
LinkedIn Growth Engine: The Never Ending Viral Loop - gwintrob
http://growthhackers.com/companies/linkedin/
======
orillian
Nope it's not a viral loop it's a bucket of spam. Rather warm spam, one that's
been sitting in the sun far to long. But spam none the less.

Oh, and as a person no longer on LinkedIn I know this because I had to
permanently place linkedin addresses in my spam filter so all my "friends"
would stop sleep inviting me to linkedin. Including the ones that didn't even
realize they had given linkedin my address. Oh, and a few well meaning
individuals even asked linkedin to stop spamming me and others on their behalf
and even though they said they would....linkedin failed to actually comply
with their "clients" wishes.

And lets not get started on the crock trying to recruit on it has become. As
an employer, all I wanted to do was post a position, that was all. Sigh, one
can look back wistfully on the good ol' days when you could post your add in a
few regional or provincial papers and expect a decent response.

~~~
orthecreedence
Came here to pretty much say exactly what you did. LinkedIn is a spam echo
chamber, and I recently deleted my account because it's such an insane
cesspool of filth. I can't count how many times I got endorsed by people I
hardly knew for things they've never even heard of before. Not to mention
recruiters mailing me with stupid shit like "I noticed you programmed an async
library for lisp, you should come program Java for us!!" Like, wow! No thanks!

Let LinkedIn be a lesson in how NOT to grow a company. What used to be a
somewhat decent social network has devolved into a cheap mockery of its former
self.

~~~
sj4nz
I kind of get a feeling that a paid-entry social network like app.net may be
the future place for finding this kind of business networking. I'm also a
LinkedIn leaver, because of the spam just like everyone else.

More than a few general users I've seen usually get pretty upset when they get
random LinkedIn invitations from people they don't even know, because of the
address book harvesting.

~~~
vijayaggarwal
People tend to overvalue money and undervalue time, and that's the reason
"free" services tend to beat "paid" ones in any business where per capita cost
of service is low. So, while LinkedIn generates spam, it's not much vulnerable
to a "paid" competitor.

~~~
sj4nz
This is so very true. Falls under the general guideline "If You're Not Paying
for the Product--You are the Product." [http://lifehacker.com/5697167/if-
youre-not-paying-for-it-you...](http://lifehacker.com/5697167/if-youre-not-
paying-for-it-youre-the-product)

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LukeB_UK
For me, deleting my LinkedIn account was one of the best things I've done. I
only ever recieved spam from recruiters, endorsements for skills I don't have
from people who don't really know and invites to connect with people that I
worked with and are in a different industry. None of this meant anything to me
so it was just an annoyance.

Couple all that with LinkedIn's constant use of dark patterns and general bad
practices, I think I'm way better off without it.

Unfortunately they are in a position where a lot of people signed up and won't
move to an alternative unless their contacts are there too, much like
Facebook. It's embedded.

Since deleting my LinkedIn profile, I've mainly used twitter for networking.
Within the development community it seems to be a great place for people to
share all the stuff that people would share on LinkedIn anyway.

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morganb180
Hey Guys, I wrote the post.

Here's my take, after researching them for so long. LinkedIn is definitely
aggressive with their growth tactics. From the endorsements product, which has
some questionable value, to the gimmicks like the "You're in the top 1% of
profile views" emails, they definitely push the limits on growth and driving
sustainable engagement. There's definitely an argument to be made that they
cross the line too often for many people's tastes.

But what I think the most important takeaway from their success is that even
after a decade they are constantly pushing the growth envelope. They are
launching new products, new tests, new features, many focused on creating
repeat visits and new growth, all the time. It doesn't stop.

To innovate on the growth engine for a decade straight? That's impressive.
Sure they get things wrong, but they don't stop trying. Even as a public
company. Even with 225 million users they keep trying new things.

I think that's a great lesson for companies to learn from, regardless of how
hard you decide to personally push tactics for growth. So many companies
lament their lack of growth, but what did they really try? What have they
shipped that is actually focused on driving growth? PR, AdWords and a referral
program does not make for a sustainable startup growth engine. I think the
focus on the need to grow and the constant iteration and learning is something
that has certainly given me a new perspective on how to think about startup
growth.

~~~
damian2000
Now their tactics look more like desperation rather than well thought out
methods to maintain growth. Its mainly the spam combined with blatent selling
out to advertisers & recruiters that I have an issue with.

~~~
morganb180
It's a valid point. The entire early growth team is gone and onto other
ventures. It's probably very likely that the new growth team is facing
increasing pressure to continue to grow, which can lead to overly aggressive
tactics.

I also think the product is in the middle of a massive pivot from referral
network to network+content destination and that transition isn't quite done
yet. It will be interesting to see what the next few years hold for them.

~~~
boomzilla
I noticed that Linkedin has been trying to push content too with the
influencers' posts and Pulse recommended articles. I am skeptical that they'll
be able to get a lot of traction with that kind of content though.

I am just curious why they have not pushed Q&A as another engagement channel,
something similar to Quora. As most people in Linkedin use real identity, the
Q&A should be relatively high quality with little spam. Thinking about it,
maybe Linkedin should buy Quora or Stackoverflow :)

~~~
taurath
Nice try, Quora or Stackoverflow competitor!

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gumby
LinkedIn is very useful to me, but the way I use it doesn't get LI much
revenue. I use it only as a "check up on people" service (to check up on
others and make it easy to check up on me).

So instead of having a resume I can just suggest someone look at my linked in
page. This is more for FOAFs (e.g. someone would like me to work with them;
their colleagues can check out my LI page before they meet me to have some
idea of who I am). I can see, to some degree, who has looked me up.

I use it the same way in reverse: when I want to check someone out I can look
them up on LI and see whom we know in common, then just write to that person
directly.

Unfortunately I can't send all LI mail straight to spam since some people who
have lost my address use LI mail to get in touch. So I use some mail sieve
rules to bin the obvious junk.

When it started it was a great way to catch up with old work colleagues. Now I
link to people I've met, not just close colleagues, but I know which is which.
In the case of professional contacts, The Strength of Weak Ties[0] really
applies.

[0]
[http://www.immorlica.com/socNet/granstrengthweakties.pdf](http://www.immorlica.com/socNet/granstrengthweakties.pdf)

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damian2000
LinkedIn has been almost useless to me ever since I joined ... all I get out
of it is daily spam in my inbox.

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dsplatonov
nice article and information about linkedin early days, how they test the
concept and attracted new users. Maybe now its annoying, but they get many
active users.

~~~
morganb180
I agree. That was the key takeaway from me. How the sustain growth over such a
long period of time is amazing.

