at hand is how LinkedIn defines “public”. From the public profile settings page the author linked: > Select what shows via searches on Bing, Google, etc. as well as on public profile badges and permitted services like Outlook, when the viewers are not logged-in members or did not bind their LinkedIn account to their account on such services. Its not anyone who isn’t logged in but rather a subset of unauthenticated users who discover your profile through a specific set of avenues Clicking on the informational icon next to “public” reinforces what they mean: >All LinkedIn members as well as others who find you through search engines (e.g. Google, Bing) or other servies.
- detaro 9y ago
  I just tried googling the authors profile and got a login-wall coming from Google though.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Are you sure you're not running any browser extensions that might be blocking the Referrer header? On fresh Chrome profile, I didn't get a login-wall from Google, but I did get one coming directly to the URL.
- paulddraper 9y ago
  WTF? How is "accessible via the home page of 99%" of the Internet not public?
- pmlnr 9y ago
  The exact wording is "Make my public profile visible to everyone". They need to re-word that sentence for certain, this way, it's not true.
vanderZwan 9y ago
As a UX guy I have noticed so many dumb quirks, tiny inconsistencies and flat-out design errors like: - URLs not being clickable or selectable in many contexts for no good reason - icon positions/sizes being off by a pixel between different pages - if you're typing a message in their mobile app, and the text input field loses focus for whatever reason, everything you typed in so far is erased (this was true a few years ago and I essentially "rage-quit" the LinkedIn app after that) ... that I am absolutely convinced that their technology stack is a Frankenstein's monster of different chunks of code and logic, with a similar-enough skin on the outside for all of the parts to fool the managers (both inside and outside LinkedIn) into believing the website works. (I know, I know: in a way all software projects relying on other libraries are Frankensteins, but you know what I'm talking about here: the parts don't even fit together properly) These kinds of "ignores its own rules" bits fits perfectly with that. I really wonder what the internal culture of that company is. I bet there's a lot of turnover, leading to this mess.
- jdhn 9y ago
  Another UX guy here. Right after they did their redesign, I had an initial phone screen where the interviewer asked if I had a portfolio. I told them that it was on my Linkedin profile, and the interviewer said that he had looked there first, but couldn't find it. I knew that I had put it on there, so I went to LinkedIn to see if the recruiter had made a mistake.. About 2 minutes later, I figured out what had happened. The redesign had moved the Contact & Personal Info section to the side of the screen, and by default it was collapsed. Originally it was right under your profile picture & job title, but for some reason they decided to move & hide it. Very strange.
  - vanderZwan 9y ago
    My money is on separate teams that don't communicate with each other. Would explain the icon inconsistencies I mentioned earlier too.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    [deleted]
robinhood 9y ago
I've hated Linkedin for years, but what's interesting is to understand why. I think it's a mix of - really, really bad UX resulting in an ugly product - the level of emptiness of the news feed, full of people talking about respectful bosses and good work condition while quoting Steve Jobs (oh, the irony) - seeing people becoming apparently more successful than me (if I have to be honest) - the level of intrusiveness of the platform in general Despite all that, I've been afraid of missing job opportunities if I left the platform. And I don't know why, because I've only found one job through Linkedin in 10 years. I wish I had the guts to leave it entirely.
- na85 9y ago
  What bothers me the most about LinkedIn is how vapid everyone seems to be. Everone has a job title like 'dynamic individual searching for creative opportunities' when they really mean unemployed. It's like a game where everyone pretends while simultaneously knowing that everyone else is pretending too.
  - robinhood 9y ago
    I've long thought of an alternative, but I don't think we can do better than this actually, as people are, by nature, vapid, in the sense that they will always pretend to be someone they are not. I wish someone will create an alternative where, unlike Facebook, people don't feel miserable after visiting the site.
    - phillc73 9y ago
      There are alternatives[1][2], it's just that it doesn't feel like they have critical mass outside certain markets. XING is focused on German speakers and claims circa €150 million in revenue. Viadeo claims 65 million users. They're not exactly small or overtly failing entities. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XING https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XING [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viadeo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viadeo
  - noarchy 9y ago
    > It's like a game where everyone pretends while simultaneously knowing that everyone else is pretending too. To be fair, that sounds a lot like job-hunting, in general. The whole process can be filled with rituals meant to obfuscate the fact that you just want a job.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
I just ran into this, and it's weird, because it's not consistent. I tried to look up someone's profile, and saw the same paywall page - but accessing it from a different browser profile (or maybe Incognito - I forget) showed the profile to me.
muthusk 9y ago
LinkedIn wants users to sign in to see anyone's profile. what is seen is defined by the user. LinkedIn is behind networking data. who sees who, who connects to who and how are the connections and relations impacting.. etc.. so they are not for showing anyone profile for the public. that is the new business model. this news is mistitled, Linkedin is not anonymous anymore.
- 0x00000000 9y ago
  I wish Google would obliterate their search engine ranking for redirecting you to a login screen that does not contain any of the text from the preview
petetnt 9y ago
Sort of funny LinkedIn story: I was fed up with the recruiters constantly contacting me without any relevance to the work I actually would like to do (if I was looking for a job in the first place, which I am not as my profile states). So I went ahead and changed my job descriptions to things like "The theme for Fresh Prince Of Bel Air plays in the background" and I have now been contacted about my Fresh Prince Of Bel Air skills twice.
- userbinator 9y ago
  Those are the "spamcruiters" who just use bots to scrape the pages and automate the whole process. I don't use it myself but I've heard from others who have, several times, received offers for jobs in the company they were already working at.
  - a3n 9y ago
    LinkedIn has suggested that I connect with addresses of mail lists.
- justinclift 9y ago
  I just changed my public description to say "Idiot recruiters Fuck Off". That dropped the amount of er... idiot recruiters substantially. :)
jamhan 9y ago
LinkedIn need to be made an example of. They continue to spam with contact recommendations etc even after I closed my account.
bitL 9y ago
LinkedIn is super buggy lately (6 months+); it might be one of those recent ones. Maybe they are transferring from their own tech to Azure, causing all kinds of fun happening?
wrs 9y ago
Aside from the question of whether the request should be denied... The HTTP status “999 Request Denied” is complete nonsense. What is the point of that?
- metafunk 9y ago
  Am I weird for being more upset about this than the rest of LinkedIn's shady "public" page treatment?
extesy 9y ago
You might have bought a wrong product then. You should use PPC job posting that only charges you for clicks and doesn't have any trials or annual subscriptions: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/74054/pay-per-click-pricing-for-posting-a-job-frequently-asked-questions?lang=en https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/74054/pay-per-...
mathattack 9y ago
LinkedIn seems to be moving heavily towards monetize at all costs. They’ve always been an Enterprise Company making money off of ads and HR departments. Now they’re going more extreme with aggressive credit card policies and more user limits. They risk killing the goose that’s laying their golden eggs. Facebook is learning it quicker than they are.
kburman 9y ago
If I remember correctly, Linkedin recently lost a court case where some startup was scraping it's public data for analytics purpose. And pretty sure LinkedIn didn't like that. Edit: Heres the article about the court case.[Aug 15, 2017] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-linkedin-ruling/u-s-judge-says-linkedin-cannot-block-startup-from-public-profile-data-idUSKCN1AU2BV https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-linkedin-ruling...
- philipodonnell 9y ago
  I still hear a lot of complaints about this, has there been any confirmation that LinkedIn changed anything at all?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ChuckMcM 9y ago
There seems to be a relationship between 'not logged in' and 'not a LinkedIn user'. I have found sometimes that a profile isn't visible (asks me to log in) because at one time I was logged in. Switching to an incognito window "fixed" it. That said, I too find that people use LinkedIn in different ways, I try to only link with people whom I know personally, ideally have worked with, and know something about me. I do occasionally get random invites (which I assume is someone trying to reach me) which I will accept and add a calendar entry to remove in 2 weeks. Then if I haven't heard anything from them for 2 weeks I know it was just random 'contacts' spamming or 'people you might want to link with' spamming.
yeukhon 9y ago
LinkedIn is a good tool. The recruitment email aspect is definitely quite annoying, but please consider using an alternative email address so you don't get spammed, if that's one of the things you find problematic. It's an easy solution to that (you can also disable notification). I always use separate email addresses to keep my sanity (one for private, one for bank, one for useless stuff, one for mailing list, one for tech, one for school, one for utility bills, and a couple more). I often use LinkedIn to check out famous people's credentials because I am generally curious about their backgrounds. From time to time I do get a "hello" from really big SV companies, otherwise I would have a hard time to get an initial interview without a LinkedIn profile. I am sure they send like 10,000 requests every month, but it still help speeds the progress with a recruiter directly reaching out to you. But there was an embarrassing anecdote, something a lot of users had faced before. One day I was on LinkedIn and it asked me whether I want to import contacts, I hit "no thanks", but I think there was another confirmation which I pressed "next" and LinkedIn sent out an invitation to everyone in my email contact list, including many mailing lists. Some mailing lists rejected the email, but some let the email through its filter.
- philipodonnell 9y ago
  I agree. If it was just a resume hosting tool and a graph of who probably knows who then it would be quite valuable. As long as it is... whatever you call that kind of thing, its always going to be something people hate.
sambe 9y ago
Easily the buggiest, spammiest and most dishonest of the social media sites, I hardly find it surprising. Never had any reason to go there other than incessant spam invites, unwanted notifications and the vague promise of potential future value of contacts.
Tepix 9y ago
Unfortunately, the german LinkedIn competitor (clone?) xing.com is getting less usable all the time. They try very hard to get you to subscribe and have crippled most of their functions (search etc) in reckless fashion.
- distances 9y ago
  Xing is almost a scam, demanding asymmetrical methods for signing to a service (such as their paid membership) and canceling that service. For canceling, you need all kinds of manually sent, privacy endangering proofs of identity while subscribing is of course very straightforward. Furthermore, they are very aggressive at sending any of these fees to collections if you dispute their shady tactics -- I personally know people who've been bitten by this. It has left such a bad taste in my mouth that I always strongly suggest everyone to abandon them. What they do is technically legal, but definitely should not be. The company can't die soon enough.
- sdfjkl 9y ago
  Xing just means that now you have to have profiles on two annoying job networking sites instead of one, because Xing is virtually only used in Germany, and Linkedin in the rest of the world.
deft 9y ago
yep I noticed this months ago. Very annoying, I set mine to public for a reason...
notadoc 9y ago
Easy solution; don't use LinkedIn.
pasbesoin 9y ago
Years ago, LinkedIn's early behavior caused me to avoid them. I can't say anything's changed. I wonder what I'll do if/when I need to engage in a "traditional" job search. There's no way I want to let them into my life, professional nor otherwise. As for the ongoing "networking" aspect: It reminds me all too much of the "can you do something for me" networking permeating the traditional job search. I've met a minority of really helpful people and generous spirit, in the past, in that context. But, it's individuals you get to know, personally; the proforma data exchanges are mostly just part of the routine and are at best a pre-cursor to those few real connections. I can't see LinkedIn or its like ever "algorithmizing" that. Though, like I said, I don't have experience with it. TL;DR: If I'm not a networking cynic, I'm a pragmatist. And with the way LinkedIn has spammed me, because one of my friends once touched their property, however briefly and/or indirectly, I'm not very optimistic their model matched my experience of what actually works and is useful. And, I don't want their cooties.
Pxtl 9y ago
That's fair, I'm ignoring LinkedIn. Seriously, I'm ignoring a crapload of messages from that service.
deftturtle 9y ago
is anyone actually surprised? LinkedIn is even more hostile than Facebook. scum of the earth.

380 points by pmlnr 9y ago

webmaven 9y ago

Public not pubic. SMH

pmlnr 9y ago
I need to keep a better eye on my typos o.O Thanks.
sarreph 9y ago
No need to be condescending about it ("smh") — people make mistakes...

sidcool 9y ago

Honestly, anything you want private should not go to LinkedIn.

ealexhudson 9y ago
The article's point is the inverse: you cannot get any info public (without login) e even if that's explicitly what you ask for..

IgorPartola 9y ago

I deleted my LinkedIn profile years ago. The amount of spam I was getting from them was ridiculous (the owner of the pizza joint next door wants to add you, etc.). The final straw was when someone pointed out to me that unless you keep it up to date, it reflects poorly on you. And I had no interest in doing that.

visarga 9y ago
I deleted mine too, but recently I wanted to see someone else's page and was not allowed. Not even a detail shown without login.
- jasonkostempski 9y ago
  Make a fake account using a throwaway email everytime you want to view a page.
- kuschku 9y ago
  If your referrer is from Google, they actually do allow you to see public detail. So just override referrer header, and you'll see a lot more.
  - pmlnr 9y ago
    Doesn't work for me either, at least not with cURL.
    - BenjiWiebe 9y ago
      Don't forget that you have to misspell Referer.
      - pmlnr 9y ago
        !!! I'm having a really bad day with typos and overlooking them. You are correct; it does work with https://google.com https://google.com as referrer. I'm updating the entry. EDIT aaand it stopped working. It was either a glitch or it will lock you out after a few requests.
        OkGoDoIt 9y ago
        It definitely locks you out after a few requests. In the past I built a LinkedIn profile scraper, but they are really really good at locking down their data. If you even somewhat appear to be a bot, you’re blocked.
        flukus 9y ago
        Can it differentiate between a bot and a human opening up a dozen links in tabs? I suspect the tumblr one can't, it appears to rate limit me for using there archive pages.
kirykl 9y ago
A hiring manager told me recently I need to work on “curating [my] linked in presence” in response to how I could position myself better for the job
- nvr219 9y ago
  Sad but true. Clients look me up on linkedin (I know because they mention it to me) and I'll bet if I didn't have a linkedin page they'd think that's weird.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    It also, if you invest a little effort to produce an appealing profile, does a great deal to make up for weak face-to-face networking skills. The "LinkedIn, faugh, who needs it" attitude around here really doesn't do an introvert any favors, I think.
    - IgorPartola 9y ago
      Why not host your own resume?
      - throwanem 9y ago
        No reason not to do both. But if you only do one, LinkedIn has discovery benefits that are very hard to equal with self-hosting.
      - nvr219 9y ago
        I do both.
      - apple4ever 9y ago
        Actually, that's a good point. If you don't want to do linked in, then host one on your own site, and make sure its on your resume.
  - apple4ever 9y ago
    I know I do. If you applied and you can't even keep up a decent LinkedIn, why should I interview you? Or better yet, trust you?
squarefoot 9y ago
Same here, I unsubscribed about 10 years ago and never regretted, but although choosing not to receive anything anymore, they kept pestering me with unwanted invitations until I contacted again them in 2014 and finally got completely deleted from their lists (hopefully).
astura 9y ago
I've never had a LinkedIn account and I still get spam from them. The "so and so wants to connect with you on LinkedIn."
- stareatgoats 9y ago
  Technically this is because Linkedin asks to be given access to a user's contacts (phone, email or otherwise) and then displays the contacts as people possible to connect to, regardless of whether the contacts are members already or not. No doubt some manager with shady ethics thought this a very clever way to expand the number of users.
- robin_reala 9y ago
  I used to just delete LinkedIn emails but started to hit unsubscribe on each email I got, one month after another. That lasted for 6 months before I flipped and said that this was the only warning I’d give that they’d be taken to court if they ever emailed me again. Not a single email since that point, so an internal blacklist must exist.
- aendruk 9y ago
  You can preemptively add yourself to their "do not contact" list: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/426 https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/426 I did it four years ago and they've honored it since.
  - alxndr 9y ago
    The captcha on that page is broken in Chrome 63.
enobrev 9y ago
I did the same and still received spam from them for a couple months. After contacting them, it stopped, but I still get "networking requests" from real life friends and colleagues every so often. I assue those are just because I'm in these people's contact lists or something.

pablostarter 9y ago

It's tied to an IP address, you have a limited number of visits per day. At least in my experience has been like that, really annoying... https://webapps.stackexchange.com/a/106476 https://webapps.stackexchange.com/a/106476 https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/69654 https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/69654

hedora 9y ago
I think they’ve completely disabled public profiles. I never use LinkedIn, and my own profile is now locked down (though pieces of it show up in search engine cache).

brndnmtthws 9y ago

LinkedIn is a complete joke, but also somewhat necessary. It's become the new resume. I personally maintain a parody of myself profile (check it out if you want: https://linkedin.com/in/brndnmtthws https://linkedin.com/in/brndnmtthws) but I'm considering deleting my account altogether because LinkedIn seems to only be used as a spam delivery mechanism these days.

frik 9y ago
Has Microsoft took LinkedIn over or is LinkedIn still a separate entity? Anyway the quality of the sites gets worse with each site update. Sometimes one has to hit F5 several times to see even the site. Reminds me of Friendster.
rdiddly 9y ago
Can't see it without logging in... O the irony.
kerouanton 9y ago
"LinkedIn seems to only be used as a spam delivery mechanism these days." I created a dedicated email address for Linkedin. And yes, I do receive a lot of spam on this unique email address. For testing purposes, I regularly update this email address to a new one every 6 months, and spam begins to flow a few days after the address change. So I believe either LinkedIn resells email addresses, makes users emails public and easy to scrap, or regularly gets hacked.

hedora 9y ago

Moving forward, I guess I’ll have to make sure my web server has all the info my LinkedIn profile contains.

demarq 9y ago
most people are likely to know how to get to linked in, but your webserver... not so much.
- hedora 9y ago
  Point taken, though my GitHub page is right under LinkedIn for the common spelling of my name on unbubbled google search. Also, you can figure out the right spelling by skimming the top ten of the other spelling’s results (oddly, LinkedIn is the top hit for both spellings). I mostly just crosslink across reputable, indexable domains and make sure the same keywords show up everywhere that’s possible. :-) But, yeah, nothing seems to think my web server should be in the top ten of any keyword search.
  - demarq 9y ago
    > common spelling of my name on unbubbled google search I think there is a misunderstanding here. Things work the other way around. People do not seek you, linked in takes you to them. A recruiter more often is looking for people with your skillset, than looking for you specifically. In other words they are not typing in your name into a search engine, they are typing "aws architect python" etc. If they were seeking you specifically, they probably already know enough about you and will just get to emailing you directly.
- asdfgadsfgasfdg 9y ago
  Really? I think most people still know how to go to a website (they might go there by googling the url but that is another matter).
  - demarq 9y ago
    one thing to know, another not to have to know

wslh 9y ago

I always think about LinkedIn as a "light scam". LinkedIn always pretended to help businesses and employees but indeed they don't do anything special to match people except for recruiters, which at the end it is enough with a search. To put it straight, it is not a Tinder for business. I tried many paid services like Ads, Premium, and API. They are subpar. I recruit better via Reddit than via LinkedIn, you can post in a group with hundreds of thousands and it is a ghost town when nobody pay attention. they refuse API access for obvious uses, etc.

fineng123 9y ago
LinkedIn (i.e., data.com) is far and away the best tool for recruiting/accessing GTM professionals. And it's in China. That doesn't sound like that bad of a niche to me.
- jstanley 9y ago
  I spent some time searching but still can't find out what a GTM professional is. What is it?
  - fineng123 9y ago
    Go To Market, so sales and marketing and everything that hangs off that
    - geekamongus 9y ago
      That explains why LinkedIn feels so "salesy" and "markety."
      - Yhippa 9y ago
        And why it would be so easy to find a "GTM" person there
  - paulddraper 9y ago
    GTM is an automotive company, though it's European, so IDK why the OP would be recruiting in China. (Though my initial tech-centered recognition was a common reference to Google Tag Manager :)

sarreph 9y ago

I'd like to see this issue get more attention. However, I did think this was already known — anecdotally, I've not really been able to view public profiles ≈50% of the time without hitting an auth-wall. What I'd like to know more, is if LinkedIn tracks non-logged-in viewers somehow. I have an inkling there's some kind of cookie-mongering taking place that informs the person's profile that you viewed who you are (if they are able to ascertain that). It's just an inkling, but strong enough to make sure I'm always browsing others' profiles in Incognito.

croisillon 9y ago
there is https://www.linkedin.com/me/profile-views/ https://www.linkedin.com/me/profile-views/ the rule is that if wou wanna see who viewed yours you have to let the viewed profiles know who you are ; conversely if you don't wanna let the viewed profiles know who you are you can not see who viewed yours
justinclift 9y ago
It's definitely a cookie wall of some sort. On the computer I used to access LinkedIn from, I use two browsers. One for general browsing, and one for "more sensitive content" (eg things with passwords). I used to log into LinkedIn with the second one. Trying to look at public LinkedIn profiles using the general browser (which has no LinkedIn cookie) never works. Always shows the log-in-wall. Whereas looking at the exact same profile (cut-n-pasting-the-url) using the browser-used-for-secure-content did always work. 100% reproducible.
- jeromegv 9y ago
  That is so odd. So I use Safari for general browsing. Typically use Chrome in private window but rarely for general browsing (only sometimes). For a while I would always check linkedin profiles from google private window and a google search and it stopped working a few months ago (getting an auth wall). After reading your message, I opened Firefox (which I never use), googled a name, click on the linkedin name, and bang it worked!
  - 9y ago

acd 9y ago

Its an issue private companies are owning the social networks which are the real value for most people. Ie you give away private information which are then sold as targeted ads to you. For example SMTP is an internet standard yet almost none of the new tech is standardized chat, social networks.

pmlnr 9y ago
> none of the new tech is standardized chat XMPP? > social networks This is on it's way (sort of) in form of ActivityStreams, webmentions + h-feed, etc. Making something into a standard unfortunately takes a lot of time but with the GDPR it might even get a push, data portability wise.

known 9y ago

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish by MS

lordnacho 9y ago

LinkedIn is a weird, weird place. There's always people wanting to add me, but then they mostly don't introduce themselves. Even half of the recruiters who add me don't do an intro. How is that networking? The articles seem pretty low quality. Sorry to say it, but a lot of them seem to be written as a form of homework, as in "you should write something to be seen". There's rarely any insightful comments on news pieces either. And then there's Oleg. Doing a parody of him is basically the only form of humour on LinkedIn. Do you agree? The endorsements system is messed up. My 6th grade teacher endorsed me for "derivatives" and "investment". That's not quite the same as a colleague or a manager, is it? But you won't know unless you check all those links. The one thing it's good for is as a replacement for a rolodex. No need to have business cards anymore, you have LinkedIn.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tnolet 9y ago
LinkedIn is going the MySpace way. Total crap “content”, endless amount of people that indeed just want “connect” without intro, reason or anything else than bumping their numbers. Weird thing, I found it pretty useful up to 2 years ago. I guess that’s when the influencers takeover and bullshit blogging began.
- praneshp 9y ago
  God, you should see the number of 20 line posts, each line in a paragraph by itself, about how someone hired someone that others wouldn't. I agree with you about the 2 years/influencers thing.
  - gnicholas 9y ago
    Yeah, I think the platform is more popular among recruiters, which leads these types of posts to become popular with likes/comments/arguments. I am genuinely curious how they get tens of thousands of engagements though. I can't imagine getting in public arguments about this stuff. Maybe it's a form of networking for recruiters? To us outsiders, it's just plain bizarre.

chimen 9y ago

2 months ago I signed up for a 30 day trial to search for people to hire and then 140 eu/mo if I decide to continue using it. Of course I forgot to stop it (they were pretty quiet also) and they charged me 1400+ eu for a full year because...why not - no refunds (that's what their page says). I know, I know...should have read the whole shebang. Lost 1400 euros for something I didn't really use. I was about to pay for a month and discontinue but now I feel robbed. I do websites myself and I write in `bold - caps - red` when I'm about to charge someone for a full year. Shady tactics.

WrtCdEvrydy 9y ago
Call your CC, tell them they charged you incorrectly, include the page saying 140/month.
- chimen 9y ago
  It's not about that. I'm the CEO. I'm sure it's somewhat my mistake because they wouldn't risk lawsuits for shady tactics. Probably a 0.8px text in gray somewhere on that page saying I'll get charged yearly and not monthly.
  - praulv 9y ago
    Doesn't matter. I recently got suckered into their free premium trial as well which then resulted in monthly charges. I complained quite vocally about their tactics and got it refunded straight away. It is worth a shot. At the very least be willing to pay a minimum of a month's fees.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - delinka 9y ago
    "...they wouldn't risk lawsuits for shady tactics." This sounds like you don't do business often (with US corporations?) They're hoping more people like you just let it ride. That's how they're making money. Hit them where it hurts - have the bank perform a chargeback. Enough of that happens, and their rates to accept credit cards goes up.

kevinconaway 9y ago

The issue at hand is how LinkedIn defines “public”. From the public profile settings page the author linked: > Select what shows via searches on Bing, Google, etc. as well as on public profile badges and permitted services like Outlook, when the viewers are not logged-in members or did not bind their LinkedIn account to their account on such services. Its not anyone who isn’t logged in but rather a subset of unauthenticated users who discover your profile through a specific set of avenues Clicking on the informational icon next to “public” reinforces what they mean: >All LinkedIn members as well as others who find you through search engines (e.g. Google, Bing) or other servies.

detaro 9y ago
I just tried googling the authors profile and got a login-wall coming from Google though.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Are you sure you're not running any browser extensions that might be blocking the Referrer header? On fresh Chrome profile, I didn't get a login-wall from Google, but I did get one coming directly to the URL.
paulddraper 9y ago
WTF? How is "accessible via the home page of 99%" of the Internet not public?
pmlnr 9y ago
The exact wording is "Make my public profile visible to everyone". They need to re-word that sentence for certain, this way, it's not true.

vanderZwan 9y ago

As a UX guy I have noticed so many dumb quirks, tiny inconsistencies and flat-out design errors like: - URLs not being clickable or selectable in many contexts for no good reason - icon positions/sizes being off by a pixel between different pages - if you're typing a message in their mobile app, and the text input field loses focus for whatever reason, everything you typed in so far is erased (this was true a few years ago and I essentially "rage-quit" the LinkedIn app after that) ... that I am absolutely convinced that their technology stack is a Frankenstein's monster of different chunks of code and logic, with a similar-enough skin on the outside for all of the parts to fool the managers (both inside and outside LinkedIn) into believing the website works. (I know, I know: in a way all software projects relying on other libraries are Frankensteins, but you know what I'm talking about here: the parts don't even fit together properly) These kinds of "ignores its own rules" bits fits perfectly with that. I really wonder what the internal culture of that company is. I bet there's a lot of turnover, leading to this mess.

jdhn 9y ago
Another UX guy here. Right after they did their redesign, I had an initial phone screen where the interviewer asked if I had a portfolio. I told them that it was on my Linkedin profile, and the interviewer said that he had looked there first, but couldn't find it. I knew that I had put it on there, so I went to LinkedIn to see if the recruiter had made a mistake.. About 2 minutes later, I figured out what had happened. The redesign had moved the Contact & Personal Info section to the side of the screen, and by default it was collapsed. Originally it was right under your profile picture & job title, but for some reason they decided to move & hide it. Very strange.
- vanderZwan 9y ago
  My money is on separate teams that don't communicate with each other. Would explain the icon inconsistencies I mentioned earlier too.
- SilasX 9y ago
  [deleted]

robinhood 9y ago

I've hated Linkedin for years, but what's interesting is to understand why. I think it's a mix of - really, really bad UX resulting in an ugly product - the level of emptiness of the news feed, full of people talking about respectful bosses and good work condition while quoting Steve Jobs (oh, the irony) - seeing people becoming apparently more successful than me (if I have to be honest) - the level of intrusiveness of the platform in general Despite all that, I've been afraid of missing job opportunities if I left the platform. And I don't know why, because I've only found one job through Linkedin in 10 years. I wish I had the guts to leave it entirely.

na85 9y ago
What bothers me the most about LinkedIn is how vapid everyone seems to be. Everone has a job title like 'dynamic individual searching for creative opportunities' when they really mean unemployed. It's like a game where everyone pretends while simultaneously knowing that everyone else is pretending too.
- robinhood 9y ago
  I've long thought of an alternative, but I don't think we can do better than this actually, as people are, by nature, vapid, in the sense that they will always pretend to be someone they are not. I wish someone will create an alternative where, unlike Facebook, people don't feel miserable after visiting the site.
  - phillc73 9y ago
    There are alternatives[1][2], it's just that it doesn't feel like they have critical mass outside certain markets. XING is focused on German speakers and claims circa €150 million in revenue. Viadeo claims 65 million users. They're not exactly small or overtly failing entities. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XING https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XING [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viadeo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viadeo
- noarchy 9y ago
  > It's like a game where everyone pretends while simultaneously knowing that everyone else is pretending too. To be fair, that sounds a lot like job-hunting, in general. The whole process can be filled with rituals meant to obfuscate the fact that you just want a job.

pavel_lishin 9y ago

I just ran into this, and it's weird, because it's not consistent. I tried to look up someone's profile, and saw the same paywall page - but accessing it from a different browser profile (or maybe Incognito - I forget) showed the profile to me.

muthusk 9y ago

LinkedIn wants users to sign in to see anyone's profile. what is seen is defined by the user. LinkedIn is behind networking data. who sees who, who connects to who and how are the connections and relations impacting.. etc.. so they are not for showing anyone profile for the public. that is the new business model. this news is mistitled, Linkedin is not anonymous anymore.

0x00000000 9y ago
I wish Google would obliterate their search engine ranking for redirecting you to a login screen that does not contain any of the text from the preview

petetnt 9y ago

Sort of funny LinkedIn story: I was fed up with the recruiters constantly contacting me without any relevance to the work I actually would like to do (if I was looking for a job in the first place, which I am not as my profile states). So I went ahead and changed my job descriptions to things like "The theme for Fresh Prince Of Bel Air plays in the background" and I have now been contacted about my Fresh Prince Of Bel Air skills twice.

userbinator 9y ago
Those are the "spamcruiters" who just use bots to scrape the pages and automate the whole process. I don't use it myself but I've heard from others who have, several times, received offers for jobs in the company they were already working at.
- a3n 9y ago
  LinkedIn has suggested that I connect with addresses of mail lists.
justinclift 9y ago
I just changed my public description to say "Idiot recruiters Fuck Off". That dropped the amount of er... idiot recruiters substantially. :)

jamhan 9y ago

LinkedIn need to be made an example of. They continue to spam with contact recommendations etc even after I closed my account.

bitL 9y ago

LinkedIn is super buggy lately (6 months+); it might be one of those recent ones. Maybe they are transferring from their own tech to Azure, causing all kinds of fun happening?

wrs 9y ago

Aside from the question of whether the request should be denied... The HTTP status “999 Request Denied” is complete nonsense. What is the point of that?

metafunk 9y ago
Am I weird for being more upset about this than the rest of LinkedIn's shady "public" page treatment?

extesy 9y ago

You might have bought a wrong product then. You should use PPC job posting that only charges you for clicks and doesn't have any trials or annual subscriptions: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/74054/pay-per-click-pricing-for-posting-a-job-frequently-asked-questions?lang=en https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/74054/pay-per-...

mathattack 9y ago

LinkedIn seems to be moving heavily towards monetize at all costs. They’ve always been an Enterprise Company making money off of ads and HR departments. Now they’re going more extreme with aggressive credit card policies and more user limits. They risk killing the goose that’s laying their golden eggs. Facebook is learning it quicker than they are.

kburman 9y ago

If I remember correctly, Linkedin recently lost a court case where some startup was scraping it's public data for analytics purpose. And pretty sure LinkedIn didn't like that. Edit: Heres the article about the court case.[Aug 15, 2017] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-linkedin-ruling/u-s-judge-says-linkedin-cannot-block-startup-from-public-profile-data-idUSKCN1AU2BV https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-linkedin-ruling...

philipodonnell 9y ago
I still hear a lot of complaints about this, has there been any confirmation that LinkedIn changed anything at all?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ChuckMcM 9y ago

There seems to be a relationship between 'not logged in' and 'not a LinkedIn user'. I have found sometimes that a profile isn't visible (asks me to log in) because at one time I was logged in. Switching to an incognito window "fixed" it. That said, I too find that people use LinkedIn in different ways, I try to only link with people whom I know personally, ideally have worked with, and know something about me. I do occasionally get random invites (which I assume is someone trying to reach me) which I will accept and add a calendar entry to remove in 2 weeks. Then if I haven't heard anything from them for 2 weeks I know it was just random 'contacts' spamming or 'people you might want to link with' spamming.

yeukhon 9y ago

LinkedIn is a good tool. The recruitment email aspect is definitely quite annoying, but please consider using an alternative email address so you don't get spammed, if that's one of the things you find problematic. It's an easy solution to that (you can also disable notification). I always use separate email addresses to keep my sanity (one for private, one for bank, one for useless stuff, one for mailing list, one for tech, one for school, one for utility bills, and a couple more). I often use LinkedIn to check out famous people's credentials because I am generally curious about their backgrounds. From time to time I do get a "hello" from really big SV companies, otherwise I would have a hard time to get an initial interview without a LinkedIn profile. I am sure they send like 10,000 requests every month, but it still help speeds the progress with a recruiter directly reaching out to you. But there was an embarrassing anecdote, something a lot of users had faced before. One day I was on LinkedIn and it asked me whether I want to import contacts, I hit "no thanks", but I think there was another confirmation which I pressed "next" and LinkedIn sent out an invitation to everyone in my email contact list, including many mailing lists. Some mailing lists rejected the email, but some let the email through its filter.

philipodonnell 9y ago
I agree. If it was just a resume hosting tool and a graph of who probably knows who then it would be quite valuable. As long as it is... whatever you call that kind of thing, its always going to be something people hate.

sambe 9y ago

Easily the buggiest, spammiest and most dishonest of the social media sites, I hardly find it surprising. Never had any reason to go there other than incessant spam invites, unwanted notifications and the vague promise of potential future value of contacts.

Tepix 9y ago

Unfortunately, the german LinkedIn competitor (clone?) xing.com is getting less usable all the time. They try very hard to get you to subscribe and have crippled most of their functions (search etc) in reckless fashion.

distances 9y ago
Xing is almost a scam, demanding asymmetrical methods for signing to a service (such as their paid membership) and canceling that service. For canceling, you need all kinds of manually sent, privacy endangering proofs of identity while subscribing is of course very straightforward. Furthermore, they are very aggressive at sending any of these fees to collections if you dispute their shady tactics -- I personally know people who've been bitten by this. It has left such a bad taste in my mouth that I always strongly suggest everyone to abandon them. What they do is technically legal, but definitely should not be. The company can't die soon enough.
sdfjkl 9y ago
Xing just means that now you have to have profiles on two annoying job networking sites instead of one, because Xing is virtually only used in Germany, and Linkedin in the rest of the world.

deft 9y ago

yep I noticed this months ago. Very annoying, I set mine to public for a reason...

notadoc 9y ago

Easy solution; don't use LinkedIn.

pasbesoin 9y ago

Years ago, LinkedIn's early behavior caused me to avoid them. I can't say anything's changed. I wonder what I'll do if/when I need to engage in a "traditional" job search. There's no way I want to let them into my life, professional nor otherwise. As for the ongoing "networking" aspect: It reminds me all too much of the "can you do something for me" networking permeating the traditional job search. I've met a minority of really helpful people and generous spirit, in the past, in that context. But, it's individuals you get to know, personally; the proforma data exchanges are mostly just part of the routine and are at best a pre-cursor to those few real connections. I can't see LinkedIn or its like ever "algorithmizing" that. Though, like I said, I don't have experience with it. TL;DR: If I'm not a networking cynic, I'm a pragmatist. And with the way LinkedIn has spammed me, because one of my friends once touched their property, however briefly and/or indirectly, I'm not very optimistic their model matched my experience of what actually works and is useful. And, I don't want their cooties.

Pxtl 9y ago

That's fair, I'm ignoring LinkedIn. Seriously, I'm ignoring a crapload of messages from that service.

deftturtle 9y ago

is anyone actually surprised? LinkedIn is even more hostile than Facebook. scum of the earth.