
LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network - interactually
http://www.interactually.com/linkedin-creepiest-social-network/
======
jtbigwoo
There's a more benign answer to the creepy connection suggestions. LOTS of
people import their email address books into linkedin. It's not a stretch to
think that his girlfriend's mother (or some other relative) imported her
address book that contained the names of both the OP and the girlfriend's
stepfather.

As far as the creepier name mismatches go, my oldest email address list has
tons of maiden names and unused/defunct email addresses. It's likely that some
high school friend of the OP uploaded an old address book and LinkedIn's
algorithm made a best effort match on some of the rarer names even if the
email addresses don't match. I mean, how many Lucy Hatsbaughs do you think
there are on linked in? Two? LinkedIn may as well gamble on odds like that.

~~~
edwardunknown
I didn't import anything to LinkedIn. One person showed up on mine who could
_only_ have come from either my Twitter account or G+ account, both of which
have been deleted.

Yes, it was a hot chick I was creepily cyber stalking. Like you haven't ever.

~~~
Aloisius
So you and the person it suggested to you don't know anyone in common that
might have uploaded _their_ address book?

~~~
edwardunknown
I guess that's possible, but unlikely. I'm looking at it now, she's still
there and so is a girl I had a crush on in junior high. This is fascinating
but extremely disturbing, I'm deleting this thing asap. I figure I must have
googled her and found her LinkedIn page while signed in, it could have been
years ago. In fact that's got to be the explanation for both of them unless
they did something extremely unethical with the email address I gave them.

------
blhack
I finally joined linkedin about a week ago, and it just feels...scammy.

It's interesting to me (or frightening) that some of the smartest people I
know have the fewest endorsements. People I know doing [1] _actual real work_
on things like "microcontrollers" have...3-4 endorsements with them, but
people who I _know_ have only maybe _installed_ Linux, have 20 or so
endorsements for "linux".

There are people I know who are post-graduate level experts on certain fields,
and those fields are either not listed at all, or they have maybe 1 or 2
endorsements for it.

Stupid.

I'll keep just linking people to my github, and showing them projects I've
built.

[1]: Actual real work as in: writing libraries that other people use.
Contributing to the community in ways that effect _the entire_ community.

~~~
wtetzner
The endorsements on LinkedIn are useless. LinkedIn suggests things like
"Endorse [So and So] for [some thing]," and people just click the "endorse"
button.

People that know nothing about technology have endorsed me for skills I don't
have.

~~~
btrautsc
Agreed. Endorsements are largely a popularity contest. Sure, it is great that
your connect [name] endorsed you for [skill]... That is helpful to know in
some ways, but it is no way definitive on your ability.

We're working on a system we think is slight better, based on getting credit
for what you read, and hopefully one day what you know.

~~~
nhebb
> Endorsements are largely a popularity contest.

That's the way I've been looking at the entire web these days - and not just
social media. The Google page ranking algorithm really boils down to a
(potentially high stakes) popularity contest.

~~~
yen223
Not just the web though - our entire political system is one great big
popularity contest.

~~~
nhebb
Ha ha, I get your point.

There are SEO tea leaf readers who think Google+ plays an increasing role in
search rankings. It's probably just speculation coupled with coincidence, but
as I was reading some articles on this last week, I was reminded of the
Googler that wrote about why he was not going to his high school reunion. It
wasn't just sad - it made me angry that adults condoned the activity. I was
struck by the irony that this Googler had escaped the high school social
pressure cooker, only to go on to work for a company that has engineered the
world's biggest popularity contest.

------
Caerus
Facebook does the same thing and it's just as creepy.

I closed my "real" account around 2011. A few months back I created a new
blank account because I needed access to a couple organization's pages. The
only information on that account is my name (a fairly common one) and an email
address which is different from the one on my original account. It's possible
they have some geographic info linking the two accounts as I closed and opened
them from the same city.

90% of the "people you may know" are correct and from dramatically different
social groups. Some how it's picked out a girl I did a family stay with in
Germany in '04, a fourth cousin I'm only vaguely aware of, current friends
from several groups, and high school friends I haven't talked to in 10 years.

~~~
vidarh
I set up a test Facebook account while doing a Facebook app that uses an
e-mail address that has _never_ been used for anything else.

Yet it keeps suggesting people I actually know.

The second account also does not have my full name (if it had my full name
it'd be less weird, as my name to my knowledge is globally unique - there's
only a few hundred people with my last name worldwide)

The account has not been used for anything related to me. I've never searched
for anyone from it. Never given my e-mail address there...

The only thing connecting the two is that the "fake" e-mail address is a
"real-user-part+something@gmail.com" address, and that I've logged in to them
from the same machine.

It took less than a day before that account started getting friend requests
from people I know (clearly the "TEST" instead of my surname did nothing to
dissuade them)

~~~
nthj
> The only thing connecting the two is that the "fake" e-mail address is a
> "real-user-part+something@gmail.com" address, and that I've logged in to
> them from the same machine.

So, to summarize, a simple regular expression matching emails against
/\\+[^@]+/ and replacing with '' is some 1984-level creepiness?

Come on.

~~~
TallGuyShort
The technology to do any of those is little more than a few database joins and
some fuzzier matching logic like you are suggesting. What's creepy is just the
extent to which they match. In the email contacts theory, for example, it's
not hard to remember an email address that was in a user's contacts list and
then suggest they connect when that email address is used. It's only creepy
because you personally had no control over giving them the information that
allows them to make that leap.

------
jere
Here are some things I find more creepy about LinkedIn:

-It tells people when I view their profile. So now I _never_ view people's profiles because I don't want to look like a stalker. Imagine if Facebook worked this way.

-An andecdote, but maybe you've experienced it: a guy I worked with about 3 years ago (and only for 2 weeks) has "endorsed" me several times recently. I don't know if this is some kind of quid pro quo, but it makes me somewhat uncomfortable.

~~~
Aloisius
You can turn off your visibility when browsing other people's profiles. By
default, it should be anonymized anyway, unless you switched it when trying to
view profile stats __:

[https://www.linkedin.com/settings/wvmp-
visibility?goback=%2E...](https://www.linkedin.com/settings/wvmp-
visibility?goback=%2Enas_*1_*1_*1)

Personally I keep mine fully on since it is a good way of passive contact (I
once browsed ~1000 VCs with a headline that was somewhat provocative as an
experiment and about half looked at my profile back and 6 of them emailed me
asking what I was working on).

 __Note: I actually designed this feature at LinkedIn after doing a ton of
interviews with people and going to multiple privacy organizations and the EU
to make sure it wasn't violating anyone's privacy by making it a tit-for-tat
system that was by default anonymized (if you click on profile stats, it
prompts you to switch your setting if you want to see who has viewed your
profile (or did when I was there)).

~~~
corin_
Premium accounts still see it, though.

~~~
lukejduncan
LI employee here. That's actually not correct. Premium accounts do not still
see anonymous viewers.

~~~
corin_
I'm not sure exactly which accounts premium accounts _can_ see have viewed
their profile, but pretty sure all free accounts are included. Will get
someone who has setting on anonymous to view my profile later and check, but
for now there's only a couple of hidden names on there, looks like people who
are more than 3 degrees away.

------
onemorepassword
It's not the creepiness that's relevant here. That's rather subjective, and as
others have pointed out, all social networks do the same.

What's most relevant here is that it's downright illegal in most Western
countries LinkedIn e.a. operate in. Both collecting this information and
sharing it without explicit (as in: not just default checked boxes) informed
(as in: information about why, what and shared with whom) consent is not just
unethical, it's a violation of most known privacy laws.

The widespread practice of blatantly unethical business practices in our
industry by both high profile companies and small start-ups alike is something
we as professionals should take more seriously.

If we don't, it doesn't only harm the image of our industry, but we'll be
faced with ever more regulatory hurdles. The infamous EU cookie law is just
the beginning if we don't act to clean up our own industry.

Every second web company seems to have a business model that directly or
indirectly generates revenue through stalking people on a massive scale. This
cannot possible be sustainable without a huge backlash.

------
speeder
I just did a test and opened LinkedIn and took a look at the suggested people.

They included: Several people with the same name as I (expected, not really
creepy). But also: People that I trained martial arts with, and I NEVER
exchanged electronic messages with them, and I do not talk with them for 4
years now. Also I doubt they remember me to search me, I am not much
remarkable. People that I met at school and church 6, 7 years ago, and that
again, I never exchanged electronic messages with them.

Yes, LinkedIn is very, very, very creepy.

~~~
vph
I am curious why this is supposedly _creepy_. I think the main premise of a
social network is that you reach out or get reached out to people who might
know you or you might know. Now, you have the option of not reaching out to
those people, and I think it is fair game that the social network assumes that
other members might reach out to you, a member of the network.

If you do not like that aspect of the social network, do not join it.

~~~
k3n
Educated guesses are one thing; exact "guesses" are quite another, and one has
to wonder where the 'guessing' is pulling its data.

Would it creep you out if I guess which month you were born in? Probably not.

Would it creep you out if I guessed your exact birthday, including
month/day/year? Hell yeah it would.

It has nothing to do with whether or not one wants to be social, and
everything to do with random, axe-murderer creepiness. Imagine if I walked up
to you at a party and rattled off names of 5 random people from different
aspects of your life; would that not freak you out? "Oh, you don't know me,
but I know _you_ ;)". That's virtually the same thing that is happening here.

------
dmbass
I always assumed the suggestions were from other people importing their
Twitters and email contacts. So if person A emails me and then imports their
emails, Linkedin can suggest to both of us that we might know each other,
increasing the chance of creating a connection (and creepy-ness factor for
me).

~~~
anon987
I'm pretty sure that's the case. I got suggestions for 2 people I played WoW
with and the only ways we communicated were in-game chat, voice chat, and we
had a single e-mail chain where we (the officers) talked about....something, I
forget what. I'm guessing one of them imported their mail contacts because I
doubt LinkedIn has visibility into Blizzard's social network or private voice
chat servers.

I think the creepy part about LinkedIn is you can actually see who views who.
If Facebook did that it would be very embarrassing for a lot of people.

~~~
yen223
"I think the creepy part about LinkedIn is you can actually see who views
who."

Is it any creepier than being able to stalk some stranger's Facebook profile
anonymously?

------
ChuckMcM
No creepier than other social networking sites.

I find it interesting that it has automated what some folks have done on their
own for years. There was a woman at Netapp who managed these sorts of
potential and known relationships in her head about the folks working at a
couple of big Netapp customers.

I guess what I find amusing is that it is was my experience when introducing
myself to someone new at a social event and saying "I work at <company>" or
"Yeah, I grew up in Las Vegas" or something along those lines I would often
get "Really, I knew this person <name> who worked/lived there, did you know
them?" as social banter. It didn't creep me out then either, but I'm sure that
for some folks it does.

------
joelandren
Yes, I also noted the creepiness of "viewers of the profile also viewed."

<https://twitter.com/joelandren/status/251417778643406848>

If I were a woman, I would be turned off to see something like this.

~~~
mindcrime
I'm not sure how much one should read into that. I mean, ok, there are
probably _some_ guys (and some women, as far as that goes) who click on
profiles solely due to the attractiveness of the picture. BUT... there are
other reasonable reasons to explain a picture like shown above. For example,
note that all of the people listed appear to work in related domains
(marketing, event management of some sort). Given the nature of linkedin
(business networking, with a heavy emphasis on recruiting) it makes sense that
somebody looking to, say, poach an event planner or marketing person, would
look at those profiles. And, from what I've seen, those are a couple of
domains where women are heavily represented. Recruiting is another one.

Anyway, just as a little anecdotal test, I just logged into LinkedIn and
looked at two profiles, both attractive women, where one is a recruiter and
the other is a developer. In the recruiter case, every single entry in the
"people also viewed" list was female (and also a recruiter), in the case of
the developer they were almost completely male (with two exceptions) and are
either developers or work for the same company.

I don't know... _maybe_ this is indicative of something that should be
considered "creepy" but I have my doubts.

~~~
dclowd9901
Further, there tends to be a high correlation between someone's success in a
field such as marketing and recruiting, and their appearance. I don't want to
generalize too much, but most recruiter emails I get are from very attractive
women, and I have a feeling that's not unintentional, as gross as that sounds.

~~~
mindcrime
Yeah. I guess it says something about society, human nature, etc., but I think
you're right. Heck, I can't even remember ever meeting a female recruiter who
wasn't _at least_ moderately attractive. And most of the women I've met, who
were recruiters, are what I'd describe as flat-out "gorgeous" or "beautiful".

So... are attractive women particularly drawn to recruiting for some reason,
or is physical appearance a hiring criteria for recruiting companies? Both?
Neither?

~~~
caw
I know a woman who was thinking of joining tech recruiting, and she asked me
about it. She went for an interview, and most of the to-be co-workers were
young women, and also attractive. It seemed like one of the requirements
though it wasn't explicitly stated.

She was interested in it primarily for the pay; they were promising something
like 45-60k a year, and her current position was only around $30k. You start
off as a recruiter, and then you move up into account management, which is
better pay and a larger budget for wining and dining clients.

------
TallGuyShort
I've had the same experience. Register on LinkedIn, log in, "Would you like to
connect with <screwed up relationship from years ago>?" We hadn't spoken in
years or connected on any other site, I could only come up with one thing: she
emailed me once. I bet she gave LinkedIn her email credentials to find
connections. I hate that feature.

~~~
atechnerd
I was thinking the exact same thing. It's funny that he wrote that entire post
and never raised the possibility of OTHER people sharing their contacts with
LinkedIn, and that may explain at least some of the "people you may know."

~~~
interactually
You're right, I hadn't thought about that. The first person that commented on
the blog pointed it out. You're also right, however, that it only explains
_some_ of the suggestions they made. It still doesn't explain some of the
others, and they still don't make any mention of that in their Help page
explaining where they get the data from.

------
rcoh
For a while, Linked in was present a password input box that looked like "You
failed to login, try again" at a glance, but in reality it was asking for your
email address and password. From that point, they could read your email and
extract all your contacts.

------
some1else
The site is down for me. Here is the cached version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?biw=1436&bi...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?biw=1436&bih=806&sclient=psy-
ab&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.interactually.com%2Flinkedin-creepiest-social-
network%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.interactually.com%2Flinkedin-creepiest-
social-
network%2F&gs_l=serp.3...12288.12981.1.13574.6.6.0.0.0.0.101.436.4j1.5.0...0.1...1c.1.12.psy-
ab.bV51ytimoPc&pbx=1)

Update: Creepy. But I think most of this data can be lifted from other users
who imported contacts from GMail. I think they must be matching only by name,
because people could have been in touch with different mail addresses (at a
previous employer, for instance).

~~~
interactually
Sorry about that, I didn't expect the response the article got, should be
resolved now. And thanks for posting the cached version!

------
joethrow
On a throw away account.

Several people have hit upon the major method LinkedIn uses which is that
someone you know who has your name/email/... (or likely many someones)
uploaded an address book to LinkedIn. LinkedIn then infers that because that
person knows you, that you may know the other people they know (which is often
true). They then combine that when a bunch of far more complicated inferences
to generate the list.

The goal of course is to provide suggestions to someone who just signed up.
Sadly, the reason it feels creepy is because it seems like voodoo. They could
do a better job explaining how it worked, but a lot of the bigger inferences
are secret sauce.

------
mariusmg
To me LinkedIn is basically a bunch of people circle jerking each other.
Professionally.

~~~
michaelochurch
_To me LinkedIn is basically a bunch of people circle jerking each other.
Professionally._

Endorsed: Product Knowledge.

------
joezydeco
I think we all don't want to admit that we look up ex-girlfriends, neighbors,
college roommates, etc. when we're on these social networks and we're bored
(or lonely).

I searched for an ex once on LinkedIn and found nothing...until a year later
when she finally signed on and there she was in my "you might know" suggestion
list.

------
geetee
LinkedIn recently suggested my neighbor from 1995. I didn't even have Internet
access, let alone an email address back then. I haven't had any contact with
this person since.

~~~
hollerith
My guess is the neighbor put your name in LinkedIn's search box.

~~~
smutticus
That or they have information on where you and your neighbor once lived. I
have signed up for a couple of online brokerage accounts where they ask me
questions about where I or my family have lived in the past.

I got questions like; "At which of these 5 addresses has $BROTHER ever lived
before?" And one of them was correct.

~~~
chloraphil
I've had similar questions when opening online accounts before, I believe that
information comes from your credit report.

------
rooker
I did the "attractive women" thing (took a hit for the team, for science) and
that was absolutely true. The odd thing was, the first random girl I clicked
on was this girl I kinda had a crush on in college (all my "People you may
know" recommendations were from college, even as I'm three years out) who
happened to be Asian. Then...all of the "Also Viewed" were fairly attractive,
well-groomed Asian women. Isn't that interesting? I thought at the very least
it would break me out of race, but apparently they're their own class.

The other thing I'll say is perhaps this author is tapped out of "People you
may know" and LinkedIn is simply guessing . Mine looks fairly reasonable,
random, and not like they were digging particularly deep.

------
mikeevans
Google cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.i...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.interactually.com%2Flinkedin-
creepiest-social-network%2F&aq=f&oq=cache%3Awww.interactually.com%2Flinkedin-
creepiest-social-
network%2F&aqs=chrome.0.57j58j60.2709j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

------
base698
I routinely get suggested to connect with people I've never even emailed or
who used email account I closed a decade ago.

It's reasons like this I wish someone would do a Public/Private key based p2p
social network. Essentially you digitally sign a key that you know someone and
that's how you derive connections. Seems like you could implement browsable
profiles as well.

~~~
freshhawk
Its a great idea, but I think everyone who has had it is stopped when they
look at just how unwilling people are to exchange keys (or understand them)
and how unwilling browser companies are to put effort into interfaces for
managing keys (both of these obviously feed into each other).

~~~
finnw
The type of user who uses public keys usually knows better than to use server-
side key management on a social networking site (however pretty the interface
may be.)

~~~
freshhawk
Oh definitely, that's why I highlighted the lack of innovation in browsers for
handling keys and encryption/decryption. This all needs to happen locally (not
the trendy thing these days) and the current tools aren't at the level where
that's going to happen at a large scale.

There would still be the key-exchange problem (I can't imagine a system that
would make it easy for non-technical people to exchange keys out of band, even
if you could explain why that was necessary and what it means), but with good
browser tools I bet the number of zero-knowledge type sites/p2p networks would
explode.

~~~
base698
I think if you take away the need to it to be really truly secure it's
workable. Social profiles aren't nuclear secrets, they are just posts about
topics and pictures. I think if you embed the private key with a symmetric key
password that would be good enough. I do wonder why that hasn't been done
especially in the era of native mobile apps.

------
jack-r-abbit
The OP site is down so I don't know what they are citing as "creepy"... but I
never considered LinkedIn to be a _social_ network. It has always just been a
_professional_ network. It is my always on, mostly up to date resume. It has
the who/what/where/when of my employment history. I have only accepted
connections from people that I have worked with (and even then only those I
actually worked with... not just anyone that worked at the same company but
does not actually know me in some way) or friends that are in similar fields
(and the rare cases of recruiters I've dealt with regarding employment). It
actually bothers me that people use it to post twitter/facebook style status
updates. LinkedIn is the last place I would think to read about someone's
breakfast choice... but I've seen those updates before.

~~~
interactually
Sorry about the crash, its back up now!

------
maresca
I'm usually pretty careful about picking technologies and websites to use.
I've steered clear of linkedin and as time goes on, I'm pretty happy with that
decision.

------
qompiler
LinkedIn leaks privacy information through their "also viewed" section.

Applied to a new job and started working there, after a few months I decided
to look up my managers LinkedIn profile, only to notice that on his page the
"also viewed" section showed employees from my older company and family. So
yeah, so now I know he was trying to figure out more about me through
LinkedIn.

~~~
harryf
I'm not sure this is a bad thing. In your example isn't a good thing to know
your new boss did this?

Social networks encourage creepy behavior amongst their users. LinkedIn lets
you know who viewed your profile while Facebook doesn't. Personally I'd rather
know.

~~~
qompiler
Not a bad thing for me no.. this time!

I don't think anyone is giving explicit permission to let the world know they
have been snooping around other people's profiles. Although this information
is not directly published it leaks through their "features".

------
bifrost
Eh, LinkedIn says that there are other people that work for my company that I
might know. The only problem is, I'm an officer of my company, I know everyone
who works there and they're all on my Linkedin. The people its suggesting,
work for a similarly named company, about 1000 miles away... Score 1 for
accuracy...

------
rjempson
I don't like LinkedIn for similar reasons but I somehow feel I will offend
people if I drop out, and I have had some decent leads from it over the years.

The import contacts feature is particularly nefarious, it says "import" but it
actually keeps checking down the track (or at least it used to work like
that).

------
datums
How was Doug connected ? Doug while only communicating with you via email
imported his contacts. His contacts include you. There's the connection. Works
similarly on FB. When that business associate imports contacts aka
connections, they find you on the other side :) It's really that simple

------
localhost3000
funny this should come up today. the girl i am currently dating happens to be
both attractive and asian. i was on her linkedin yesterday and noticed that
the "people also viewed" widget was 100% other young, good-looking asian
women. so, add race as a vector to the linkedin creep graph...

~~~
interactually
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who noticed that. I was admittedly hesitant to
add that part to the story.

------
darxius
Looks like his site was taken down or something. Its redirecting to the
wordpress setup page.

~~~
interactually
Back up now, server couldn't handle all the database requests.

------
Zigurd
I see LinkedIn as something akin to going to networking events. They really
really want you to network, and they make some reasonable assumptions about
your inhibitions. That's what their paying customers are there for.

------
oddshocks
Redirected to your install.php file at this URL:

[http://www.interactually.com/linkedin-creepiest-social-
netwo...](http://www.interactually.com/linkedin-creepiest-social-network/wp-
admin/install.php)

------
tloudon
probably worth pointing out that LI doesn't have ads and makes its money from
subscribers, most of whom i'm guessing are sales/recruiting.

from a pure-business-no-ethics perspective, why would you care what anyone
else thought? w/ that point of view: every connection or link, however creepy,
makes the system as whole more valuable to subscribers.

personally, the feature doesn't have enough churn, so i always see the same 5
faces, 99% of the time it's background...otherwise it would probably creep me
out slash annoy more.

------
laurent123456
I also don't like how they recently changed the invitation email titles to
"XXX, good to see you on LinkedIn", as it makes it look like it's a personal
message, when it's not.

------
smaili
As a hacker, I consider seeing

 _Error establishing a database connection_

as more creepy :)

~~~
interactually
haha good point. It's fixed now.

------
josh2600
I don't know, LinkedIn seems a lot less creepy than Facebook. I mean some of
the ads I get hit with would make many folks blush.

~~~
illuminate
"some of the ads I get hit with would make many folks blush"

I'm guessing the "likes" you have that cause the targeted ads to hone in on
you would also make many folks blush.

At least, before I shut mine down some months ago, I had plenty of interesting
likes but I never had any ads that didn't match my content.

~~~
josh2600
I appreciate your insinuation about my "likes". I don't really have anything
"liked" on my Facebook but please, go ahead and tell me about how my personal
preferences are affecting my online experience.

I'm happy that your anecdotal experience was different from mine, but your
empirical evidence does not undermine mine.

Good day sir.

~~~
illuminate
Facebook tends to base these ads around collected data and demographics, the
targeting is not generally random. Perhaps other sites you've browsed that
share data with Facebook's advertising network?

I suppose there's also the possibility of malware replacing FB's ads with
their own.

------
JoeKM
If you're a programmer I see no reason to have a LinkedIn profile. GitHub is
better for résumé and networking.

------
Lewton
I don't have a linkedin account. Should I? Does it provide value I can't find
elsewhere?

~~~
TallGuyShort
I think it's the best / most ubiquitous way to always have your up-to-date
resume available, and to keep in touch with industry contacts.

~~~
jaredmcateer
I like the hard copies Careers 2.0 prints out better but the Industry contacts
on LinkedIn can't be beat.

------
gdltec
Wow, it looks like interactually's site has been hacked

~~~
jdolitsky
Yea, I would do something, I was redirected to the wordpress installation
screen..

~~~
interactually
Lesson of the day: Don't go to lunch after posting an article like this. I got
it handled as soon as I got back!

~~~
jdolitsky
lol

------
neduma
Just deleted my account today.

------
michaelochurch
Y'all know that I worked for Google. On this topic, I can only say good things
about the place. When it comes to privacy and PII, Google holds itself to an
extremely high standard. Many of these "social" innovations that are popping
up on the market place were rejected out-of-hand at Google because it holds
itself to an extremely high ethical standard regarding user data, as it
actually respects them.

I was shocked, for example, when I learned that a certain social network gives
universal profile access to employees as a perk. That would not happen at
Google. If you looked at your high-school ex-girlfriend's email, you'd be
fired immediately (and deserve it).

Social _is_ creepy, because it's all about being defined by other people,
which is ridiculous and horrible. What, so do I suck at Programming Languages
because I haven't trolled my 25 closest acquaintances for endorsements? Am I
really going to become more credible in Machine Learning if I get 15 strangers
to "endorse" me?

The major conflict in "Social" is what I call "Document vs. Improve" (or:
Exploit vs. Explore). A social app can expand the web of social connections
and make it more efficient, but (a) that's really hard, and (b) there isn't a
lot of short-term money in it. Or it can document social relationships that
already exist, and make a shit-ton of money off the data. That's easy, but it
doesn't actually make anyone's life better. Guess which one the mainstream
social players favor?

What I find depressing about LinkedIn is how much it has play-by-play
replicated the old, broken way of doing things. Resumes. Titles and dates of
employment. Recommendations. Recruiter spam. It feels like the Wayback Machine
took us to 1995.

~~~
onemorepassword
> When it comes to privacy and PII, Google holds itself to an extremely high
> standard.

With all due respect, but you've gotta joking.

Google doesn't even hold itself to the standards set by the laws in countries
it operates in. Laws that are for now still full of loopholes Google happily
exploits with zero restraint, despite knowing full well (not in the last place
because they've been warned on a regular basis) that this at the very least
violates the intent of those privacy laws.

Also, Google has been actively lobbying _against_ privacy protection laws in
the EU for several years now.

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dbrian
Considering that, for years, Facebook had a universal password that would log
you into anyone's account, I'd say that Google's standards are significantly
higher than other players in the social sphere.

[http://therumpus.net/2010/01/conversations-about-the-
interne...](http://therumpus.net/2010/01/conversations-about-the-
internet-5-anonymous-facebook-employee/)

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grimman
This is a non-argument. Just because other actors do certain things does not
excuse ANYTHING. Period.

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vsl
Well, the claim was that Google's standard is higher than that of (some) other
actors, so the behavior of the other actors is kind of directly relevant...

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yid


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ttrreeww
As long as LinkedIn continues to get me high paying jobs, it is all good.

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edgely
Site's down.

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interactually
Back up now, sorry about that!

