

Changes to Linkedin API Developer Program - sk24iam
https://developer.linkedin.com/blog/posts/2015/developer-program-changes

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ghettoCoder
This can only accelerate linkedin becoming (more) irrelevant which is not a
bad thing in my opinion. I keep a linkedin (basic) profile because it's handy
to stay in touch with work acquaintances and keep doors open. But for the love
of God, no, I will not grant you access to my address book. No, Mr.
Headhunter, you may not have my resume before showing me an actual
opportunity.

Linkedin is now eerily similar to Facebook (which I shun) with work
anniversaries, timelines, "You may know" and "you may be interested in" lists
and all this other nonsense. It's nothing more than a trolling site for
headhunters and large corps to pick off low-hanging fruit.

No big loss.

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iandanforth
We feel like we could be making more money. We also don't like that
occasionally bits of user generated content make it out of our captive portal.
We're very sorry about having to blah blah _yawn_ ... Sorry, just got really
bored in the middle of lying to you. Anyway there nothing you can do so deal
with it.

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irickt
Opinion from ApiEvangelist: "Ultimately, the move by LInkedIn is no surprise
to me, and the platform is purely a distribution channel for me, and has been
for some time.. Meaning I only syndicate content there, and you will never
find me actually engaging very deep on the platform, building relationships
there, because along with other platforms like Quora I do not have any
ownership over any of the exhaust I generate. As a professional this is
unacceptable to me, as I have a valuable brand that I carefully maintain. As
other professionals realize this, they too will mostly abandon the business
social network, leaving it to be a spammy corner of the Internet where HR
professional prey upon the semi-professional, aspiring employee types."
[http://apievangelist.com/2015/02/12/changes-to-linkedin-
deve...](http://apievangelist.com/2015/02/12/changes-to-linkedin-developer-
program-are-no-surprise/)

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srjk
Definitely could see this coming. While it's a shame that linkedin is closing
down their API even more, they are just shooting themselves in the head which
is great news :)

Anyway, the future of professional social networks is destined to be rich ones
for each profession/vertical, not the "crappy/high noise for everyone"
linkedin model.

I know I'm focusing more on crunchbase[0] and angellist[1] APIs for my
startup.

[0][https://developer.crunchbase.com/](https://developer.crunchbase.com/)

[1][https://angel.co/api](https://angel.co/api)

~~~
daniula
Don't be so sure about Crunchbase API. It's owned by AOL, which haven't played
nicely in the past, too.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6680040](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6680040)

~~~
srjk
Sure, the "halflife of openness" of crunchbase is probably smaller than
angellist.

However, at this point crunchbase is pretty open (to the point of giving data
dumps) so I'll give them the benefit of doubt for the next 2 years.

Anyway, startups seem to tend towards closing off access to their data as they
become the dominant player so it's a question of when not whether.

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ninjaranter
Does anyone know of any existing (scrubbed for anonymity is fine) datasets of
linked-in data? Doesn't have to be particularly recent.

~~~
mdaniel
For free or for money?

I believe there are web scraping companies that sell monthly dumps of LinkedIn
data, but I don't know off-hand how much something like that would cost.

It would also likely depend on whether you wanted US-only data or worldwide.

~~~
ninjaranter
US-only is fine. For money is potentially fine (I've no idea how much
something like that would cost), if I knew it was legal - though if there was
a legal way to get that data through scraping I'd probably just do that myself
:)

~~~
mdaniel
As I mentioned in a sibling reply, legality depends on your jurisdiction but
in the US AFAIK scraping is no different from connecting to LinkedIn
15,000,000 times with a copy of Chrome.

To further illustrate this point, LinkedIn provides a helpful directory at the
bottom of their homepage, allowing one to browse every user[0] and every
company[1] in their graph. Hard pressed to argue that it's illegal to navigate
to every single profile if you serve a directory of them.

Also, I believe there are companies[2] and shops[3] that specialize in doing
that kind of thing. I would say it would be worth reaching out to them, if
nothing else just to get a sense for what something like that would cost.

0 =
[https://www.linkedin.com/directory/people-1-5-1/](https://www.linkedin.com/directory/people-1-5-1/)
1 =
[https://www.linkedin.com/directory/companies](https://www.linkedin.com/directory/companies)
2 = [http://scrapinghub.com/](http://scrapinghub.com/) (makers of the
outstanding Scrapy framework!) 3 =
[http://webscrapinghelp.com](http://webscrapinghelp.com)

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sk24iam
It looks like they also wiped out their developer forum which was home to a
wide range of questions and answers for specific API uses. It's too bad this
is gone, it had some great content.

[http://developer.linkedin.com/forum/](http://developer.linkedin.com/forum/)

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captn3m0
This is one of the two reasons that I refuse to sign up for LinkedIn. The
other one is spam.

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prez
[https://developer.linkedin.com/support/developer-program-
tra...](https://developer.linkedin.com/support/developer-program-transition)

They're basically restricting access to 90% of their API.

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stickperson
Forgive me for the possibly silly question, but does this mean developers
won't be able to make LinkedIn a login option for their apps? I'm not sure if
and how OAUth and APIs are related.

~~~
anabranch
You will still be able to login with linkedin:
[https://developer.linkedin.com/docs/signin-with-
linkedin](https://developer.linkedin.com/docs/signin-with-linkedin)

They just rehashed the website @ developer.linkedin.com

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TheLoneWolfling
The classic pattern. Have an open API, grow until you think you're large
enough that people are locked in, then lock it down.

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Lunatikzc
This is a non constructive comment... they suck ...

