
LinkedIn Q1 Beats on Sales of $638M, Shares Fall 25% on Weak Outlook - samaysharma
http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/30/linkedin-q1/
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kbenson
I can't say I'm entirely disappointed to see LinkedIn doing poorly. They do
shady things with their data[1], and I'm not okay with that.

I like the idea, but it feels like they are a company that could have done
well and been fine privately, but market pressure forces them into some
questionable practices (but I have no idea how representative of reality that
is).

1: Such as determining a second email address of mine through data mining or
some other method and sending emails to it asking if I know a person, even
through I'm already linked with them, and _that email address does not have a
LinkedIn account_. That's either an invasion of privacy, or spam, or both.

~~~
NDizzle
If we're trading stories about shady linkedin things, I want to participate!

While I have never synced any of my email addresses with linkedin, and I have
always used the hidden craigslist email address when buying/selling things,
linkedin currently wants me to connect with two different people that I have
sold things to on craigslist.

I'm not even sure how that happens, especially since I use the craiglist-
internal email for handling the transaction.

~~~
VieElm
You probably replied to a craigslist email which used your real email address
via reply-to field and they were using gmail which stored this information.

~~~
NDizzle
My current theory is that I gave him my phone number in one of the emails, but
every email transaction was through the pseudo-anonymous craigslist email that
is generated per listing.

He probably has a contact with that (now bad) email and my (still current)
phone number. Which is my phone number on linkedin.

That kind of makes sense, but it still doesn't make me very happy about their
methods.

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chollida1
The word I'm hearing is that this is going to start being the new normal for
tech companies.

The market is starting to demand that companies that have huge multiples start
to earn their multiples.

FB, GOOG, MSFT, APPL and CSCO are proabably all ok as they can hit their
targets with relative ease and don't carry a burdensome multipel, but hype
based companies like TWTR, LNKD and others are about to be in a world of hurt,
I wouldn't want to be a shareholder in any of those companies:(

This is probably going to be especially painful for the SAAS companies that
just IPO'd, I don't think they'll get much time to prove they are worth their
multiples and they have the double whammy of coming out of employee lock up
periods pretty soon.

AMZN is the one wild card, I would have thought their free pass expired long
ago but they are the sole exception that I can think of.

 __EDIT __to respond to the question about FB 's multiple, Most people still
believe that FB has the ability to turn on a switch and make more money, ie
they are artificially making less than they could fro the sake of growth, just
like AMZN.

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kbenson
Isn't this exactly what the last week of HBO's series Silicon Valley was
about? Not getting valued too high because it may force your hand later?

~~~
guiomie
The last episode is the opposite, don't make revenues, this way expectations
are limitless as opposed to making small revenues

~~~
andrea_s
Yes, but the character who gives that advice is very blatantly portrayed as a
moron (by the way, does anyone know who are the inspirations for the
character?)

~~~
shalmanese
It's a thinly veiled Mark Cuban, who sold his radio on the internet startup to
Yahoo and has since managed to increase his net worth from 2.5 billion dollars
to a whopping 2.7 billion dollars.

~~~
xienze
To be fair, he also owns a basketball team.

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win_ini
I wonder if there will be any sort of impact longer term as a result of them
basically cutting off developer access to their current API. Login, Sharing,
and some other stuff remains - but you can't access someone's network graph.
Very similar to Facebook's move.

I know everyone always says "don't build your business on another platform"
which I agree with. And several businesses have recently closed because they
did just that.

LinkedIn claims this change is because they want to have the best end-user
experience. Well - I think the main reason I have a professional graph is
because I want to leverage my connections. And frankly, LinkedIn's use of that
graph info is primarily focused on Finding Jobs and building Social Capital
for your career.

By cutting off developers from the graph and community - I think Linkedin is
actually NOT providing a better end-user experience... for other apps -
LinkedIn is now a glorified Professional Resume served up via an API. BUT as a
LinkedIn user I want to leverage my graph in different ways - reconnecting
with old connections, keeping track of people's careers, connecting with
vendors, and other use cases I can't imagine - but other app developers can.

As usual, I know nothing will change LinkedIn's mind. Except they have changed
my mind, about using LinkedIn on a regular basis except for finding jobs. Over
time I find Glassdooor is becoming better for that anyhow.

I personally have some feeling of Schadenfreude when I see them miss and only
hope that cutting off developers hampers them in the long-term. But I also
recognize developers are a small part of their users and can effectively be
ignored.

Fuck you, Linkedin - I wish I knew how to quit you.

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gitah
Yelp, Twitter, Grubhub, and now LinkedIn.

Social media companies are getting crushed this earnings season. Maybe it's FB
sucking all the ad dollars in this space.

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hkmurakami
This holds a lot of weight to me. Everyone I talk to raves about the
effectiveness of FB app install ads, even though CPI is becoming tremendously
expensive.

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deepinsand
Twitter, LinkedIn, GrubHub, and Yelp all had decent quarters, and yet they all
reported tepid outlooks. When they're in such disparate industries, how did
they reach this consensus? Shouldn't this be reflected in the broader economy
somehow?

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jedberg
Q2 is generally a slow quarter for a lot of businesses, so many of them have
lower outlooks.

~~~
deepinsand
But shouldn't that have been priced into expectations or previous outlooks?

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maverick2
Like FB for Work,LinkedIn in for work is an 'easier' sell and a solid
secondary revenue stream. They must be looking into that. If not, they should
be.

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randomname2
Beats? Sales were estimated at $718.3M, so they missed.

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saurabhtandon
No they earned more than expectation which was good. But because in the second
quarter they have lower revenue expectation. The shareholders don't like this
given their history and that's why the share is down by 25%

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ta41q
Off-topic: I'm interviewing for a Site Reliability Engineer position at
LinkedIn (Mountain View). Anybody has any comments (even second-hand) on how
is it to work for LinkedIn? thanks!

~~~
ogsharkman
Study your linux internals, seriously they drill you at the on-site.

~~~
ta41q
thanks, that actually helps although first I have a Python remote test and
then another one before the on-site.

