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It has become customary when a LinkedIn-related article pops up for people on HN to complain about the endorsements, the spam or to declare that they've deleted

It has become customary when a LinkedIn-related article pops up for people on HN to complain about the endorsements, the spam or to declare that they've deleted their accounts with no remorse. This article isn't about the spam or the endorsements, but rather about its network effects, with its roots lying in the "positive-thinking industry", a pyramid of salesmen for snake-oil following the model of Dale Carnegie, a man who never influenced anybody until he wrote his famous book. It is a rather interesting perspective of which I never thought about before.

victoriap 13y ago
A very well-thought and written article. LinkedIn is like a corporate party, where everyone is there, connected but there is no party indeed, just a crowd of faces hanging around. In that way it becomes just another resume service with some job board features through ads. They are trying hard to bring interactivity by small inventions like endorsements, recommendations and also sometimes mirroring similar interactions from Twitter, Facebook to LinkedIn. At the end of the day they are still selling premium membership to jobseekers, (ability to get) connections with inmails and services for headhunters and recruiters to digg into the pile of resumes. I believe LinkedIn can achieve much more than that by creating an application store similar to Google's and Apple's. where 3rd party apps can be listed, featured and installed and billed in a recurring or per-request basis. Through a LinkedIn app store, 3rd parties can bring a lot of innovative functionality to LinkedIn.
- salemh 13y ago
  I imagine, while they are focused on recruiter services/$ generation now, they are looking to the future as the go-to CRM for sales. I.e. SalesForce.com killer (not that I think they can do so, and the dynamic of "pesonal" versus "work" LinkedIn profiles is a contentious debate sometimes (at least in recruiting, i.e. "who owns your LinkedIn profile). A B2B sales rep has been sued for their LinkedIn account after leaving the company, posting an "update" and being argued that this construed "stealing" away past clients. My Google-fu is failing me to find the source, apologies. I dug into this long ago when switching companies who had mandatory LinkedIn usage, etc.
mherdeg 13y ago
If you like stories about people who make better "thought leaders" than "individual contributors", consider also Florence Nightingale, whose hands-on work during the Crimean War contributed her hospital's having the the highest death rate of any hospital in the East during the Crimean War. Nevertheless her contributions to modern nursing — largely done from her bed during her 50-year post-war "bedridden period" — are widely accepted as having done a lot of good for the field.
mathattack 13y ago
I think anyone looking at LinkedIn as a holy grail of career advancement is misplaced. Despite the spam and other features, I find it useful for a few reasons: 1) If I'm trying to find someone in a very specific role, for a very specific reason, LinkedIn tells me who I need to go through to get there. This isn't always job hunting. 2) If I have a meeting or a call with someone, I check them out in LinkedIn for a quick bio. These two use cases justify my having an account, investing time in building my network, and encourage me to put up with the spam. There's a 3rd use case, which is recruiting. LinkedIn is likely as useful and current as any headhunter's internal database. This should make smart recruiter's jobs a little bit easier.

victoriap 13y ago

A very well-thought and written article. LinkedIn is like a corporate party, where everyone is there, connected but there is no party indeed, just a crowd of faces hanging around. In that way it becomes just another resume service with some job board features through ads. They are trying hard to bring interactivity by small inventions like endorsements, recommendations and also sometimes mirroring similar interactions from Twitter, Facebook to LinkedIn. At the end of the day they are still selling premium membership to jobseekers, (ability to get) connections with inmails and services for headhunters and recruiters to digg into the pile of resumes. I believe LinkedIn can achieve much more than that by creating an application store similar to Google's and Apple's. where 3rd party apps can be listed, featured and installed and billed in a recurring or per-request basis. Through a LinkedIn app store, 3rd parties can bring a lot of innovative functionality to LinkedIn.

salemh 13y ago
I imagine, while they are focused on recruiter services/$ generation now, they are looking to the future as the go-to CRM for sales. I.e. SalesForce.com killer (not that I think they can do so, and the dynamic of "pesonal" versus "work" LinkedIn profiles is a contentious debate sometimes (at least in recruiting, i.e. "who owns your LinkedIn profile). A B2B sales rep has been sued for their LinkedIn account after leaving the company, posting an "update" and being argued that this construed "stealing" away past clients. My Google-fu is failing me to find the source, apologies. I dug into this long ago when switching companies who had mandatory LinkedIn usage, etc.

mherdeg 13y ago

If you like stories about people who make better "thought leaders" than "individual contributors", consider also Florence Nightingale, whose hands-on work during the Crimean War contributed her hospital's having the the highest death rate of any hospital in the East during the Crimean War. Nevertheless her contributions to modern nursing — largely done from her bed during her 50-year post-war "bedridden period" — are widely accepted as having done a lot of good for the field.

mathattack 13y ago

I think anyone looking at LinkedIn as a holy grail of career advancement is misplaced. Despite the spam and other features, I find it useful for a few reasons: 1) If I'm trying to find someone in a very specific role, for a very specific reason, LinkedIn tells me who I need to go through to get there. This isn't always job hunting. 2) If I have a meeting or a call with someone, I check them out in LinkedIn for a quick bio. These two use cases justify my having an account, investing time in building my network, and encourage me to put up with the spam. There's a 3rd use case, which is recruiting. LinkedIn is likely as useful and current as any headhunter's internal database. This should make smart recruiter's jobs a little bit easier.