
De-anonymizing LinkedIn profile views - youngj
http://lite.floodmagazine.com/post/1303462297/now-how-are-we-supposed-to-stalk-each-other-on
======
danilocampos
Slightly OT, but can someone explain to me what I'm getting from LinkedIn?
I've codified a historical record of my coworkers. Occasionally a recruiter
contacts me – 90% of the time, they're bozos carpet bombing by buzzwords.

I've given it something like five years to click and I'm still missing
something. It's just not a fun web application to use. Twitter, Facebook,
Stack Overflow, Quora and many others do a better job at the tasks LinkedIn
half-heartedly attempts. If I want to connect with someone I don't know, I
send them an email. The Rube Goldberg business where a chain of connections
passes you around always felt weird and imposing to me.

At this point I feel like a cow at the feedlot, and LinkedIn sells me to
staffing professionals.

Entirely willing to be put onto the right path, I'm just not seeing it right
now.

edit: The score for jobs I've gotten through social sites:

LinkedIn: 0

Facebook: 0

Twitter: 2

~~~
gaius
The bizarre thing about LI is you have all your current colleagues on it - why
would you want _them_ to know you were looking for another job?

~~~
run4yourlives
Collectively, you don't. You'd be surprised however how much this can help
individually, especially with former colleagues.

~~~
gaius
Well yes quite - so where's the mechanism to exclude "my boss" or "managers in
my company" from such updates?

~~~
run4yourlives
The Inbox?

~~~
gaius
Uh what?

If you edit your profile or set your status to "is looking for a new job"
everyone gets notified. Have you used LI?

~~~
run4yourlives
Linked in isn't facebook. If you are using your "status" as a glorified
twitter account, you're doing it wrong.

If you are looking for a new job, contact the people you think may be able to
help directly via message.

Status messages customized to an audience type in a world of public
information being available on google is a bad idea in general, regardless of
linked in's behaviors.

~~~
gaius
Erm yes I know how to send a message thanks. Nevertheless if I update the
skills/experience section of my profile, everyone will be notified. There's no
way around your cow-orkers knowing that you've updated your CV.

~~~
danilocampos
You can turn that off.

~~~
gaius
Yes but I _want_ people outside the company to see it.

------
araneae
This is also an opt-in feature of OKCupid.

I personally opted out, because people's whose profile I viewed but didn't
contact are exactly the people I _don't_ want contacting me- which they could
do if they saw my profile name/info.

Namely, these are all the people whose profile I looked through and said
"meh." If they knew who I was they might contact me when I already determined
I wasn't interested.

I imagine it might be the same for LinkedIn; say you were looking to headhunt
someone but found their resume lacking. Would you really like them to have the
option to then contact you and ask for a job?

~~~
slig
Browse the new profiles using an incognito window first.

~~~
araneae
If I were going to go through all that effort, I would just contact the person
who I was actually interested in. Instead of passively looking at their
profile and hoping they would notice and contact me.

------
albahk
When Linkedin released this modal feature - i.e. if you don't agree to release
more information to everyone, then we will restrict your usage rights - I
placed Linkedin alongside Facebook into the basket of sites where I will
actively try to reduce my usage until I can phase them out completely.

I know Linkedin is free, but I have invested a lot of time plowing their
fields and cultivating business contacts (from which you make revenue) and now
this?

~~~
pierrefar
I'm really annoyed because there is no middle ground: I have to be completely
de-anonymised to get the analytics. Even partial anonymity of the profile gets
you absolutely no analytics.

Will I quit LinkedIn? No way at this point; I have way too much invested in
it. But as LinkedIn provides no incentive for me to be even partially
anonymous as opposed to total anonymity now, I'm conciously making my profile
completely anonymous.

~~~
ThomPete
You mean it's ok that you can see others but they can't see you?

~~~
pierrefar
Not quite. Why not show analytics of others at the same level of anonymity you
set? The three levels of anonymity are completely open, the "vague" headline,
and completely anonymous. The analytics can be of a similar level. The more
open you are the more you learn about viewers of your profile.

The old way was to show (by default) the vague headline of your profile's
viewers. The system I describe above is not a big jump from that.

What I find annoying is that for me to get any form of analytics, I have to be
completely open. In buzzword compliant words: it is the incongruence between
the 3 levels of anonymity and the binary availability of analytics.

------
gojomo
Friendster (at least for a while, perhaps still) had a similar feature. If I
recall correctly, to see who'd browsed your profile, you had to let others see
when you browsed theirs.

~~~
binarymax
I think Orkut as well.

------
aikinai
Mixi (the most popular social networking site in Japan) has had this feature
since the beginning and it certainly changes how people use the site.

Actually a year or two ago they finally added the ability to delete your
tracks after viewing someone else's profile. I think you can only delete 5 per
day though, so you still can't stalk on Mixi all day without any trace.

------
aniket_ray
Orkut, Google's old attempt at Social Networking had this feature.

I doubt anybody really cared. This was not really a game changer and was just
another feature.

It's a nice feature for your ego to know who is secretly stalking your profile
but beyond that (and after the initial novelty) its usage fades.

~~~
judson_white
> Orkut, Google's old attempt at Social Networking

Orkut's still leading in Brazil -
[http://finchannel.com/Main_News/Tech/72662_Orkut_Continues_t...](http://finchannel.com/Main_News/Tech/72662_Orkut_Continues_to_Lead_Brazil%E2%80%99s_Social_Networking_Market,_Facebook_Audience_Grows_Fivefold_/)

Something about Orkut sounding like yogurt in Brazilian Portuguese -
[http://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-brazil-loves-
orkut/30...](http://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-brazil-loves-orkut/3082/)

------
newmediaguy
Feels like they are holding aspects of the site hostage - only released if you
give up more privacy. I am simply not comfortable being forced to give up my
privacy in order to use aspects of the site. Would rather pay - to maintain
privacy. Lack of concern over 'user privacy' was the primary reason I quit
Facebook. If the average person really knew what was going on in the back room
connecting all their data - without their knowledge or approval - they would
be astonished.

------
mcantor
Re: the "what if" Facebook scenario:

And so a thousand jilted exes had their egos soothed.

(" _OMG_ , he forgot to opt out, and he's been stalking me _every day_ for
_two months_ even though I unfriended him. He's like, totally still into me.")

~~~
lzm
In practice this would just force stalkers to create fake accounts.

~~~
qq66
Highly dubious use of the word "stalker" to describe someone who views their
ex's Facebook profile compulsively.

------
pwim
This is standard feature, called footprints, on Japanese Social Networks.

~~~
mkempe
Interesting. Are there cultural differences wrt leaving visible footprints? do
you need to _feel_ private? is it ok to stare at other people, until they
notice you? it can be very different between cultures.

I recently watched Ozu's "Good Morning" (1959) and was struck by the way
people would come to a house, open the door, step in, and _then_ call /
announce themselves. Kids, relatives, neighbours, even a traveling salesman. I
always assumed a closed house door invited people to knock and wait outside...

------
ig1
LinkedIn have always had the feature if you had a premium account you could
always see the names of your visitors. I guess they're changing it now to make
it available to all of their users.

------
nozepas
I'm sure if fb had a feature to allow checking who has seen your profile, a
lot of people would be happy to pay for it. Maybe it could be a new way for
facebook to make money? I'm not pretty sure facebook users have more value
than they cost to facebook (based on money from ads (to my knowledge, the only
way fb gets money from users 'directly) vs bandwidth/server/development
expenses)

------
ugh
studiVZ (German Facebook clone, something like six million members, 17 million
if you add the other two VZ social networks) has always (or at least as far as
I remember) allowed you to see who viewed your profile. You can opt-out so
others won’t see you but you will still be able to see who viewed your
profile.

------
tjarratt
I looked for this on LinkedIn briefly and couldn't find it. Apparently you
have to opt in to letting users whose profile you've viewed learn about you.

The default setting is for the text to read "someone at _SOME TYPE OF COMPANY_
has viewed your profile".

------
dgudkov
Just checked LI - I can manage how somebody will see me if I visited his or
her page. I can remain fully anonymous if I want to. So FB or LI do not de-
anonymize profile views but users themselvs when they want to. No reason for
panic.

------
fragmede
(Btw, it might be just me, but the byline (Posted by...) hides the word
'stalk' in the title. It becomes semi-transparent if I mouseover article text,
but it looks amateur.)

------
Jun8
You can opt out of this feature. AFAIK, the feature that you don't get is the
month-by-month tabulation of search hits for your profile.

------
mrud
xing a networking site like linkedin, already has this feature since a long
time. But you can only use it if you are pro member and pay for that feature.
You have to pay to see who stalked you, normal user don't see any details who
visited their profile.

Punchline: you have to pay money on xing to see who's stalking you ;0

~~~
loewenskind
I thought LinkedIn was like this before? I always saw "John Doe and 6 others
have viewed your profile. Sign up to a premium account to see who they were".
In fact I know some people who had the premium account exactly so they could
see this information.

~~~
mrud
Thought the same, but could not find details on the comparison page...

