
Hey LinkedIn – Nobody Wants This - primeobsession
http://appmagma.com/hey-linkedin-nobody-wants-this/
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herbig
I don't even have to read this article to say that no, Linkedin is not better
than this, whatever this is.

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joelgrus
Yeah, I can't get the article to load, but my reaction was pretty much the
same.

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wlesieutre
It's about their "Invite people to LinkedIn" scheme and how they make it very
easy to spam everyone you've ever communicated with. Or in the case of
addresses like iTunesConnect, everything you've ever communicated with.

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interstitial
The CEO of a company I worked for did this by accident: Invited all of his
contact. Let me tell you, all the underlings and vendors were so excited to
get an invitation from the CEO. His linked in profile exploded. I was tasked
with trying to uninvite the 500 or so people that hadn't accepted in the first
few hours! I eventually told him it was no big deal. LinkedIn isn't very
personal, it's mostly image.

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rajacombinator
That's kind of interesting. Why were they so excited to get his invite and why
was he so worried about managing his connections? (Ie uninviting people.)
Curious to understand the behavior.

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interstitial
All those people apparently felt some sort of personal connection by the act,
it was a very strange phenomenon. He had not cleared out his contacts in a
decade! He had "reached out" to many past vendors, former colleagues, etc.
They all want to "reconnect" and were emailing, messaging, etc. It was
literally (in the correct use of the word), taking up a lot of his time with
all the influx of emails and calls.

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stretchwithme
Why give them access to your account at all?

I did this with Facebook eons ago and they just kept the data and it haunted
me for years. No, I don't want to add people I removed from my address book
years ago.

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letstryagain
LinkedIn is at the very bottom of the list when it comes to stuff like this.
If you don't expect the worst from them you've not been paying attention.

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dpcheng2003
Everyone does this. By now, I consider it an industry "best practice" and no
one should be surprised.

Is it still reprehensible? Sure, but then again, every startup that has ever
grown their user base has used some variation of this "growth hack".

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nnnnni
I wish that I had the ability to downvote people because of comments like
this. There is no justification for that kind of behavior -- and calling it a
"best practice" speaks volumes about your lack of integrity.

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pandler
I think the quotes around "best practices" served to convey a sense of
mocking. The second paragraph is evidence of that.

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dpcheng2003
Where's the app that properly conveys snarkiness in text? Thanks Pandler for
your clarification.

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nnnnni
Huh, I didn't read any snarkiness in that... Sorry, then!

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mikkelewis
Twitter also does this:

[https://www.evernote.com/shard/s74/sh/d88e4751-964e-464b-aef...](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s74/sh/d88e4751-964e-464b-aef6-0f55d9faf74d/c20fdcad6a764285425270602e6c9b36)

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reporter
I have never had a LinkedIn and I just counted 213 LinkedIn messages in my
gmail account (yes, I am horrible at deleting emails). Their email spamming
has turned me off to ever trying LinkedIn.

Do people actually find LinkedIn useful anyway? Everyone I know has an
account, but I have never actually met a person who has found a job through
using the site.

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refurb
I actually find it pretty useful. I've used it to cold call people in
different companies and functional roles just to pick their brains, people are
surprisingly open to it.

Also, it's helpful as a contact database when a former colleague changes their
email address/phone number.

The "request an intro" is pretty good to just to see how you're connected. If
you know someone in common with a person it tends to lower the barrier of a
cold call.

Note: by cold call I don't mean selling, just getting a chance to talk to
someone interesting; i.e. you see an interesting role and want to get the real
deal about a company

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unclebucknasty
I find LinkedIn to be super-aggressive on the email marketing front; both with
trying to recruit new members through existing members and in trying to keep
existing members coming back.

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billspreston
FIFY: I find LinkedIn to be super-aggressive on growth hacking.

Maybe their aggressiveness shows that they've reached market saturation?

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drinchev
I remember exactly when I accidentally hit invite button after I successfully
linked my gmail account with LinkedIn. After I did this I noticed that the
scrollbars were hidden by OS X and later I realized that I spammed every
single person that I received email from with my linkedin invitation. I felt
so ashamed by myself and even until today I receive messages such as : "you
are now connected to Person X", who personally I even don't remember.

Shame for LinkedIn that they do their social linking in such a bad and
confusing way. Cheers for the author.

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pscsbs
Google cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:yiaEc_C...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:yiaEc_C6iVQJ:appmagma.com/hey-
linkedin-nobody-wants-this/)

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primeobsession
Whoa thats a lot of traffic. I just beefed up the server! Sorry for the 500
errors!

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seriocomic
Your server would have handled it fine if your WordPress install had some
basic performance tuning.

Read [http://browserdiet.com/](http://browserdiet.com/) or
[http://blog.newrelic.com/2013/02/07/web-performance-
optimiza...](http://blog.newrelic.com/2013/02/07/web-performance-optimization-
automation/)

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tiagobraw
Go to this link to discover if Linkedin ripped all your contacts:
[http://www.linkedin.com/people/contacts?sortAction=lastName&...](http://www.linkedin.com/people/contacts?sortAction=lastName&showInvited=true&membersOnly=false)

PS: I saw this link in:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6426733](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6426733)

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jack-r-abbit
> _its probably my favorite social network_

I pretty much tuned out at this point. I don't believe it is (nor should it
be) a _social_ network. I have a couple connections that use LinkedIn like
others use Facebook. I don't want my LinkedIn connections telling me they had
oatmeal for breakfast. That is what Facebook is for.

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enscr
The moment a service linked Linkedin or Facebook tries to connect to your
Google or Yahoo account, there should be a big glaring red pop-up listing the
horrors in store ... and how some of the damage is irreversible. It'll haunt
you for ages as someone else said in another comment.

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assqwert
Cached copy here:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://appmagma.com/hey-
linkedin-nobody-wants-this/)

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nnnnni
This sleazy behavior is exactly why I refuse to use LinkedIn.

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stormqloud
It's called monetizing.

Eventually all the free services do it.

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ejain
No, it's called being viral. Monetizing is when you get spam from people
you're not connected to (a.k.a. InMail)...

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nnnnni
No, it's called being sleazy.

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greatsuccess
Contact scraping is the only thing keeping social media going. I say let it
die.

