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This obsession with collecting users (dead or alive) reminds me of Gogol's Dead Souls - companies trading in users (who may or may not exist) in order to boost

This obsession with collecting users (dead or alive) reminds me of Gogol's Dead Souls - companies trading in users (who may or may not exist) in order to boost their standing and taking out huge loans on the basis of their illusory popularity. Even illusory users can have some value, just like the dead serfs in Gogol's tale, and like the dead serfs, their value is not in their existence, but in being entries on a ledger of chattels. It doesn't matter to LinkedIn whether these accounts are used or real, because they are judged on basic numbers like how many users they have. Since real money is involved and salaries and careers are riding on this number going up, they'll employ all kinds of perverse and intrusive tricks in order to inflate that number every quarter for as long as it is a measure of success.

jebus989 13y ago
Is there any evidence LinkedIn reports all members email contacts as LinkedIn users? The g+ post just displays OP's confusion at "connect" really meaning "invite" in instances where contacts don't have a LinkedIn account.
- nkozyra 13y ago
  None whatsoever, the OP is making a gigantic leap based on a logical fallacy. LinkedIn claims X number of users Suggested connections by LinkedIn can be generated for users that do not even have a present LinkedIn account. Therefor, the number X must include those users.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    You're using logical fallacy wrong. At best this is a logical error, not a clasifiable fallacy. But it's far more likely that it's just an error of judgement, involving no formal or informal logic at all. Namely, nobody, including OP, made the syllogism you present, with the neat "therefore, X must include" etc step. They simply thought that it's very probable that this is what LinkedIn did to inflate their numbers.
    - DougBTX 13y ago
      Neither the article nor the title actually talk about inflating numbers, which is how I read it at first too. They only talk about actually increasing the number of users, by sending out invites: "Another example of the lengths LinkedIn will go to in order to increase its user base."
    - nkozyra 13y ago
      > You're using logical fallacy wrong. Actually it's a wonderful example of affirming the consequent. Had the initial accusation been "LinkedIn possibly using ..." this might carry some wait, but it was all presented in declaration as proof.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    In this post, there is no claim that LinkedIn is claiming in any reported numbers the ghost users that it presents to people who allow it to import their contacts. So what you have done here is called the straw man fallacy. ---- "[...]LinkedIn is misrepresenting who has an account and does this to entice such people to create one when they receive a 'would like to connect' email. In doing so, it misleads its users into thinking they are connecting with people who already use the service." is the easily sustained claim.
- grey-area 13y ago
  It's the struggle to report more and more users every quarter that is damaging; this leads to the concept of users and their contact list as the property of websites and dark patterns like this. Is there any evidence LinkedIn reports all members email contacts as LinkedIn users? I have no idea if LinkedIn reports ghost users as real in annual reports but I'm sure they'll report users, and creating ghosts and deceiving users into thinking they are real will increase dramatically the number of signups for them, so it will help their overall stats, even if those people then do nothing with the account after they discover Robin didn't really invite them and should never have been on the site. This cult of collecting users as trophies or even faking them is both damaging to brands and user-hostile; in the long term it will fail and LinkedIn already has trust issues. The g+ post just displays OP's confusion at "connect" really meaning "invite" in instances where contacts don't have a LinkedIn account. The LinkedIn page is deliberately deceptive (showing a dead person as a member who can be added to someone's network), in an attempt to goose their stats and get more signups. There's no confusion here, and I'm surprised that you'd try to characterise it as that, deception might be a better word. If it means invite, it should say invite, and it should be presented as sending an email to a harvested contact, not inviting an already current LinkedIn member. This kind of dark pattern is where you end up if you trust certain metrics blindly and always make the modification which incrementally increases your metric (say user signups), regardless of other consequences. It is clearly designed to deceive.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
oskarth 13y ago
This is spot on. I absolutely love the book, but I've never thought about how connected it is to the chase of user metrics and the likes. Good observation.
waylandsmithers 13y ago
Sounds a lot like Google+ at the beginning. "We have 100 million users!!!" Well no, you funneled people using search, gmail, and youtube into some annoying screen where they clicked around to make it go away.
- wyclif 13y ago
  That's not what they did. It should be noted that in the announcements that I've seen, Google has counted only active Google+ users. This is the "ghost town" ruse all over again. It's weak sauce and demonstrably facile. You can bash Google+ all you want, but it's not going to impress people who enjoy using it very much. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/the-loyal-users-of-google-plus-say-it-is-no-ghost-town/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/the-loyal-users-of-...
  - cma 13y ago
    Does "active" Google+ users include people who are logged in and have plus-related stuff-they-don't-care-about in their standard google header? Or people who just reciprocate circle-adds but don't engage whatsoever?
    - hangonhn 13y ago
      Good point. "Active" shouldn't be a binary term. It should be more like "active engagement". Technically I'm an "active" user of Google+ but I don't spend more than a minute on there if I can help it.
    - wahnfrieden 13y ago
      Or even just people who click the bell when it's lit up red to make the notification go away.
      - rhizome 13y ago
        Engagement hacking!
      - 13y ago
downandout 13y ago
They are not reporting these to investors as accounts. Every time someone that knows someone else hits the connect button, it gives LinkedIn another opportunity to spam that user on their behalf - pummeling them until they sign up. This is an aggressive (though somewhat scummy) growth strategy, not an investment fraud strategy.
- grey-area 13y ago
  It's not important whether they report ghost users as real because they serve their own purpose - to trick people into spamming contacts and trick contacts into signing up, at which point they are counted. Growth is not always good.
ryguytilidie 13y ago
"Since real money is involved and salaries and careers are riding on this number going up, they'll employ all kinds of perverse and intrusive tricks in order to inflate that number every quarter for as long as it is a measure of success." Isn't this also true for most startups?
ianstormtaylor 13y ago
Not saying that the "dead souls" trend isn't real, but I don't actually think these accounts themselves are what LinkedIn is using to boost their user numbers. The goal for the dead souls is to boost activation by getting more and more real people to create accounts. Still the same motivation, but I doubt their long-term goal is to be counting tons of fake users as users. It's sooner to find new (potentially scam-y) ways to trick people into making accounts.
- grey-area 13y ago
  I didn't mean to imply that, but rereading the post I see why people have read it that way. That wasn't really the objection I have to this, more that a focus on user numbers growing at all costs leads to all sorts of evil activity like using ghost users to try to trick people into spamming their contacts list.

jebus989 13y ago

Is there any evidence LinkedIn reports all members email contacts as LinkedIn users? The g+ post just displays OP's confusion at "connect" really meaning "invite" in instances where contacts don't have a LinkedIn account.

nkozyra 13y ago
None whatsoever, the OP is making a gigantic leap based on a logical fallacy. LinkedIn claims X number of users Suggested connections by LinkedIn can be generated for users that do not even have a present LinkedIn account. Therefor, the number X must include those users.
- coldtea 13y ago
  You're using logical fallacy wrong. At best this is a logical error, not a clasifiable fallacy. But it's far more likely that it's just an error of judgement, involving no formal or informal logic at all. Namely, nobody, including OP, made the syllogism you present, with the neat "therefore, X must include" etc step. They simply thought that it's very probable that this is what LinkedIn did to inflate their numbers.
  - DougBTX 13y ago
    Neither the article nor the title actually talk about inflating numbers, which is how I read it at first too. They only talk about actually increasing the number of users, by sending out invites: "Another example of the lengths LinkedIn will go to in order to increase its user base."
  - nkozyra 13y ago
    > You're using logical fallacy wrong. Actually it's a wonderful example of affirming the consequent. Had the initial accusation been "LinkedIn possibly using ..." this might carry some wait, but it was all presented in declaration as proof.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  In this post, there is no claim that LinkedIn is claiming in any reported numbers the ghost users that it presents to people who allow it to import their contacts. So what you have done here is called the straw man fallacy. ---- "[...]LinkedIn is misrepresenting who has an account and does this to entice such people to create one when they receive a 'would like to connect' email. In doing so, it misleads its users into thinking they are connecting with people who already use the service." is the easily sustained claim.
grey-area 13y ago
It's the struggle to report more and more users every quarter that is damaging; this leads to the concept of users and their contact list as the property of websites and dark patterns like this. Is there any evidence LinkedIn reports all members email contacts as LinkedIn users? I have no idea if LinkedIn reports ghost users as real in annual reports but I'm sure they'll report users, and creating ghosts and deceiving users into thinking they are real will increase dramatically the number of signups for them, so it will help their overall stats, even if those people then do nothing with the account after they discover Robin didn't really invite them and should never have been on the site. This cult of collecting users as trophies or even faking them is both damaging to brands and user-hostile; in the long term it will fail and LinkedIn already has trust issues. The g+ post just displays OP's confusion at "connect" really meaning "invite" in instances where contacts don't have a LinkedIn account. The LinkedIn page is deliberately deceptive (showing a dead person as a member who can be added to someone's network), in an attempt to goose their stats and get more signups. There's no confusion here, and I'm surprised that you'd try to characterise it as that, deception might be a better word. If it means invite, it should say invite, and it should be presented as sending an email to a harvested contact, not inviting an already current LinkedIn member. This kind of dark pattern is where you end up if you trust certain metrics blindly and always make the modification which incrementally increases your metric (say user signups), regardless of other consequences. It is clearly designed to deceive.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

oskarth 13y ago

This is spot on. I absolutely love the book, but I've never thought about how connected it is to the chase of user metrics and the likes. Good observation.

waylandsmithers 13y ago

Sounds a lot like Google+ at the beginning. "We have 100 million users!!!" Well no, you funneled people using search, gmail, and youtube into some annoying screen where they clicked around to make it go away.

wyclif 13y ago
That's not what they did. It should be noted that in the announcements that I've seen, Google has counted only active Google+ users. This is the "ghost town" ruse all over again. It's weak sauce and demonstrably facile. You can bash Google+ all you want, but it's not going to impress people who enjoy using it very much. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/the-loyal-users-of-google-plus-say-it-is-no-ghost-town/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/the-loyal-users-of-...
- cma 13y ago
  Does "active" Google+ users include people who are logged in and have plus-related stuff-they-don't-care-about in their standard google header? Or people who just reciprocate circle-adds but don't engage whatsoever?
  - hangonhn 13y ago
    Good point. "Active" shouldn't be a binary term. It should be more like "active engagement". Technically I'm an "active" user of Google+ but I don't spend more than a minute on there if I can help it.
  - wahnfrieden 13y ago
    Or even just people who click the bell when it's lit up red to make the notification go away.
    - rhizome 13y ago
      Engagement hacking!
    - 13y ago

downandout 13y ago

They are not reporting these to investors as accounts. Every time someone that knows someone else hits the connect button, it gives LinkedIn another opportunity to spam that user on their behalf - pummeling them until they sign up. This is an aggressive (though somewhat scummy) growth strategy, not an investment fraud strategy.

grey-area 13y ago
It's not important whether they report ghost users as real because they serve their own purpose - to trick people into spamming contacts and trick contacts into signing up, at which point they are counted. Growth is not always good.

ryguytilidie 13y ago

"Since real money is involved and salaries and careers are riding on this number going up, they'll employ all kinds of perverse and intrusive tricks in order to inflate that number every quarter for as long as it is a measure of success." Isn't this also true for most startups?

ianstormtaylor 13y ago

Not saying that the "dead souls" trend isn't real, but I don't actually think these accounts themselves are what LinkedIn is using to boost their user numbers. The goal for the dead souls is to boost activation by getting more and more real people to create accounts. Still the same motivation, but I doubt their long-term goal is to be counting tons of fake users as users. It's sooner to find new (potentially scam-y) ways to trick people into making accounts.

grey-area 13y ago
I didn't mean to imply that, but rereading the post I see why people have read it that way. That wasn't really the objection I have to this, more that a focus on user numbers growing at all costs leads to all sorts of evil activity like using ghost users to try to trick people into spamming their contacts list.