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Anyone remember polywork.com ? Their tagline was "Your professional network" They closed in early 2025 LinkedIn may suck. Let me retract that. It definitel

Anyone remember polywork.com ? Their tagline was "Your professional network" They closed in early 2025 LinkedIn may suck. Let me retract that. It definitely sucks (For me - it sucks because of non-professional posts in the feed. memes, political rants, funny pics etc.) But there are good parts as well. The most important thing going on for them is they have network effect. Everyone (and their grandma, as they say) is on LinkedIn When I was interviewing, I used to check the LinkedIn profile for the candidate as well. (Lot of times, after the interview in case I had good things to say in my feedback form) Having said that - Best wishes to OpenSpot.

zabil 2y ago
The network effect is strong, but it’s not unbeatable. History has shown that new social platforms can thrive despite the “everyone is already there” argument—Facebook vs MySpace, Insta, TikTok et al. I can’t predict how openspot will turn out, but I hope it or anything else doesn’t get caught up in the network effect narrative.
- AJ007 2y ago
  The network effect also works in reverse. The collapse of a network can happen very quickly. Facebook wasn't just functionally better than Myspace. Myspace experienced two really bad things at once, uncontrolled spam and adding display ads, at the same time, in 2008. It was easy to get users to just lose their daily Myspace habit and replace it with Facebook. LinkedIn is unlikely to be mismanaged as poorly as Myspace was but there will be openings for competitors. Myspace and Facebook were unique because they were both very interchangable at that point, although Myspace was kind of like the "public" internet while Facebook had already dropped the edu email requirement, it was still heavily skewed college educated at that point. Also worth pointing out, the edu email addresses requirement for Facebook likely did a lot for keeping their early network clean of bots and spam at a minimum cost. LinkedIn, on the other hand, basically hijacked their user's address books and sent out email impersonating those users, meanwhile ignoring unsubscribe requests and spam complaints. Which certainly sounds like something someone would end up in jail for doing (they did get in trouble for this.)
rachofsunshine 2y ago
Yep, pretty much this. I worked on this problem for a couple years, with vastly more funding and an existing userbase to bypass the cold start problem. So did my predecessor. Neither of us succeeded, nor came particularly close. Here's what I wrote last year in a retrospective about how we failed (with a few things not relevant to this post trimmed): > "LinkedIn For Engineers" - that was the by-phrase within Triplebyte for most of 2020 as we shifted into the Source era. > Job searching on LinkedIn sucks! (True.) Engineers hate LinkedIn! (Often true.) So if we just make a LinkedIn that doesn't suck (uh-oh), everyone should want to use us instead! > I present it here in a somewhat comedic tone, but this wasn't a ridiculous idea on the face of it. We didn't need to worry about the cold-start problem (because we already had a bunch of users on both sides of the hiring process) and we were competing against an incumbent people don't like. None of Triplebyte's leadership were stupid, and they didn’t pick that direction arbitrarily. > Conventional wisdom, and wisdom within the company at the time, was that if you want to disrupt an incumbent, you need to be a step function better. The claim was that our skill assessments and our engineer-specific functions could accomplish that. And our assessments were very good. That part wasn't wrong. > But the problem was that we couldn’t just be a step function better at something. That can work for a company just starting out (and in fact it’s standard advice for making a great startup), but we were a growth-stage Series B company with a nine-figure valuation. We needed to be a step function better at the core value proposition of our space. And the core value proposition of LinkedIn isn't "we make finding a job easy and pleasant". It’s "we have all the jobs and all the candidates". > No one wanted another LinkedIn, because LinkedIn had already perfected its we-have-all-the-jobs-and-all-the-candidates value prop. I'm not quite sure what OP thinks their step-function advantage is, either. It certainly looks nicer than LinkedIn, but if you're generating a profile from a resume, what does it add beyond resumes? Resumes that are already a de facto standard supported by every ATS in the Universe? We had a UI with a bunch of nice displays and animations and such. No one used it - they all just used the PDF export. At my current company, I pretty much exclusively use linkedin's PDF export when viewing candidates there for the same reason.
- bbor 2y ago
  Heh, gotta love HN -- we're all just musing, and in comes a founder of the biggest startup in this space to share their personal experience! Thanks for commenting, interesting stuff. I think you hit the nail on the head with "LinkedIn had already perfected its value prop". We all hate the culture on the social media network hosted by LinkedIn, but the internet killed that kind of highly-social networking anyway for most corp jobs (in the US?), so it doesn't actually relate to their real value props: 1. surfacing people for searches by name or specific experiences, 2. connecting employees & employers, and 3. providing some informal identity verification. None of those really rely on the slop that we've all been drawn into scrolling through every now-and-again, only to be horrified by how banal & insincere it all is. Personally, my takeaway is that for OpenSpot to really compete, one huge (+ hugely challenging) opportunity would be to actually do professional social networking well, and thus add something LinkedIn doesn't have for most people. I was going to cynically say that Bluesky already (re-)solved this for people in academia, writing, and journalism, but it's now occurring to me that bsky's protocol means that network could be leveraged here, too...
lolinder 2y ago
> The most important thing going on for them is they have network effect. Yes, and the network effect is both what they have going for them and what causes the weird dynamics that make it so awful. I honestly don't think you can have one without the other. If there are enough people on a platform for the network effects to kick in, then you'll never "stand out" the way OP's tool advertises, and it will inevitably slide into the weird. And if there aren't enough people for the network effects to kick in, then you'll never get to 3x as many interviews from having a profile on this platform (the number advertised). I wish OP the best of luck, but I honestly don't think you can make a better LinkedIn because the problem isn't LinkedIn, the problem is corporate culture and what happens when you get enough people who are trying to sell themselves for a job into one space.
- ricardobeat 2y ago
  We had one without the other. The “LinkedIn influencer” only came to existence in the past 5-6 years. Before that, 99% of people never browsed LinkedIn, you only ever used it to lookup other people and job search. What made it turn into this cesspool, is the endless engagement optimization and pursuit of profit above all else.
  - bbor 2y ago
    I have to disagree, as HN's resident anti-Display-Ads evangelist: the problem is the display ads! Display ads mean influencers, and LinkedIn messed up specifically by paying influencers extra if they got people to click "See More", which is why people on LinkedIn: Talk like this. To increase engagement. And take up space. They've been trying to change their value-prop from "we manipulate people into buying stuff" to "we offer useful services for professionals" by selling Premium subscriptions, which seems to be going well but still far from done: Premium sales account for ~12% of their revenue, leaving a staggering $14B to "LinkedIn Marketing Solutions". https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/29/linkedin-passes-2b-in-premium-revenues-in-12-months-with-overall-revenues-up-9-on-the-year/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/29/linkedin-passes-2b-in-prem... https://news.linkedin.com/2024/July/LinkedIn_Business_Highlights_from_FY24_Q4_Earnings https://news.linkedin.com/2024/July/LinkedIn_Business_Highli...
JohnFen 2y ago
> Everyone (and their grandma, as they say) is on LinkedIn Well, no, not everyone. I know a number of devs who aren't. I'm not either... I found the cost/benefit ratio of LinkedIn had become very unfavorable (not because of the non-professional content) and so I left it years ago.
nailer 2y ago
Nobody was on Facebook. Everyone already has a MySpace profile so what’s the point. Nobody was on Instagram. They got all their traffic from people posting photos on Twitter. Nobody was on TikTok. They got all their traffic from people reposting TikToks on Instagram stories. I’m not saying this project will succeed but it’s absolutely possible to build a new business social network.
- fragmede 2y ago
  Facebook had the cachet of being for college grads from Harvard and MIT. TikTok had the pandemic to help it along. (Not sure about Instagram.) There was also the mass migration from Digg to Reddit because of an unpopular redesign of the former. Is it possible? Absolutely, yes. But there needs to be a catalyst to make it happen that I don't think that can be caused with money.
  - nailer 2y ago
    That's true, but Facebook also had innovations: it was one the first popular websites to ask what people's actual first and last name was, then use that as their handle. It used AJAX relatively early. It had a better design than MySpace. Likewise, I suspect Reddit got more growth through innovation - allowing people to create arbitrary subreddits - than through the Digg v4 mess. Having a design that encourages trust (with a clean UI video content) is a good innovation over LinkedIn. Is it enough? Probably not. Is LinkedIn weak in other areas? Yes, fraud is huge. People lie about job titles and work dates and even entire roles. Tying in with Rippling etc, could defeat that. There's catalysts like you mention too: Reid Hoffman has also been accused of funding political violence via the recent ActBlue scandal in which 7 board members resigned.
    - BigGreenJorts 2y ago
      Also inclined to agree with the innovation angle on TikTok. Was already growing and I think rather than Instagram, their in-flow was from Snapchat where Gen z/alpha were already trained on exploring filters and tools and TikTok expanded on that with extensive video editing tools and being feed first, creation later (default open mode on Snapchat remains the camera view).
spelunker 2y ago
Written in the style of a LinkedIn post even ;-)
chistev 2y ago
I'm not on LinkedIn
mralanlee 2y ago
I hate that this reads a bit like some of the LinkedIn posts in my feed.
waynesonfire 2y ago
and read.cv closed as well.

zabil 2y ago

The network effect is strong, but it’s not unbeatable. History has shown that new social platforms can thrive despite the “everyone is already there” argument—Facebook vs MySpace, Insta, TikTok et al. I can’t predict how openspot will turn out, but I hope it or anything else doesn’t get caught up in the network effect narrative.

AJ007 2y ago
The network effect also works in reverse. The collapse of a network can happen very quickly. Facebook wasn't just functionally better than Myspace. Myspace experienced two really bad things at once, uncontrolled spam and adding display ads, at the same time, in 2008. It was easy to get users to just lose their daily Myspace habit and replace it with Facebook. LinkedIn is unlikely to be mismanaged as poorly as Myspace was but there will be openings for competitors. Myspace and Facebook were unique because they were both very interchangable at that point, although Myspace was kind of like the "public" internet while Facebook had already dropped the edu email requirement, it was still heavily skewed college educated at that point. Also worth pointing out, the edu email addresses requirement for Facebook likely did a lot for keeping their early network clean of bots and spam at a minimum cost. LinkedIn, on the other hand, basically hijacked their user's address books and sent out email impersonating those users, meanwhile ignoring unsubscribe requests and spam complaints. Which certainly sounds like something someone would end up in jail for doing (they did get in trouble for this.)

rachofsunshine 2y ago

Yep, pretty much this. I worked on this problem for a couple years, with vastly more funding and an existing userbase to bypass the cold start problem. So did my predecessor. Neither of us succeeded, nor came particularly close. Here's what I wrote last year in a retrospective about how we failed (with a few things not relevant to this post trimmed): > "LinkedIn For Engineers" - that was the by-phrase within Triplebyte for most of 2020 as we shifted into the Source era. > Job searching on LinkedIn sucks! (True.) Engineers hate LinkedIn! (Often true.) So if we just make a LinkedIn that doesn't suck (uh-oh), everyone should want to use us instead! > I present it here in a somewhat comedic tone, but this wasn't a ridiculous idea on the face of it. We didn't need to worry about the cold-start problem (because we already had a bunch of users on both sides of the hiring process) and we were competing against an incumbent people don't like. None of Triplebyte's leadership were stupid, and they didn’t pick that direction arbitrarily. > Conventional wisdom, and wisdom within the company at the time, was that if you want to disrupt an incumbent, you need to be a step function better. The claim was that our skill assessments and our engineer-specific functions could accomplish that. And our assessments were very good. That part wasn't wrong. > But the problem was that we couldn’t just be a step function better at something. That can work for a company just starting out (and in fact it’s standard advice for making a great startup), but we were a growth-stage Series B company with a nine-figure valuation. We needed to be a step function better at the core value proposition of our space. And the core value proposition of LinkedIn isn't "we make finding a job easy and pleasant". It’s "we have all the jobs and all the candidates". > No one wanted another LinkedIn, because LinkedIn had already perfected its we-have-all-the-jobs-and-all-the-candidates value prop. I'm not quite sure what OP thinks their step-function advantage is, either. It certainly looks nicer than LinkedIn, but if you're generating a profile from a resume, what does it add beyond resumes? Resumes that are already a de facto standard supported by every ATS in the Universe? We had a UI with a bunch of nice displays and animations and such. No one used it - they all just used the PDF export. At my current company, I pretty much exclusively use linkedin's PDF export when viewing candidates there for the same reason.

bbor 2y ago
Heh, gotta love HN -- we're all just musing, and in comes a founder of the biggest startup in this space to share their personal experience! Thanks for commenting, interesting stuff. I think you hit the nail on the head with "LinkedIn had already perfected its value prop". We all hate the culture on the social media network hosted by LinkedIn, but the internet killed that kind of highly-social networking anyway for most corp jobs (in the US?), so it doesn't actually relate to their real value props: 1. surfacing people for searches by name or specific experiences, 2. connecting employees & employers, and 3. providing some informal identity verification. None of those really rely on the slop that we've all been drawn into scrolling through every now-and-again, only to be horrified by how banal & insincere it all is. Personally, my takeaway is that for OpenSpot to really compete, one huge (+ hugely challenging) opportunity would be to actually do professional social networking well, and thus add something LinkedIn doesn't have for most people. I was going to cynically say that Bluesky already (re-)solved this for people in academia, writing, and journalism, but it's now occurring to me that bsky's protocol means that network could be leveraged here, too...

lolinder 2y ago

> The most important thing going on for them is they have network effect. Yes, and the network effect is both what they have going for them and what causes the weird dynamics that make it so awful. I honestly don't think you can have one without the other. If there are enough people on a platform for the network effects to kick in, then you'll never "stand out" the way OP's tool advertises, and it will inevitably slide into the weird. And if there aren't enough people for the network effects to kick in, then you'll never get to 3x as many interviews from having a profile on this platform (the number advertised). I wish OP the best of luck, but I honestly don't think you can make a better LinkedIn because the problem isn't LinkedIn, the problem is corporate culture and what happens when you get enough people who are trying to sell themselves for a job into one space.

ricardobeat 2y ago
We had one without the other. The “LinkedIn influencer” only came to existence in the past 5-6 years. Before that, 99% of people never browsed LinkedIn, you only ever used it to lookup other people and job search. What made it turn into this cesspool, is the endless engagement optimization and pursuit of profit above all else.
- bbor 2y ago
  I have to disagree, as HN's resident anti-Display-Ads evangelist: the problem is the display ads! Display ads mean influencers, and LinkedIn messed up specifically by paying influencers extra if they got people to click "See More", which is why people on LinkedIn: Talk like this. To increase engagement. And take up space. They've been trying to change their value-prop from "we manipulate people into buying stuff" to "we offer useful services for professionals" by selling Premium subscriptions, which seems to be going well but still far from done: Premium sales account for ~12% of their revenue, leaving a staggering $14B to "LinkedIn Marketing Solutions". https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/29/linkedin-passes-2b-in-premium-revenues-in-12-months-with-overall-revenues-up-9-on-the-year/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/29/linkedin-passes-2b-in-prem... https://news.linkedin.com/2024/July/LinkedIn_Business_Highlights_from_FY24_Q4_Earnings https://news.linkedin.com/2024/July/LinkedIn_Business_Highli...

JohnFen 2y ago

> Everyone (and their grandma, as they say) is on LinkedIn Well, no, not everyone. I know a number of devs who aren't. I'm not either... I found the cost/benefit ratio of LinkedIn had become very unfavorable (not because of the non-professional content) and so I left it years ago.

nailer 2y ago

Nobody was on Facebook. Everyone already has a MySpace profile so what’s the point. Nobody was on Instagram. They got all their traffic from people posting photos on Twitter. Nobody was on TikTok. They got all their traffic from people reposting TikToks on Instagram stories. I’m not saying this project will succeed but it’s absolutely possible to build a new business social network.

fragmede 2y ago
Facebook had the cachet of being for college grads from Harvard and MIT. TikTok had the pandemic to help it along. (Not sure about Instagram.) There was also the mass migration from Digg to Reddit because of an unpopular redesign of the former. Is it possible? Absolutely, yes. But there needs to be a catalyst to make it happen that I don't think that can be caused with money.
- nailer 2y ago
  That's true, but Facebook also had innovations: it was one the first popular websites to ask what people's actual first and last name was, then use that as their handle. It used AJAX relatively early. It had a better design than MySpace. Likewise, I suspect Reddit got more growth through innovation - allowing people to create arbitrary subreddits - than through the Digg v4 mess. Having a design that encourages trust (with a clean UI video content) is a good innovation over LinkedIn. Is it enough? Probably not. Is LinkedIn weak in other areas? Yes, fraud is huge. People lie about job titles and work dates and even entire roles. Tying in with Rippling etc, could defeat that. There's catalysts like you mention too: Reid Hoffman has also been accused of funding political violence via the recent ActBlue scandal in which 7 board members resigned.
  - BigGreenJorts 2y ago
    Also inclined to agree with the innovation angle on TikTok. Was already growing and I think rather than Instagram, their in-flow was from Snapchat where Gen z/alpha were already trained on exploring filters and tools and TikTok expanded on that with extensive video editing tools and being feed first, creation later (default open mode on Snapchat remains the camera view).

spelunker 2y ago

Written in the style of a LinkedIn post even ;-)

chistev 2y ago

I'm not on LinkedIn

mralanlee 2y ago

I hate that this reads a bit like some of the LinkedIn posts in my feed.

waynesonfire 2y ago

and read.cv closed as well.