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Has anyone else noticed LinkedIn becoming increasingly hostile towards small consumers of its API? I feel like the first straw was the non-active positions bein

Has anyone else noticed LinkedIn becoming increasingly hostile towards small consumers of its API? I feel like the first straw was the non-active positions being pulled from developers followed by secondary and tertiary connections. I don't dev on the LinkedIn API but as I understand it now, only their large enterprise partnerships have access to a number of features, and it looks like, from the sound of this, that that is only going to get worse. Is it possible to have an API-first public company? It's sort of like asking if it's possible to have an open, api-accessible data-warehouse (I think the answer is no, but maybe I'm wrong).

mjolk 13y ago
>Is it possible to have an API-first public company? It's sort of like asking if it's possible to have an open, api-accessible data-warehouse (I think the answer is no, but maybe I'm wrong). Unless you're charging for access to the APIs, you're going to have to generate the money to keep the lights on somehow. For linkedin, it's paid access to more user data and advertising, so it's understandable why they put the website first.
corresation 13y ago
It's the same pattern that every similar company goes through -- open and inclusive, increasingly to closed and defensive. Aside from outside services increasingly being blocked from constructively accessing LinkedIn's API, the company is becoming more insular in the other direction as well: Where once it allowed you to configure an external blog that could be itemized as stories on your own profile (which seems like a perfectly logical integration point if a LinkedIn profile were considered a central point of professional information), LinkedIn dumped that in favour of a invitation only siloed-data approach. No thanks. Where once I saw LinkedIn as an interesting Rolodex, increasingly I am getting an impression that one's career is in a bad place if feeding the LinkedIn beast is an important activity.

mjolk 13y ago

>Is it possible to have an API-first public company? It's sort of like asking if it's possible to have an open, api-accessible data-warehouse (I think the answer is no, but maybe I'm wrong). Unless you're charging for access to the APIs, you're going to have to generate the money to keep the lights on somehow. For linkedin, it's paid access to more user data and advertising, so it's understandable why they put the website first.

corresation 13y ago

It's the same pattern that every similar company goes through -- open and inclusive, increasingly to closed and defensive. Aside from outside services increasingly being blocked from constructively accessing LinkedIn's API, the company is becoming more insular in the other direction as well: Where once it allowed you to configure an external blog that could be itemized as stories on your own profile (which seems like a perfectly logical integration point if a LinkedIn profile were considered a central point of professional information), LinkedIn dumped that in favour of a invitation only siloed-data approach. No thanks. Where once I saw LinkedIn as an interesting Rolodex, increasingly I am getting an impression that one's career is in a bad place if feeding the LinkedIn beast is an important activity.