20 ms·

The Absurdity of LinkedIn

803 points by darrennix 12y ago

jively 12y ago
Fun fact - small recruitment agencies use this tactic to stalk candidates... it's even got a name: x-ray searches https://www.linkedin.com/groups/How-Google-XRay-Search-LinkedIn-114325.S.112175327 https://www.linkedin.com/groups/How-Google-XRay-Search-Linke... (I realise the irony of posting a linkedin link)
frade33 12y ago
spoiler: never use linkedin when logged in.
yahelc 12y ago
I noticed this the other day -- while logged in, LinkedIn insisted I must upgrade to Premium in order to see the last name of the person whose profile I was looking at (which of course, was publicly once I logged out).
- hga 12y ago
  Might you find some value from the person, and LinkedIn, knowing you looked at that profile? I can't offhand think of any, but that's one difference between these two use cases.
  - lstamour 12y ago
    Except anonymous users get the benefit of being both anonymous and able to view the profile. LinkedIn pushes users to either upgrade or sign out. Works for me, I don't like signing in often either.
    - andypants 12y ago
      They only really push users to upgrade. They don't let you know that you can view the full profile if you sign out. That's just an obscure (possibly temporary) workaround.
  - antjanus 12y ago
    Yeah, small bits of value. Before any interview, I'd check out the people I'd go see. They would know I looked at their profile (which shows interest and due diligence) and if they had not checked out my profile already, they would now which helps me imprint on them better, if that makes sense. I'd also check out the people I'd be working with, and if they see that I checked out their profile, they'd probably check mine out too (just to see who this guy is that visited their profile) thus that makes me stand out a bit and we're on a better footing. On the flip side, if an interviewer checks me out before I go in for an interview, it shows actual interest and makes me consider the company more seriously. So I actually appreciate it when an interviewer drops by my linkedin and I can see that they did. It's a plus. Like a pre-connect before an interview. Outside of that, I'm not sure.
  - scrabble 12y ago
    I can think of one. My current director viewed my profile and didn't contact me during my employment with my last employer. I took a look at the company he worked for and contacted him myself about an opportunity. Now I work for him (he's an excellent leader too). Had I not seen that he viewed my profile, I wouldn't be working for his company now. As an aside, I will generally always view profiles in an incognito window.
- samstave 12y ago
  I saw this recently to, where i had done a google search of the person: the google search result showed their full nam in the actual link to linkedin - after clickingto go to the linkedin page, from the full name link, it withheld the last name. Idiocy.
  - shostack 12y ago
    Isn't that considered cloaking and a direct violation of Google's Webmaster guidelines? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355 https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355 That's the kind of thing expertsexchange.com was busted for amongst other sites. Or is LinkedIn simply "above the law" because of their search volume?
    - Netminder_EE 12y ago
      DISCLAIMER: I'm Experts Exchange's senior volunteer administrator. That's just one of the things EE was busted for. For logged in members, they would see the pages from a Google SERP one would expect to see; for non-members (or those who weren't logged in), they would see a page that said "sign up". It's not unprecedented -- the New York Times does the same thing -- but the way EE did it (over strong objections from the user community) was singularly creepy. That EE's competitors had Matt Cutts on speed dial just hastened the imposition of the Panda et seq. penalties. The good news -- at least, for those of us who aren't natural born haters -- is that a change in management has resulted in the paywall coming down, and the penalties imposed are slowly but surely being overcome.
      - samstave 12y ago
        They still exist?
        Netminder_EE 12y ago
        Why wouldn't EE exist? Despite the best efforts of some well-known bloggers whose site wouldn't exist if it had to depend solely on actual income, EE exists because it has a business model that DOES work.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
I've wondered about this too. They don't seem to have a coherent "value capture" strategy. There is always tension between the 'let the customer see the value' and 'give away the value' except they do seem to have it backwards. As a non-logged in user you should not see profiles but as a logged in user you should. That at least would keep some of the scraper bots away.
- fredgrott 12y ago
  their value strategy is allow recruiters to find the linkedin profile via google and than up sell the recruiter.
  - Nicholas_C 12y ago
    Absolutely. My coworkers and I all get cold calls and cold e-mails from recruiters who find our names/occupations on LinkedIn. I'm assuming these recruiters are using premium accounts and paying to send e-mails through LinkedIn.
    - eli 12y ago
      For what it's worth, I get many more/worse emails and calls from people who scraped my github profile.
      - vidarh 12y ago
        At least the people scraping my Github profile tends to have a slight idea about what languages I tend to work with.
- tomkarlo 12y ago
  The scraper bots are exactly why they're making the full information available to non-logged in users, so it shows up in Google's index. I believe it's considered a no-no to show the bot a different page from a non-logged-in human viewer, so they don't really have a choice. Hiding it from users with login/session cookies, however, is just being annoying and depending on the fact that most people won't know enough to switch to an incognito window.
grimmdude 12y ago
Seems to be an oversight on LinkedIn's part.
- rch 12y ago
  No, I'm pretty sure it's a purposeful strategy to acquire paying users.
atto 12y ago
Neat trick: when wanting to see the full profile, just search LinkedIn for their name. If you come from search results, you can see the full profile (if their privacy settings allow it, which most do).
leorocky 12y ago
This absurdity is found all over the internet and it's the result of Google's crawling policy. You can do the same kind of thing with nytimes.com articles and other websites that want their context indexed by Google but at the same time restrict access to it. These absurdities are made and work because most people do not understand how to use the software they have.
- retube 12y ago
  I thought Google heavily penalised sites that made content available to the Google bot but firewalled content for everybody else?
  - leorocky 12y ago
    I think there is a penalty for showing Googlebot something other than what people can see, but these sites all use tricks to get around it by allowing users to see the same thing as Googlebot in various circumstances. For example Quora has the ?share=1 URL variable. The Wall Street Journal allows users to read a limited number of articles for free if they clicked in from Google (tracked via a cookie). The New York Times allows free reads from anywhere for a limit, but also tracked via a cookie. LinkedIn blocks their registered users, which is probably the worse system ever.
- willu 12y ago
  So GoogleBot can't scrape more than 10 NYT articles per month, right?
  - leorocky 12y ago
    Googlebot doesn't maintain a nytimes.com session, so it can crawl an unlimited number of articles same as you could if you tell your browser to not accept cookies from nytimes.com
- dmbass 12y ago
  This is subtly different for Linkedin. They DO show the same thing to Googlebot as logged out users. Registered users end up seeing a different page which Google bot has no way of accessing because it does not have an account.
enginerd 12y ago
Linkedin has always baffled me with this stuff. It's the guy at the party who's so nervous to over-control the social situation, right down to the T in Gil's name.
josho 12y ago
This is the tension that is LinkedIn. While they were growing, they allowed great amount of sharing. Now it seems they are transitioning from a growth based company to growing their revenue--I've personally been finding more and more examples of this increased friction. So far that tension seems to still be 'ok', they still give away, for free, most of the value is in their huge user database. Their monetization strategy has been to tighten things up so it's still valuable for most people, with the exception of sales and recruiters. If you are one of them, then to get the value of the database you need to pay. Given the network effects of their user database, I suspect over time what they give away will be less and less and we'll see more examples of this.
scrollaway 12y ago
I can't believe people still use LinkedIn. And when I say that, I am talking about the HN crowd. It's one thing to say "I can't believe people use IE6", but this is tech-savvy people using a joke of a social media. Guys, if you want to look professional, buy your own domain name. Something professional, like yourname.me, or clever like "yourna.me". Build your own web page with your own damn profile and don't leave control over a company on how you look on the web. Be in control of the first point of entry to your identity. For god sake guys. LinkedIn has had so many security issues, so much scummy behaviour regarding spam, user retention etc... yet you are still blessing them with your presence. (Obviously this doesn't apply to those that don't) PS: Use gandi.net as a registrar for your name. They offer a free ssl cert along with the domain (and support almost every tld) for added "professional-looking" value to your site. I am not affiliated with them, I just love Gandi. Edit: I'm being called out for "living in my own bubble" it seems. Yet LinkedIn is the very definition of a bubble. I used to have a LinkedIn profile and from it all I got were the most awful recruiting experiences, and all of them through cold calls. Your own site with CV + portfolio + Github + contact details is a LOT better. PS2: Downvote or not I don't care, but please reply if you disagree; I'd love to disagree even harder! Edit 2: I'm starting to think there is correlation between finding LinkedIn useful and not having a Github profile. A lot of the points people are bringing up here are solved in a very similar way by Github (which is in many ways a social network). This does bring me back to my original point though, why use LinkedIn when you can use a company that isn't scummy and actually have your real work experience on there and a link back to your personal website with more portfolio etc?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- mathattack 12y ago
  I upvoted you, but still disagree. (I'm happy everytime someone forces me to clarify what I'm thinking) Here's the general idea... Most everyone else is using it, and you can get better access and knowledge if you use it too. Before every meeting I have, I look the person up. If I use it, and most of my friends do, I can figure out who we know in common. If I need something from another company and I don't know who to contact, I look at 2nd degree connections for hints. LinkedIn is in the toolkit of every tech-savvy business person. It can also be a people for engineers who want a good permanent place that non-technical people can find them. Non-technical folks won't look in Github. Your last point is relevant. Yes, there is a correlation between LinkedIn proponents and Github profiles, but why wall yourself in to a Github only universe?
krelian 12y ago
I'd rank LinkedIn number 2 after Godaddy in the list of Successful Shady Companies (list ranked by shadiness BTW). Their entire business model revolves around tricking the user into doing stuff that - if it was clearly explained - they would never want to do.
- frankdenbow 12y ago
  Recruiters paying to have premium access to candidates (a large part of LinkedIn's revenue) does not appear to involve tricking anyone.
  - eli 12y ago
    Indeed many people joined LinkedIn specifically so that prospective employers could find them.
- geekam 12y ago
  Linkedin makes Facebook look like a real good deal.
  - angersock 12y ago
    At least Facebook has cat pictures and games.
- bps4484 12y ago
  what sort of things do they do? This is a serious question, I don't know and am curious.
  - zaraflan 12y ago
    The most provable thing is that if you ever make the mistake of granting them access to your email account, everyone on your contact list can expect multiple spam messages FROM YOU begging them to join LinkedIn. It's the kind of thing only the shadiest of shady Facebook apps employ. Harvesting of contact information even without permitted access is less clear cut but there's widespread concern due to the large number of questionable coincidences.
mjt0229 12y ago
Linked in is a very strange world; maybe it's good for job seekers or recruiters, but I find that the most frequent interactions I have there are either recruiters contacting me for ridiculous jobs that I would never be interested in (and sometimes am not qualified for). The second most frequent type of interactions I have there are where people endorse me for various skills. Inevitably, I get endorsed by people who have no knowledge of said skills: I'm not sure why a technology-phobic college admissions officer would endorse my skills in distributed software engineering, and what would be the value of such an endorsement?
- artmageddon 12y ago
  > Inevitably, I get endorsed by people who have no knowledge of said skills: I'm not sure why a technology-phobic college admissions officer would endorse my skills in distributed software engineering, and what would be the value of such an endorsement? I have to agree. I've gotten so many endorsements from non-software engineers who I've never worked with for my apparent XML abilities. I literally don't know what to think about that.
  - ovulator 12y ago
    A childhood friend added me on LinkedIn, I haven't interacted with her since I was maybe 10 years old. But I guess she knows I rock at SQL! A previous boss endorsed me for PHP, at that job I used PHP exactly 0 times. Needless to say, he wasn't a very good boss either.
  - mjt0229 12y ago
    It's also weird that I'm most endorsed for some of my weakest skills. Everyone thinks I'm a great Python programmer except me, it seems.
    - kiksy 12y ago
      I keep getting endorsed for jQuery. I keep being reminded of this: http://www.doxdesk.com/img/updates/20091116-so-large.gif http://www.doxdesk.com/img/updates/20091116-so-large.gif
badusername 12y ago
LinkedIn pursues a bullshit strategy. Instead of adding value and figuring out how to monetize it, they want to hide whatever value they brought to the table, and charge $39.95 for what is essentially a resume hosting service and a broken email system. I discovered long ago that browsing LinkedIn while logged out gives me a better experience.
sridharvembu 12y ago
LinkedIn seems to be changing, and I am not sure for the better. Recently they stopped access to a whole bunch of CRM players to LinkedIn API. Only Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics are allowed now. http://www.zdnet.com/linkedout-crm-companies-squawk-over-linkedins-api-policies-7000028762/ http://www.zdnet.com/linkedout-crm-companies-squawk-over-lin... (Disclosure: Zoho CRM was one of the affected products - we offered to pay for their API access but no dice)
Hovertruck 12y ago
I only ever view LinkedIn profiles in an incognito window. I don't want to appear in the "These people viewed your profile" emails that they send out.
bowlofpetunias 12y ago
This has been the case for quite a while. I've gotten used to using LinkedIn in another browser where I'm not logged in. It's pretty obvious that LinkedIn's strategy is completely dictated by sales and marketing droids with zero respect for the user or the product. Neither a strong product manager nor a responsible development team would ever accept such an illogical anti-user feature just to scratch extra sales out of existing users whilst at the same time maintaining their Google footprint.
brotoss 12y ago
I also use this method for looking at people's profiles without pinging them for a "Viewed by", which makes it so I can still see who is looking at mine.
kwaimind 12y ago
LinkedIn is getting a bit silly with some of their ideas. Just like the recommendation/endorsements thing, absolutely useless. I have people endorsing mw who I have never met or spoken to about my job!
datacog 12y ago
The article isn't entirely accurate about viewing 3rd degree connections. There are considerable number of profiles who have lot less information publicly viewable (on public url), in those cases this wont work. Linkedin is basically trying to achieve 2 things here: a) Show you what you can do using premium b) Convert/onboard user If you have tried premium before, they will highlight it when "you are viewing a 3rd degree profile". There is a very very simple HACK for viewing full 3rd degree profiles without being a subscriber. Here's what you need to do: - When you arrive at a 3rd degree profile, copy the 'name' and 'company' (or an other attribute) e.g. 'Chris Amazon manager' - Google search for 'Chris Amazon manager linkedin', you'll get the full name of the person, but still would view a 3rd degree profile - Now copy the full name + 'attribute' and search in linkedin, voila... You see the full profile.
lukasm 12y ago
Heh I do the same. I've been using porn mode so often that I remember shortcut by heart (shit+cmd+N) I really don't understand this strategy. Don't hold to "your" data so aggressively, build a platform. I'd be happy to pay for premium API to LinkedIn to build a custom CRM and other tools.
coherentpony 12y ago
I don't have a LinkedIn account, and they still keep emailing me. Go away LinkedIn, I do not want your spam.
Maskawanian 12y ago
I deleted my profile once I started receiving spam from an address I had only given to them.
amorphid 12y ago
LinkedIn has locked down their system so much, when someone asks me to send the URL to my LinkedIn profile, often they can't see it without a premium account. Even with a premium account. I have to download my profile as a PDF, and send that. Lame!
mbesto 12y ago
It's even worse on mobile. Search for Gil Travish on the app. Full profile available.
pt3530 12y ago
A few of my friends have taken advantage of this to create a search engine that allows you to look up anyone on LinkedIn without having to pay LinkedIn. Try http://www.recruitem.net http://www.recruitem.net in incognito mode.
baggachipz 12y ago
Ah yes the tried-and-true "experts-exchange" model. How'd that work out for them, anyway?
- Netminder_EE 12y ago
  DISCLAIMER: I'm Experts Exchange's senior volunteer administrator. That means, for the most part, that I've outlasted everyone else. At the time EE imposed the cloaking / hard and fast paywall / masking / whatever you call it, we told them it was a bad idea. We understand why they did it -- it was to counteract the effects of a prior less-than-advisable decision -- but that didn't make it a good idea. Long term, obviously, it resulted in 1) major penalties from Google and 2) a lot of competition EE didn't need to provoke. New management has removed the paywall and redirects from external search results and links about two months ago; we expect that it will still be a few months longer before the penalties will be overcome.
ramonex 12y ago
I have just closed my account that I had there for years.
jacquesm 12y ago
Linkedin will stay as long as there is nothing better. They're very much ripe for disruption, but breaking the network effects is going to be hard.
atldev 12y ago
Unrelated to this post, I was trying to downgrade my account from premium to free today. It was surprisingly hard to find the path. I had to google it. Btw, it's under "Privacy and Settings", not under "Account" where you'd expect. I have nothing against LinkedIn and find it helpful. It just struck me as something that was discussed in a design meeting- "how can we make cancellation hard to do?"
wfn 12y ago
So, has anyone been working (or pondering working) on alternatives? Ideally (and perhaps naively), I can see a diaspora-like abstract semi-decentralized / federated social network infrastructure which could then be used to build all sorts of social networks (e.g. friends/diaspora-like "non-evil version of facebook," "professional like-linkedin-but-not-evil network," what have you.) The kind of vibe that federated open source systems like tent.io might have. Of course it's all about network effects and "actually getting a critical mass of people to use $thing," but ideally, there should be a generic federated-social-network-protocol which may support many clients / web portals, and many particular social networks. "I've built a non-evil-linkedin-clone, join this network by clicking one button."
- Udo 12y ago
  I worked on a decentralized social network for a while, but eventually gave up on it because it was impossible to get traction (especially since other open source alternatives "exist").
  - wfn 12y ago
    Did you end up open sourcing the parts of the thing that you ended up implementing/writing? Seems like a waste to just throw it into a trash bin. (But of course there may be nuances / it may be hard to do that, etc.) Non-working code on github and a blog post explaining what has been done is imho >> nothing!
    - Udo 12y ago
      No, it was open source from the beginning - one of my hobby projects. I believe open source is the only way something like this can work at all. I had some early adopters who used the prototype, which motivated me initially. As I spent some time developing the actual version, people drifted away (mostly back to Facebook). In hindsight, I should not have thrown the prototype away - big mistake. When I tried to get other people interested the answer was basically either "you'll pry Facebook out of my cold dead hands" or (sometimes literally) "why are you wasting your time on this stupid shit when Diaspora exists?". At the time Diaspora had just gotten funding and people were actually really hostile or condescending towards the idea that someone was working on anything else. After that I basically suspended my efforts. I might eventually get back to it when/if fancy strikes.
thatthatis 12y ago
There are two things you can do with this information: 1) Balk at its seeming absurdity 2) Assume linkedin is a rational company and take the seeming absurdity as an insight into how to convert free users into premium users. It is shocking how little it takes to convince some people to pull out their credit cards and sign up for an annual subscription.
- Kequc 12y ago
  Number two has to assume Linkedin is not only a rational company but also a competent one. I deleted my Linkedin account almost a decade ago and I still get mail from them. When I try to unsubscribe from the spam they send me I am dragged through the sign in procedure, for an account I do not have. When I use the forgot password function to try and figure out what account they are talking about and I enter all of my addresses one by one eventually finding out I definitely do not have any account. I am by this time so frustrated that I want to kick my computer down the stairs. Every single step that has anything to do with not giving them money by the way is met with Captcha. I've never filled out so many captchas as when I tried to unsubscribe from Linkedin spam. My only remaining option was to mark all email from them as spam. Stop using Linkedin. I certainly won't think fondly of anyone who tries to add me there. People just put my email address into a box and I get an email from Linkedin on top of the spam the company still sends me.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - nollidge 12y ago
    See this post elsewhere on the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7674630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7674630
hahahafail 12y ago
About time I got to this ... http://i.imgur.com/0oIx1uC.png http://i.imgur.com/0oIx1uC.png
Major_Grooves 12y ago
That's funny, I was tweeting my annoyance about this very subject this morning: https://twitter.com/Major_Grooves/status/461456872017784832 https://twitter.com/Major_Grooves/status/461456872017784832
DanielBMarkham 12y ago
As I noted on Twitter recently, "LinkedIn, the place where you can get endorsed for skills you don't have by people you've never met, reaches 300 million users." https://twitter.com/danielbmarkham/status/457298482978512896 https://twitter.com/danielbmarkham/status/457298482978512896 What can you say? The thing is growing. People use it. It's definitely no Facebook (e-gads, is that EVEN a compliment?) but they're a contender. If I had to choose, I'd say I hate LinkedIn less than Facebook because at least they haven't mastered social manipulation to the degree that Facebook has. They're kind of rookie-league slimy. I guess that's something.
jbb555 12y ago
Linkedin seems to exist entirely so recruiters can spam people. I put up with it for a long time but finally had enough and deleted my profile. Nothing of value was lost and I get a lot less spam.
uptown 12y ago
The thing that gets me is their pricing. I pay about $40/month for my cablemodem if you extract that cost away from the other parts of my internet provider. LinkedIn costs minimally $30/month? I realize it's apples to oranges, but it just seems like an absurdly expensive service unless you're working as a hiring agent for a company. But based on the number of emails LinkedIn sends trying to convince me to upgrade my account - I can only assume they see their target customer as more than just the HR departments of the world. How could I possibly value what LinkedIn could provide at close to what I get from internet access? It's not even close. I'd pay maybe $3/month to access what LinkedIn is selling out of curiosity ... but even then, I don't know that I'd keep the plan.
- jodrellblank 12y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7673915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7673915 This person claims to have got multiple contracts at >$1000/day from LinkedIn. At that rate, if you used it to get one day of contracting, you would pay for Linkedin for two and a half years, and it would be much more valuable to you than a decade of tech-blogs.
  - uptown 12y ago
    Seems like a great use-case for that type of worker, and obviously well worth the price. But I'd guess that the vast majority of job seekers are looking for longer-term employment with a single employer. If their target audience includes those types of users, it's difficult to see how it'd be worth the membership price.
themoonbus 12y ago
You think using LinkedIn is bad, try developing for it. The developer community is left to fend for itself – the API randomly changes, questions go unanswered, bug fixes are promised and then never delivered. See: http://fucknolinkedindev.tumblr.com/ http://fucknolinkedindev.tumblr.com/
FromStoneage 12y ago
Old news, it has been like this for some times
orky56 12y ago
I've been doing this for awhile now. By going incognito, you not only get more information on that person but also you don't let them know you have been viewing them. It's pretty ridiculous that LinkedIn gives you more disadvantages than advantages for being logged in.
geekfactor 12y ago
Along the same lines, but worse... If you're signed up for the emails they send out about top news in your network or news mentions of people in your network, and you click through the links in the email, they make you log in. From your phone. To read a news article. Drives me insane.
boomlinde 12y ago
"The" absurdity as if this is the single thing that is absurd about LinkedIn.
aendruk 12y ago
I had success in asking LinkedIn to blacklist my email address [1]. My reasoning behind the decision was simply that I found their continual attempts to socially manipulate me insulting, and that I'd prefer not to be walked all over by any company, let alone one as trashy as LinkedIn. [1]: https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/ https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
habosa 12y ago
LinkedIn really blew it. They were the one of the big social players (Facebook, Twitter, G+, Foursquare, Tumblr, LinkedIn) that had people who were happy to pay for premium features. Put another way, they were the only social player with a non-ad revenue play. The problem was that the people paying were recruiters, so they did a lot to make the recruiters happy. They forgot about those who the recruiters were targeting, however, and now people like us send LinkedIn straight to spam. LinkedIn had a real opportunity to be the social network that added real value, but now (as evidenced by the comments below) people see them as a spammy, shady mess.
- SeanDav 12y ago
  I use LinkedIn, but it generates way, way too much email. Now I have a filter to send all LI mail straight to it's own folder. Next step is straight to spam.
  - nollidge 12y ago
    Can't you just adjust your LI email settings? I don't get any LI e-mail anymore after I went through the settings - no need to spamify anything.
- gergles 12y ago
  HN hates LinkedIn because they don't understand it. Look at their financials - almost none (practically speaking) of their revenue comes from advertising.
- untog 12y ago
  "People" on HN see them as a spammy, shady mess. People I've talked to that work in different industries are mystified that I don't use LinkedIn. They love it.
  - habosa 12y ago
    True, some industries like it more than others. But given that tech is one of the most heavily recruited industries right now you'd think that LinkedIn would want to keep a good image around the HN crowd.
company 12y ago
Also the mobile app sucks.
sergiotapia 12y ago
Meh, I treat LinkedIn as a glorified variable dump. Just dump client names, stack and value added to the company when I work on a project. I don't really know anyone who 'networks' within it. I don't see myself chatting with people on there.
baddox 12y ago
LinkedIn is probably my least favorite tech company. I have deleted my account (or whatever is the closest thing they allow, it might be called something like "unlink account") three times now over about two years. This was after attempting to unsubscribe from all emails but continuing to receive them. The first two times I deleted my account, my account magically resurrected itself after I accidentally clicked a link to a LinkedIn page and my password manager automatically logged me in. Apparently logging in resurrects deleted accounts, no questions asked. After the second time, I wisened up and removed all my LinkedIn cookies and disabled my password manager for the domain, then deleted my account for the third time. That had worked for a long time, until just a few days ago, when I received a random LinkedIn newsletter out of the blue. This was disturbing. I clicked the Unsubscribe link, which asked me to log in, but my login didn't work (which is nice, because apparently my account is slightly more deleted now). So I tweeted at LinkedIn, and they said they put my email address on their Do Not Contact list. Hopefully the reign of terror is over, but I somehow doubt it.
- asenna 12y ago
  > Apparently logging in resurrects deleted accounts, no questions asked. I had the same experience with Facebook.
- ktf 12y ago
  I don't even have a LinkedIn account, I've never had an account, and I still receive their emails. It's mystifying...
bthomas 12y ago
Is there a good alternative to Rapportive?
jorkro 12y ago
This looks like a bug. I can see the guy's profile just fine as a registered LinkedIn user.
serverascode 12y ago
I just setup a linked in account recently. Felt like I didn't have much choice.
whiddershins 12y ago
Not directly related: I have a linkedin account, and once, I logged in and it recommended a connection which happened to be the guy who lives on my second floor. This guy was the roommate of the person who rents the second floor, I have never called, emailed, or texted this individual. He works in a completely unrelated business to me and we have no linkedin connections in common. No social media or any other sort of connections. I have no electronic connections with the other guy who lives in that apartment. I have a different mailing address. The only thing we have in common is that he sometimes hops on my wifi when his is on the fritz. LinkedIn insists they don't use ip addresses for connections. OK. This is incredibly hard for me to believe. I feel they pump their numbers with questionable tactics and people mostly use it because of fear. Fear that if they don't use it, their career will suffer. Which plays on a general unease that you could one day end up living in a ditch. So, imo, LinkedIn isn't absurd, it is sinister.
- ctdonath 12y ago
  If you dig a little you can find several articles detailing LinkedIn's odd/scary ability to connect people having no discernible connection but a good reason to think there could/should be.
- HeavenFox 12y ago
  This happened to me too. LinkedIn somehow recommended my airbnb host, despite I've never linked the two accounts. I can only imagine two possible reasons: either my host checked my profile frequently enough to trigger their algorithm, or they're doing IP-based recommendation.
joeframbach 12y ago
Remember LinkedIn Intro? http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/24/do-not-want/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/24/do-not-want/ I'm sure they have many spectacularly bad ideas lined up. Intro was just one that leaked out. The absurdity in the OP blog is just one that was noticed. This is not a one-time thing. This is their strategy. I can't believe people still use LinkedIn.
GeneralMayhem 12y ago
I hate LinkedIn. It's a terrible, cluttered mess of a website. It's shady as all hell. Their mobile app is unusable. And yet, just by having a profile that's even vaguely up to date, I get job offers left and right. Most of them are complete crap, but I was also contacted by a recruiter for one of the big four on there. I filter all the email to a separate folder where it can rot eternally, and I page through the messages on LinkedIn every few weeks to see if there's anything interesting.
lispylol 12y ago
You know what really pisses me off? When any change to your profile gets broadcasted to your entire network. This needs to be off by default. My "feed" is inundated with updates with updates about people tweaking their title or personal information.
Thiz 12y ago
LNKD may well be the most overvalued stock in the whole world. 20B market cap for what? It's the only top-ten social tech stocks I never use.
malandrew 12y ago
I would love it if Matt Cutts and the rest of the Google search team decided to seriously derank any resource that requires login to view. LinkedIn, Quora and Experts Exchange are prime offenders here. There is absolutely no reason for google to index any information that the general public can't see without logging in.
- untog 12y ago
  They do. LinkedIn allows you to view an anonymous version of the profile, so it doesn't technically break the rules.
mark_l_watson 12y ago
I also have considered cancelling my account. The amount of SPAM, even setting every profile option to 'no email' is absurd sometimes. That said, I had lost track of an old friend and he just pinged me to join his network. So, at least for now, there is some value.
arecurrence 12y ago
You can pay to remove that restriction. You're almost guaranteed this was shipped because it showed a stat sig improvement in revenue. While this may seem absurd, most people are not savvy enough to realize there are simple solutions to workaround this restriction and pay up. You may counter this is so absurd that you wont use LinkedIn anymore. But is that really true? I doubt it.
650REDHAIR 12y ago
If you search full first + last name on linkedin you can usually view the full profile without going into incognito.
err4nt 12y ago
I found Hulu to be the same so I don't use my account anymore. You have three options with Hulu: watch free anonymously, get a free account, get a subscription on top of your free account. Free users are given 7 days of trial, after which they show you all the content you could have, if you were asubscriber. Suddenly nothing you see you can click on (until you either log out or subscribe). So I just use it logged out.
cookiecaper 12y ago
LinkedIn is a great analog for its target audience. Meaningless flattery is the primary social currency, users are constantly harassed to engage in pointless drivel that distracts from real productive work, exorbitant fees are exchanged for products and services of dubious value, and everyone pretends to be your friend while they secretly resent you. Sounds just like a corporate job to me! Seriously though, I don't know if you can grow a social network for professionals without mimicking a lot of the bad things that are inherent in the modern work place.
chrisbennet 12y ago
For an employee, LinkedIn is a marketing tool. For all it's downsides, it does make it easier for companies to discover" you. This is why people put up with LinkedIn. If your personal network is such that you don't want to be discovered by people who don't already know you, or you want to handle/control all your own marketing, that's fine.
slmnm 12y ago
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803 points by darrennix 12y ago

Fun fact - small recruitment agencies use this tactic to stalk candidates... it's even got a name: x-ray searches https://www.linkedin.com/groups/How-Google-XRay-Search-LinkedIn-114325.S.112175327 https://www.linkedin.com/groups/How-Google-XRay-Search-Linke... (I realise the irony of posting a linkedin link)

frade33 12y ago

spoiler: never use linkedin when logged in.

yahelc 12y ago

I noticed this the other day -- while logged in, LinkedIn insisted I must upgrade to Premium in order to see the last name of the person whose profile I was looking at (which of course, was publicly once I logged out).

hga 12y ago
Might you find some value from the person, and LinkedIn, knowing you looked at that profile? I can't offhand think of any, but that's one difference between these two use cases.
- lstamour 12y ago
  Except anonymous users get the benefit of being both anonymous and able to view the profile. LinkedIn pushes users to either upgrade or sign out. Works for me, I don't like signing in often either.
  - andypants 12y ago
    They only really push users to upgrade. They don't let you know that you can view the full profile if you sign out. That's just an obscure (possibly temporary) workaround.
- antjanus 12y ago
  Yeah, small bits of value. Before any interview, I'd check out the people I'd go see. They would know I looked at their profile (which shows interest and due diligence) and if they had not checked out my profile already, they would now which helps me imprint on them better, if that makes sense. I'd also check out the people I'd be working with, and if they see that I checked out their profile, they'd probably check mine out too (just to see who this guy is that visited their profile) thus that makes me stand out a bit and we're on a better footing. On the flip side, if an interviewer checks me out before I go in for an interview, it shows actual interest and makes me consider the company more seriously. So I actually appreciate it when an interviewer drops by my linkedin and I can see that they did. It's a plus. Like a pre-connect before an interview. Outside of that, I'm not sure.
- scrabble 12y ago
  I can think of one. My current director viewed my profile and didn't contact me during my employment with my last employer. I took a look at the company he worked for and contacted him myself about an opportunity. Now I work for him (he's an excellent leader too). Had I not seen that he viewed my profile, I wouldn't be working for his company now. As an aside, I will generally always view profiles in an incognito window.
samstave 12y ago
I saw this recently to, where i had done a google search of the person: the google search result showed their full nam in the actual link to linkedin - after clickingto go to the linkedin page, from the full name link, it withheld the last name. Idiocy.
- shostack 12y ago
  Isn't that considered cloaking and a direct violation of Google's Webmaster guidelines? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355 https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355 That's the kind of thing expertsexchange.com was busted for amongst other sites. Or is LinkedIn simply "above the law" because of their search volume?
  - Netminder_EE 12y ago
    DISCLAIMER: I'm Experts Exchange's senior volunteer administrator. That's just one of the things EE was busted for. For logged in members, they would see the pages from a Google SERP one would expect to see; for non-members (or those who weren't logged in), they would see a page that said "sign up". It's not unprecedented -- the New York Times does the same thing -- but the way EE did it (over strong objections from the user community) was singularly creepy. That EE's competitors had Matt Cutts on speed dial just hastened the imposition of the Panda et seq. penalties. The good news -- at least, for those of us who aren't natural born haters -- is that a change in management has resulted in the paywall coming down, and the penalties imposed are slowly but surely being overcome.
    - samstave 12y ago
      They still exist?
      - Netminder_EE 12y ago
        Why wouldn't EE exist? Despite the best efforts of some well-known bloggers whose site wouldn't exist if it had to depend solely on actual income, EE exists because it has a business model that DOES work.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

I've wondered about this too. They don't seem to have a coherent "value capture" strategy. There is always tension between the 'let the customer see the value' and 'give away the value' except they do seem to have it backwards. As a non-logged in user you should not see profiles but as a logged in user you should. That at least would keep some of the scraper bots away.

fredgrott 12y ago
their value strategy is allow recruiters to find the linkedin profile via google and than up sell the recruiter.
- Nicholas_C 12y ago
  Absolutely. My coworkers and I all get cold calls and cold e-mails from recruiters who find our names/occupations on LinkedIn. I'm assuming these recruiters are using premium accounts and paying to send e-mails through LinkedIn.
  - eli 12y ago
    For what it's worth, I get many more/worse emails and calls from people who scraped my github profile.
    - vidarh 12y ago
      At least the people scraping my Github profile tends to have a slight idea about what languages I tend to work with.
tomkarlo 12y ago
The scraper bots are exactly why they're making the full information available to non-logged in users, so it shows up in Google's index. I believe it's considered a no-no to show the bot a different page from a non-logged-in human viewer, so they don't really have a choice. Hiding it from users with login/session cookies, however, is just being annoying and depending on the fact that most people won't know enough to switch to an incognito window.

grimmdude 12y ago

Seems to be an oversight on LinkedIn's part.

rch 12y ago
No, I'm pretty sure it's a purposeful strategy to acquire paying users.

atto 12y ago

Neat trick: when wanting to see the full profile, just search LinkedIn for their name. If you come from search results, you can see the full profile (if their privacy settings allow it, which most do).

leorocky 12y ago

This absurdity is found all over the internet and it's the result of Google's crawling policy. You can do the same kind of thing with nytimes.com articles and other websites that want their context indexed by Google but at the same time restrict access to it. These absurdities are made and work because most people do not understand how to use the software they have.

retube 12y ago
I thought Google heavily penalised sites that made content available to the Google bot but firewalled content for everybody else?
- leorocky 12y ago
  I think there is a penalty for showing Googlebot something other than what people can see, but these sites all use tricks to get around it by allowing users to see the same thing as Googlebot in various circumstances. For example Quora has the ?share=1 URL variable. The Wall Street Journal allows users to read a limited number of articles for free if they clicked in from Google (tracked via a cookie). The New York Times allows free reads from anywhere for a limit, but also tracked via a cookie. LinkedIn blocks their registered users, which is probably the worse system ever.
willu 12y ago
So GoogleBot can't scrape more than 10 NYT articles per month, right?
- leorocky 12y ago
  Googlebot doesn't maintain a nytimes.com session, so it can crawl an unlimited number of articles same as you could if you tell your browser to not accept cookies from nytimes.com
dmbass 12y ago
This is subtly different for Linkedin. They DO show the same thing to Googlebot as logged out users. Registered users end up seeing a different page which Google bot has no way of accessing because it does not have an account.

enginerd 12y ago

Linkedin has always baffled me with this stuff. It's the guy at the party who's so nervous to over-control the social situation, right down to the T in Gil's name.

josho 12y ago

This is the tension that is LinkedIn. While they were growing, they allowed great amount of sharing. Now it seems they are transitioning from a growth based company to growing their revenue--I've personally been finding more and more examples of this increased friction. So far that tension seems to still be 'ok', they still give away, for free, most of the value is in their huge user database. Their monetization strategy has been to tighten things up so it's still valuable for most people, with the exception of sales and recruiters. If you are one of them, then to get the value of the database you need to pay. Given the network effects of their user database, I suspect over time what they give away will be less and less and we'll see more examples of this.

scrollaway 12y ago

I can't believe people still use LinkedIn. And when I say that, I am talking about the HN crowd. It's one thing to say "I can't believe people use IE6", but this is tech-savvy people using a joke of a social media. Guys, if you want to look professional, buy your own domain name. Something professional, like yourname.me, or clever like "yourna.me". Build your own web page with your own damn profile and don't leave control over a company on how you look on the web. Be in control of the first point of entry to your identity. For god sake guys. LinkedIn has had so many security issues, so much scummy behaviour regarding spam, user retention etc... yet you are still blessing them with your presence. (Obviously this doesn't apply to those that don't) PS: Use gandi.net as a registrar for your name. They offer a free ssl cert along with the domain (and support almost every tld) for added "professional-looking" value to your site. I am not affiliated with them, I just love Gandi. Edit: I'm being called out for "living in my own bubble" it seems. Yet LinkedIn is the very definition of a bubble. I used to have a LinkedIn profile and from it all I got were the most awful recruiting experiences, and all of them through cold calls. Your own site with CV + portfolio + Github + contact details is a LOT better. PS2: Downvote or not I don't care, but please reply if you disagree; I'd love to disagree even harder! Edit 2: I'm starting to think there is correlation between finding LinkedIn useful and not having a Github profile. A lot of the points people are bringing up here are solved in a very similar way by Github (which is in many ways a social network). This does bring me back to my original point though, why use LinkedIn when you can use a company that isn't scummy and actually have your real work experience on there and a link back to your personal website with more portfolio etc?

deleted 12y ago
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mathattack 12y ago
I upvoted you, but still disagree. (I'm happy everytime someone forces me to clarify what I'm thinking) Here's the general idea... Most everyone else is using it, and you can get better access and knowledge if you use it too. Before every meeting I have, I look the person up. If I use it, and most of my friends do, I can figure out who we know in common. If I need something from another company and I don't know who to contact, I look at 2nd degree connections for hints. LinkedIn is in the toolkit of every tech-savvy business person. It can also be a people for engineers who want a good permanent place that non-technical people can find them. Non-technical folks won't look in Github. Your last point is relevant. Yes, there is a correlation between LinkedIn proponents and Github profiles, but why wall yourself in to a Github only universe?

krelian 12y ago

I'd rank LinkedIn number 2 after Godaddy in the list of Successful Shady Companies (list ranked by shadiness BTW). Their entire business model revolves around tricking the user into doing stuff that - if it was clearly explained - they would never want to do.

frankdenbow 12y ago
Recruiters paying to have premium access to candidates (a large part of LinkedIn's revenue) does not appear to involve tricking anyone.
- eli 12y ago
  Indeed many people joined LinkedIn specifically so that prospective employers could find them.
geekam 12y ago
Linkedin makes Facebook look like a real good deal.
- angersock 12y ago
  At least Facebook has cat pictures and games.
bps4484 12y ago
what sort of things do they do? This is a serious question, I don't know and am curious.
- zaraflan 12y ago
  The most provable thing is that if you ever make the mistake of granting them access to your email account, everyone on your contact list can expect multiple spam messages FROM YOU begging them to join LinkedIn. It's the kind of thing only the shadiest of shady Facebook apps employ. Harvesting of contact information even without permitted access is less clear cut but there's widespread concern due to the large number of questionable coincidences.

mjt0229 12y ago

Linked in is a very strange world; maybe it's good for job seekers or recruiters, but I find that the most frequent interactions I have there are either recruiters contacting me for ridiculous jobs that I would never be interested in (and sometimes am not qualified for). The second most frequent type of interactions I have there are where people endorse me for various skills. Inevitably, I get endorsed by people who have no knowledge of said skills: I'm not sure why a technology-phobic college admissions officer would endorse my skills in distributed software engineering, and what would be the value of such an endorsement?

artmageddon 12y ago
> Inevitably, I get endorsed by people who have no knowledge of said skills: I'm not sure why a technology-phobic college admissions officer would endorse my skills in distributed software engineering, and what would be the value of such an endorsement? I have to agree. I've gotten so many endorsements from non-software engineers who I've never worked with for my apparent XML abilities. I literally don't know what to think about that.
- ovulator 12y ago
  A childhood friend added me on LinkedIn, I haven't interacted with her since I was maybe 10 years old. But I guess she knows I rock at SQL! A previous boss endorsed me for PHP, at that job I used PHP exactly 0 times. Needless to say, he wasn't a very good boss either.
- mjt0229 12y ago
  It's also weird that I'm most endorsed for some of my weakest skills. Everyone thinks I'm a great Python programmer except me, it seems.
  - kiksy 12y ago
    I keep getting endorsed for jQuery. I keep being reminded of this: http://www.doxdesk.com/img/updates/20091116-so-large.gif http://www.doxdesk.com/img/updates/20091116-so-large.gif

badusername 12y ago

LinkedIn pursues a bullshit strategy. Instead of adding value and figuring out how to monetize it, they want to hide whatever value they brought to the table, and charge $39.95 for what is essentially a resume hosting service and a broken email system. I discovered long ago that browsing LinkedIn while logged out gives me a better experience.

sridharvembu 12y ago

LinkedIn seems to be changing, and I am not sure for the better. Recently they stopped access to a whole bunch of CRM players to LinkedIn API. Only Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics are allowed now. http://www.zdnet.com/linkedout-crm-companies-squawk-over-linkedins-api-policies-7000028762/ http://www.zdnet.com/linkedout-crm-companies-squawk-over-lin... (Disclosure: Zoho CRM was one of the affected products - we offered to pay for their API access but no dice)

Hovertruck 12y ago

I only ever view LinkedIn profiles in an incognito window. I don't want to appear in the "These people viewed your profile" emails that they send out.

bowlofpetunias 12y ago

This has been the case for quite a while. I've gotten used to using LinkedIn in another browser where I'm not logged in. It's pretty obvious that LinkedIn's strategy is completely dictated by sales and marketing droids with zero respect for the user or the product. Neither a strong product manager nor a responsible development team would ever accept such an illogical anti-user feature just to scratch extra sales out of existing users whilst at the same time maintaining their Google footprint.

brotoss 12y ago

I also use this method for looking at people's profiles without pinging them for a "Viewed by", which makes it so I can still see who is looking at mine.

kwaimind 12y ago

LinkedIn is getting a bit silly with some of their ideas. Just like the recommendation/endorsements thing, absolutely useless. I have people endorsing mw who I have never met or spoken to about my job!

datacog 12y ago

The article isn't entirely accurate about viewing 3rd degree connections. There are considerable number of profiles who have lot less information publicly viewable (on public url), in those cases this wont work. Linkedin is basically trying to achieve 2 things here: a) Show you what you can do using premium b) Convert/onboard user If you have tried premium before, they will highlight it when "you are viewing a 3rd degree profile". There is a very very simple HACK for viewing full 3rd degree profiles without being a subscriber. Here's what you need to do: - When you arrive at a 3rd degree profile, copy the 'name' and 'company' (or an other attribute) e.g. 'Chris Amazon manager' - Google search for 'Chris Amazon manager linkedin', you'll get the full name of the person, but still would view a 3rd degree profile - Now copy the full name + 'attribute' and search in linkedin, voila... You see the full profile.

lukasm 12y ago

Heh I do the same. I've been using porn mode so often that I remember shortcut by heart (shit+cmd+N) I really don't understand this strategy. Don't hold to "your" data so aggressively, build a platform. I'd be happy to pay for premium API to LinkedIn to build a custom CRM and other tools.

coherentpony 12y ago

I don't have a LinkedIn account, and they still keep emailing me. Go away LinkedIn, I do not want your spam.

Maskawanian 12y ago

I deleted my profile once I started receiving spam from an address I had only given to them.

amorphid 12y ago

LinkedIn has locked down their system so much, when someone asks me to send the URL to my LinkedIn profile, often they can't see it without a premium account. Even with a premium account. I have to download my profile as a PDF, and send that. Lame!

mbesto 12y ago

It's even worse on mobile. Search for Gil Travish on the app. Full profile available.

pt3530 12y ago

A few of my friends have taken advantage of this to create a search engine that allows you to look up anyone on LinkedIn without having to pay LinkedIn. Try http://www.recruitem.net http://www.recruitem.net in incognito mode.

baggachipz 12y ago

Ah yes the tried-and-true "experts-exchange" model. How'd that work out for them, anyway?

Netminder_EE 12y ago
DISCLAIMER: I'm Experts Exchange's senior volunteer administrator. That means, for the most part, that I've outlasted everyone else. At the time EE imposed the cloaking / hard and fast paywall / masking / whatever you call it, we told them it was a bad idea. We understand why they did it -- it was to counteract the effects of a prior less-than-advisable decision -- but that didn't make it a good idea. Long term, obviously, it resulted in 1) major penalties from Google and 2) a lot of competition EE didn't need to provoke. New management has removed the paywall and redirects from external search results and links about two months ago; we expect that it will still be a few months longer before the penalties will be overcome.

ramonex 12y ago

I have just closed my account that I had there for years.

jacquesm 12y ago

Linkedin will stay as long as there is nothing better. They're very much ripe for disruption, but breaking the network effects is going to be hard.

atldev 12y ago

Unrelated to this post, I was trying to downgrade my account from premium to free today. It was surprisingly hard to find the path. I had to google it. Btw, it's under "Privacy and Settings", not under "Account" where you'd expect. I have nothing against LinkedIn and find it helpful. It just struck me as something that was discussed in a design meeting- "how can we make cancellation hard to do?"

wfn 12y ago

So, has anyone been working (or pondering working) on alternatives? Ideally (and perhaps naively), I can see a diaspora-like abstract semi-decentralized / federated social network infrastructure which could then be used to build all sorts of social networks (e.g. friends/diaspora-like "non-evil version of facebook," "professional like-linkedin-but-not-evil network," what have you.) The kind of vibe that federated open source systems like tent.io might have. Of course it's all about network effects and "actually getting a critical mass of people to use $thing," but ideally, there should be a generic federated-social-network-protocol which may support many clients / web portals, and many particular social networks. "I've built a non-evil-linkedin-clone, join this network by clicking one button."

Udo 12y ago
I worked on a decentralized social network for a while, but eventually gave up on it because it was impossible to get traction (especially since other open source alternatives "exist").
- wfn 12y ago
  Did you end up open sourcing the parts of the thing that you ended up implementing/writing? Seems like a waste to just throw it into a trash bin. (But of course there may be nuances / it may be hard to do that, etc.) Non-working code on github and a blog post explaining what has been done is imho >> nothing!
  - Udo 12y ago
    No, it was open source from the beginning - one of my hobby projects. I believe open source is the only way something like this can work at all. I had some early adopters who used the prototype, which motivated me initially. As I spent some time developing the actual version, people drifted away (mostly back to Facebook). In hindsight, I should not have thrown the prototype away - big mistake. When I tried to get other people interested the answer was basically either "you'll pry Facebook out of my cold dead hands" or (sometimes literally) "why are you wasting your time on this stupid shit when Diaspora exists?". At the time Diaspora had just gotten funding and people were actually really hostile or condescending towards the idea that someone was working on anything else. After that I basically suspended my efforts. I might eventually get back to it when/if fancy strikes.

thatthatis 12y ago

There are two things you can do with this information: 1) Balk at its seeming absurdity 2) Assume linkedin is a rational company and take the seeming absurdity as an insight into how to convert free users into premium users. It is shocking how little it takes to convince some people to pull out their credit cards and sign up for an annual subscription.

Kequc 12y ago
Number two has to assume Linkedin is not only a rational company but also a competent one. I deleted my Linkedin account almost a decade ago and I still get mail from them. When I try to unsubscribe from the spam they send me I am dragged through the sign in procedure, for an account I do not have. When I use the forgot password function to try and figure out what account they are talking about and I enter all of my addresses one by one eventually finding out I definitely do not have any account. I am by this time so frustrated that I want to kick my computer down the stairs. Every single step that has anything to do with not giving them money by the way is met with Captcha. I've never filled out so many captchas as when I tried to unsubscribe from Linkedin spam. My only remaining option was to mark all email from them as spam. Stop using Linkedin. I certainly won't think fondly of anyone who tries to add me there. People just put my email address into a box and I get an email from Linkedin on top of the spam the company still sends me.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- nollidge 12y ago
  See this post elsewhere on the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7674630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7674630

hahahafail 12y ago

About time I got to this ... http://i.imgur.com/0oIx1uC.png http://i.imgur.com/0oIx1uC.png

Major_Grooves 12y ago

That's funny, I was tweeting my annoyance about this very subject this morning: https://twitter.com/Major_Grooves/status/461456872017784832 https://twitter.com/Major_Grooves/status/461456872017784832

DanielBMarkham 12y ago

As I noted on Twitter recently, "LinkedIn, the place where you can get endorsed for skills you don't have by people you've never met, reaches 300 million users." https://twitter.com/danielbmarkham/status/457298482978512896 https://twitter.com/danielbmarkham/status/457298482978512896 What can you say? The thing is growing. People use it. It's definitely no Facebook (e-gads, is that EVEN a compliment?) but they're a contender. If I had to choose, I'd say I hate LinkedIn less than Facebook because at least they haven't mastered social manipulation to the degree that Facebook has. They're kind of rookie-league slimy. I guess that's something.

jbb555 12y ago

Linkedin seems to exist entirely so recruiters can spam people. I put up with it for a long time but finally had enough and deleted my profile. Nothing of value was lost and I get a lot less spam.

uptown 12y ago

The thing that gets me is their pricing. I pay about $40/month for my cablemodem if you extract that cost away from the other parts of my internet provider. LinkedIn costs minimally $30/month? I realize it's apples to oranges, but it just seems like an absurdly expensive service unless you're working as a hiring agent for a company. But based on the number of emails LinkedIn sends trying to convince me to upgrade my account - I can only assume they see their target customer as more than just the HR departments of the world. How could I possibly value what LinkedIn could provide at close to what I get from internet access? It's not even close. I'd pay maybe $3/month to access what LinkedIn is selling out of curiosity ... but even then, I don't know that I'd keep the plan.

jodrellblank 12y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7673915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7673915 This person claims to have got multiple contracts at >$1000/day from LinkedIn. At that rate, if you used it to get one day of contracting, you would pay for Linkedin for two and a half years, and it would be much more valuable to you than a decade of tech-blogs.
- uptown 12y ago
  Seems like a great use-case for that type of worker, and obviously well worth the price. But I'd guess that the vast majority of job seekers are looking for longer-term employment with a single employer. If their target audience includes those types of users, it's difficult to see how it'd be worth the membership price.

themoonbus 12y ago

You think using LinkedIn is bad, try developing for it. The developer community is left to fend for itself – the API randomly changes, questions go unanswered, bug fixes are promised and then never delivered. See: http://fucknolinkedindev.tumblr.com/ http://fucknolinkedindev.tumblr.com/

FromStoneage 12y ago

Old news, it has been like this for some times

orky56 12y ago

I've been doing this for awhile now. By going incognito, you not only get more information on that person but also you don't let them know you have been viewing them. It's pretty ridiculous that LinkedIn gives you more disadvantages than advantages for being logged in.

geekfactor 12y ago

Along the same lines, but worse... If you're signed up for the emails they send out about top news in your network or news mentions of people in your network, and you click through the links in the email, they make you log in. From your phone. To read a news article. Drives me insane.

boomlinde 12y ago

"The" absurdity as if this is the single thing that is absurd about LinkedIn.

aendruk 12y ago

I had success in asking LinkedIn to blacklist my email address [1]. My reasoning behind the decision was simply that I found their continual attempts to socially manipulate me insulting, and that I'd prefer not to be walked all over by any company, let alone one as trashy as LinkedIn. [1]: https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/ https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

habosa 12y ago

LinkedIn really blew it. They were the one of the big social players (Facebook, Twitter, G+, Foursquare, Tumblr, LinkedIn) that had people who were happy to pay for premium features. Put another way, they were the only social player with a non-ad revenue play. The problem was that the people paying were recruiters, so they did a lot to make the recruiters happy. They forgot about those who the recruiters were targeting, however, and now people like us send LinkedIn straight to spam. LinkedIn had a real opportunity to be the social network that added real value, but now (as evidenced by the comments below) people see them as a spammy, shady mess.

SeanDav 12y ago
I use LinkedIn, but it generates way, way too much email. Now I have a filter to send all LI mail straight to it's own folder. Next step is straight to spam.
- nollidge 12y ago
  Can't you just adjust your LI email settings? I don't get any LI e-mail anymore after I went through the settings - no need to spamify anything.
gergles 12y ago
HN hates LinkedIn because they don't understand it. Look at their financials - almost none (practically speaking) of their revenue comes from advertising.
untog 12y ago
"People" on HN see them as a spammy, shady mess. People I've talked to that work in different industries are mystified that I don't use LinkedIn. They love it.
- habosa 12y ago
  True, some industries like it more than others. But given that tech is one of the most heavily recruited industries right now you'd think that LinkedIn would want to keep a good image around the HN crowd.

company 12y ago

Also the mobile app sucks.

sergiotapia 12y ago

Meh, I treat LinkedIn as a glorified variable dump. Just dump client names, stack and value added to the company when I work on a project. I don't really know anyone who 'networks' within it. I don't see myself chatting with people on there.

baddox 12y ago

LinkedIn is probably my least favorite tech company. I have deleted my account (or whatever is the closest thing they allow, it might be called something like "unlink account") three times now over about two years. This was after attempting to unsubscribe from all emails but continuing to receive them. The first two times I deleted my account, my account magically resurrected itself after I accidentally clicked a link to a LinkedIn page and my password manager automatically logged me in. Apparently logging in resurrects deleted accounts, no questions asked. After the second time, I wisened up and removed all my LinkedIn cookies and disabled my password manager for the domain, then deleted my account for the third time. That had worked for a long time, until just a few days ago, when I received a random LinkedIn newsletter out of the blue. This was disturbing. I clicked the Unsubscribe link, which asked me to log in, but my login didn't work (which is nice, because apparently my account is slightly more deleted now). So I tweeted at LinkedIn, and they said they put my email address on their Do Not Contact list. Hopefully the reign of terror is over, but I somehow doubt it.

asenna 12y ago
> Apparently logging in resurrects deleted accounts, no questions asked. I had the same experience with Facebook.
ktf 12y ago
I don't even have a LinkedIn account, I've never had an account, and I still receive their emails. It's mystifying...

bthomas 12y ago

Is there a good alternative to Rapportive?

jorkro 12y ago

This looks like a bug. I can see the guy's profile just fine as a registered LinkedIn user.

serverascode 12y ago

I just setup a linked in account recently. Felt like I didn't have much choice.

whiddershins 12y ago

Not directly related: I have a linkedin account, and once, I logged in and it recommended a connection which happened to be the guy who lives on my second floor. This guy was the roommate of the person who rents the second floor, I have never called, emailed, or texted this individual. He works in a completely unrelated business to me and we have no linkedin connections in common. No social media or any other sort of connections. I have no electronic connections with the other guy who lives in that apartment. I have a different mailing address. The only thing we have in common is that he sometimes hops on my wifi when his is on the fritz. LinkedIn insists they don't use ip addresses for connections. OK. This is incredibly hard for me to believe. I feel they pump their numbers with questionable tactics and people mostly use it because of fear. Fear that if they don't use it, their career will suffer. Which plays on a general unease that you could one day end up living in a ditch. So, imo, LinkedIn isn't absurd, it is sinister.

ctdonath 12y ago
If you dig a little you can find several articles detailing LinkedIn's odd/scary ability to connect people having no discernible connection but a good reason to think there could/should be.
HeavenFox 12y ago
This happened to me too. LinkedIn somehow recommended my airbnb host, despite I've never linked the two accounts. I can only imagine two possible reasons: either my host checked my profile frequently enough to trigger their algorithm, or they're doing IP-based recommendation.

joeframbach 12y ago

Remember LinkedIn Intro? http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/24/do-not-want/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/24/do-not-want/ I'm sure they have many spectacularly bad ideas lined up. Intro was just one that leaked out. The absurdity in the OP blog is just one that was noticed. This is not a one-time thing. This is their strategy. I can't believe people still use LinkedIn.

GeneralMayhem 12y ago

I hate LinkedIn. It's a terrible, cluttered mess of a website. It's shady as all hell. Their mobile app is unusable. And yet, just by having a profile that's even vaguely up to date, I get job offers left and right. Most of them are complete crap, but I was also contacted by a recruiter for one of the big four on there. I filter all the email to a separate folder where it can rot eternally, and I page through the messages on LinkedIn every few weeks to see if there's anything interesting.

lispylol 12y ago

You know what really pisses me off? When any change to your profile gets broadcasted to your entire network. This needs to be off by default. My "feed" is inundated with updates with updates about people tweaking their title or personal information.

Thiz 12y ago

LNKD may well be the most overvalued stock in the whole world. 20B market cap for what? It's the only top-ten social tech stocks I never use.

malandrew 12y ago

I would love it if Matt Cutts and the rest of the Google search team decided to seriously derank any resource that requires login to view. LinkedIn, Quora and Experts Exchange are prime offenders here. There is absolutely no reason for google to index any information that the general public can't see without logging in.

untog 12y ago
They do. LinkedIn allows you to view an anonymous version of the profile, so it doesn't technically break the rules.

mark_l_watson 12y ago

I also have considered cancelling my account. The amount of SPAM, even setting every profile option to 'no email' is absurd sometimes. That said, I had lost track of an old friend and he just pinged me to join his network. So, at least for now, there is some value.

arecurrence 12y ago

You can pay to remove that restriction. You're almost guaranteed this was shipped because it showed a stat sig improvement in revenue. While this may seem absurd, most people are not savvy enough to realize there are simple solutions to workaround this restriction and pay up. You may counter this is so absurd that you wont use LinkedIn anymore. But is that really true? I doubt it.

650REDHAIR 12y ago

If you search full first + last name on linkedin you can usually view the full profile without going into incognito.

err4nt 12y ago

I found Hulu to be the same so I don't use my account anymore. You have three options with Hulu: watch free anonymously, get a free account, get a subscription on top of your free account. Free users are given 7 days of trial, after which they show you all the content you could have, if you were asubscriber. Suddenly nothing you see you can click on (until you either log out or subscribe). So I just use it logged out.

cookiecaper 12y ago

LinkedIn is a great analog for its target audience. Meaningless flattery is the primary social currency, users are constantly harassed to engage in pointless drivel that distracts from real productive work, exorbitant fees are exchanged for products and services of dubious value, and everyone pretends to be your friend while they secretly resent you. Sounds just like a corporate job to me! Seriously though, I don't know if you can grow a social network for professionals without mimicking a lot of the bad things that are inherent in the modern work place.

chrisbennet 12y ago

For an employee, LinkedIn is a marketing tool. For all it's downsides, it does make it easier for companies to discover" you. This is why people put up with LinkedIn. If your personal network is such that you don't want to be discovered by people who don't already know you, or you want to handle/control all your own marketing, that's fine.

slmnm 12y ago

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slmnm 12y ago

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