

Job Change Notifier is shutting down - jhonovich
http://www.jobchangenotifier.com/

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josh2600
Has anyone else noticed LinkedIn becoming increasingly hostile towards small
consumers of its API? I feel like the first straw was the non-active positions
being pulled from developers followed by secondary and tertiary connections.

I don't dev on the LinkedIn API but as I understand it now, only their large
enterprise partnerships have access to a number of features, and it looks
like, from the sound of this, that that is only going to get worse.

Is it possible to have an API-first public company? It's sort of like asking
if it's possible to have an open, api-accessible data-warehouse (I think the
answer is no, but maybe I'm wrong).

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mjolk
>Is it possible to have an API-first public company? It's sort of like asking
if it's possible to have an open, api-accessible data-warehouse (I think the
answer is no, but maybe I'm wrong).

Unless you're charging for access to the APIs, you're going to have to
generate the money to keep the lights on somehow. For linkedin, it's paid
access to more user data and advertising, so it's understandable why they put
the website first.

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tbatchelli
I actually thought this service made LinkedIn somewhat useful. It's a loss for
LinkedIn in my book.

I have no idea what API changes caused this, but all this process of closing
down ecosystems by locking down the public APIs makes the next public API less
likely to be adopted, and we all lose in the end.

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timdorr
They are "upgrading" all app tokens to require their new scoped login system,
which they've been using for new apps for the past couple years. It's a better
system for the consumer, because the app has to specifically request access to
information like your list of connections or email address.

However, it also comes with a requirement to refresh your oAuth token every 60
days by sending the user through the authorization flow transparently. JCN
relied on an infinite session to continually poll your connection list and
send you an email when anyone changed jobs. Users visited their website once
and then left, interacting with JCN almost exclusively via email. There's very
little chance of re-engaging them to go log into the site (and thereby refresh
their oAuth tokens) because there's almost nothing to do there.

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matznerd
why not just send them an email telling them that they need to re-auth to
continue receiving notifications? Seems pretty simple to me...

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timdorr
I'm a cofounder on a competing product
([http://my.salesloft.com](http://my.salesloft.com)) and you would be
surprised at how much of an uphill battle it is to get email users to engage
with a web app. In particular, sales folks (our target market) are hard to
convert.

I can understand Roger wanting to shut down JCN rather than invest any more
time and money on something that's not earning him anything directly.

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zwtaylor
I was under the impression that LinkedIn already does this, I constantly
receive notifications from them alerting me when a connection has taken up a
new job or job title. Why the need for this app?

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swalsh
I had no idea this app existed, but I wish i knew. I've found linkedin to have
very noisy notifications. For my contacts job changes are about 90% of what
I'm interested in. However its mixed in with wall posts (all recruiters)
network connections etc.

I've had experiences where I didn't find out about a change until over a year
later. Its nice to know if a former coworker has moved, or if a contact at a
vendor is no longer working at the place.

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redmattred
If anyone is looking for an alternative, we have similar service called
"Radar" that will send you a weekly update on who has recently switched jobs
or gotten promoted.

It also predicts who in your network is potentially looking for a new job
based on their recent LinkedIn activity.

You can sign up for a free account at:
[http://www.bullhornreach.com](http://www.bullhornreach.com)

