
LinkedIn Problems Run Deeper Than Valuation - isalmon
http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/23/linkedin-problems-run-deeper-than-valuation/
======
martinshen
Personally, I've used LinkedIn for recruiting tech talent, being recruited and
most recently, doing biz dev (aka sales).

Stray observations: 1\. LinkedIn has too many products like sales navigator
that attempt to force you through a specific workflow. While it can work, it
feels a lot like a misguided tracking system.

2\. LinkedIn is most useful as an online resume. Whenever I am meeting someone
new or want a refresher, I check LinkedIn. I think everyone does this in North
America. This doubles as a useful social sign in tool for biz apps.

3\. Older people (40+) in non tech positions respond surprisingly often to
InMail. They respond far more often than young techies (who probably get too
many messages). This is surprising and extremely useful for my job.

4\. LinkedIn needs contact management in context of career. For example:
simply stating when you made this contact is crucial.

5\. LinkedIn needs a way to show how active a profile is or at least indicate
if a profile is no longer responsive. There are millions of LinkedIn profiles
that are inactive but LinkedIn encourages you to pay to message them.

6\. There needs to be an indicator for how close you are to a specific
contact. 99% of the time your mutual contacts are useless. This is especially
true for "active users" like myself who see no major disadvantage personally
for adding as many contacts as possible.

My whole point is that LinkedIn has an extremely valuable service. It is
missing some features and product focus. Many of my above suggestions also
help refocus LinkedIn's integrity.

Overall LinkedIn falls into this strange low integrity (in this case, spammy)
but somehow successful company. The question is are they going to clean up
their act. I think they will.

~~~
henrik_w
As for point 6: I only connect with people I know. Every once in a while I get
a connection request from some random person , but I always say no if I don't
know them (even if we are in the same industry).

I think the whole value of connections is diluted otherwise. A connection
doesn't mean anything. So that's what I see as the disadvantage of adding as
many contacts as possible.

~~~
ydt
I agree with you in principle and in the past only accepted connection
requests from people I know as well. However, I think LinkedIn's promise as
professional social network has really diminished over the years and mostly
functions as nothing more than a job board at this point. I probably have
about 100 recruiters I have never met in person in my network. As a contract
dev updating my profile serves as a way to push notify these people that I'm
in the market. It's really the only value I see left in the platform.

~~~
alain94040
It's your choice to add 100 random recruiters to your network. But then, don't
complain that you are being spammed by recruiters.

~~~
r00fus
I've "unfriended" recruiters I've mistakenly added in the past.

However, if you're looking for talent, it is helpful to have such "connectors"
in your network - without those recruiters, when I was doing a check on my
network I didn't see some of the people I was trying to hire - this was only
the case when I had switched jobs/domains.

~~~
rhizome
Wow, how do you unfriend people? I've looked for a way for years.

~~~
tomtang0514
Linkedin -> Connections tab -> filter by "connections only" -> find the one
you wanna unfriend in the list and mouse over it -> "more" -> remove
connection

~~~
rhizome
That is just about as buried as I thought it would be if indeed it was
possible. Classic LinkedIn, thanks!

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eitally
This isn't a bad article, but it's extremely one-sided, from the POV of tech
employees, which are still the vast minority of workers. Yes, it's spammy and
yes, they use dark patterns, and yes, there should have been some better
ethical governance since the beginning, but it's not as bad at what it aims to
do as a lot of people believe. Even if you just consider it a business card
holder -- there's actual value there. Add in facilities to empower connections
between people who don't know each other, or who only share connections, and
it's pretty powerful. I think they can successfully navigate through this
critical spot and emerge much stronger on the other side. They just need to
refocus on what the core value propositions are.

~~~
gadders
I was coming to say this. From the article:

"Spotting the best talent is actually far easier with tools like Talentbin,
Stack Overflow, and Github, which aggregate or facilitate positive
interactions and allow skilled individuals to display their work — showing why
they’re good at what they do."

So that covers technical people, technical people and, er, technical people.
What if I want to find a PR Agency? Or a company to refurnish my office?

~~~
paulddraper
Or hire a PM? Or HR? Or marketing?

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mathattack
I'm not so bearish on LinkedIn.

It serves a few useful purposes:

1 - Before any meeting I look to see if there's something I share in common
(person, interest, job, etc) with the other person. This was especially
important when I was in Sales.

2 - When I was job hunting, I did a lot of "Look up the job, then see if I
knew someone who knew someone at the company" that would've been impossible
without it.

3 - I use it for recruiting. The response rate is very low when HR uses it,
but as the hiring manager it isn't too bad.

LinkedIn has the highest value users of any service - professionals making
good money. If they can figure out good ways to monetize it, they'll blow
through their current valuation issues.

~~~
qaq
You are not so bearish as a user, are you planing to invest though even at
current valuation?

~~~
mathattack
Good question. If I actively invested in individual tech stocks, I probably
would. But that's a big if. :-) For now I'm talking like a researcher rather
than a trader.

My investing strategy has been to invest in large indexes with low expense
ratios. For diversification against my human capital, I slightly lean against
tech (S&P over Nasdaq) and for personal reasons I try to get some overseas
exposure.

------
rjurney
I was in product at LinkedIn, and I thought this was spot on. LinkedIn is a
two-sided platform. Increasingly the revenue model undermines user engagement.
To some extent, one side no longer builds the other, one subtracts from the
other. LinkedIn is a platform for spam more than it is a platform for content.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-
sided_market](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market)

~~~
fweespeech
It sounds like you are suggesting a minimalist version of LinkedIn intended to
break even [rather than VC-level profitable] is a good idea. ;)

~~~
rjurney
Hah, fair point. I just think they've gone a little too far on the greed side.
No doubt as part of being public.

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dkarapetyan
I really like how every negative thing is rationalized away until shit hits
the fan and then every negative thing becomes a reality because all of a
sudden it gets reported. LinkedIn is still the same shitty service it was
before. Move along. Nothing to see here. It's just before it was overvalued
and overhyped.

------
autoreleasepool
LinkedIn is a great example of how your platform can be useful to people in
spite of a horrible UI, bad infrastructure, and grossly inconsistent user
experience.

I swear the amount of times I wasn't sure if I actually accepted or sent a
connection request is way too high. The endorsements are begging to be rigged,
and the website is absolutely dismal in terms of social functionality - it
pales in comparison to almost every other social media platform.

The only reason it's still popular is because it doesn't need to be any better
to do the one thing it does best, which is to be a search engine for
recruiters.

That all being said, I maintain an active linkedin profile and I use it
regularly.

~~~
GCA10
I think endorsements are actually a non-product -- sort of like the "close
doors" button on the elevator.

My sense is that LinkedIn doesn't use endorsements in any other dimension of
the site. It's just an engagement tool, so that people are on the site longer.
That way they see more ads -- and are perhaps more likely to tweak their
profiles.

~~~
zerozerozeroone
I work at LinkedIn, we actually do use skills in a number of places (like the
job pages); typically they are used more of a "here's how your skills compare
to other people's" and less of a "you'll get hired if you have skill X
listed". We know people can game them, so we try to only use their skills in
ways that would be helpful if their skills are actually real to give less
incentive for people to lie.

~~~
fader
As implemented, they're basically useless. Asking "does X know about Y?"
without verifying that I have any knowledge of Y myself doesn't do much. My
dentist has endorsed me for things like "Cloud", and while he's a great guy
and good at his job he can barely work his iPad.

I personally view those as noise at best and very skeptically at worst -- if
someone has a bunch of endorsements for a particular skill I suspect they
actually don't know much about it.

~~~
autoreleasepool
> if someone has a bunch of endorsements for a particular skill I suspect they
> actually don't know much about it.

I disagree with your reasoning here. While I agree endorsements are useless, I
also believe that makes them more or less meaningless. I don't think jumping
to conclusions based on endorsements, weather positive or negative, is a good
idea.

------
henrik_w
FWIW, I still get value from LinkedIn. The best parts for me:

\- one place for contact information

\- job offers (most of the ones I receive are relevant)

\- being able to "check people out", i.e. see where they have worked before,
common contacts etc

I'm in Sweden (if that's relevant). I wrote more about it here:
[http://henrikwarne.com/2013/08/21/linkedin-good-or-
bad/](http://henrikwarne.com/2013/08/21/linkedin-good-or-bad/)

~~~
jxramos
I concur, most of the job offers I get are relevant and some of the big
companies' internal recruiters contact me via LinkedIn: Google, Facebook,
Amazon. It may not be perfect but it's far from useless. My impression is that
it allows _skilled_ recruiters to make solid connections and lookups. Poor
recruiters will always be poor matchers and spam folks.

------
kfk
Yet the alternatives the article proposes are mostly for coders and tech
folks. Business people only have LinkedIn. However bad LinkedIn can be, it's
still the only tool around for some people. I think the problem is that for
some jobs is very difficult to show your skills. A good finance guy has a very
hard time showing off vs say, a programmer - there is no github or SOF for
finance guys, question is: can there be one?

------
FussyZeus
I have a LinkedIn profile because I was led, back in the day, to think that
was the best way to put myself out there for businesses to find and hire me. I
don't think I've gotten more than 50 views in the entire time I've had the
thing, which is blown away by my personal website (which is still a tiny
number of views, but swamps LinkedIn).

That and every time I connect with someone or make the mistake of clicking on
their emails, I end up with 20 more bloody emails over the next few days for
job offers I don't want (drywall contractor this past one, no joke) or people
I don't know who are trying to connect with me (most likely recruiters).

I really don't know why I don't delete the thing.

~~~
eropple
On the flip side, I get a ton of views of my profile. I indiscriminately
accept recruiter requests, because it increases the spread of second and
third-degree connections who'll see me in searches. I get two orders of
magnitude more profile views than does my website, and I've turned off every
email LinkedIn wants to send me.

But, then, I'm a consultant, and having people find me is important. A lot of
the messages I get are useless--but enough aren't that I effectively don't
need to advertise.

~~~
eplanit
I agree. I'm also a consultant and my biggest disappointment is how LinkedIn
is aligned almost exclusively with full-time employment. It's really a waste
of my money as I get all my gigs via real-world connections from previous
clients. I've been wishing for years that LinkedIn would add more consulting-
specific features (this is the era of the "gig economy" after all, right?) but
it doesn't happen. I only maintain a profile because in the U.S. not having
one means you don't exist (to too many people anyway).

~~~
altonzheng
LinkedIn is actually going into precisely that sector, but it hasn't been
publicized very well. See LinkedIn Profinder.

------
ucaetano
"LinkedIn is not, in fact, a business network — individuals on LinkedIn
represent themselves, not their businesses."

Accordingly, business attire is not, in fact, business attire, since people
are dressed up as people not as businesses.

What a waste of bandwidth...

~~~
unclebucknasty
I didn't get that either. What would a "proper" business network look like?
Everyone connects with other companies' presences through their own company's
presence?

Similarly, the advice offered by the article was vague pablum. One example:

> _The company needs to simplify its number of revenue streams and make sure
> that they work in concert with its user engagement and growth strategy,
> rather than in conflict._

Sure. How? Kind of like saying "the company needs to increase revenue by
making more money".

~~~
ryanelkins
The revenue thing is addressing a conflict in LinkedIn's approach. The value
in the platform is the users but their monetization of that platform tends to
drive off users (due to being spammy). So they are saying they need to find a
monetization system that encourages user growth rather than detracts from it.

You may not agree with that, but that's their logic. It's not quite as
tautological as you make it seem.

~~~
unclebucknasty
I understand what the article was saying and I don't disagree. In fact, I'm
saying it's obvious. Your explanation effectively repeated it, using equally
vague terms.

And that was my point. The author says that LinkedIn needs to find a
completely different revenue model in midstream that works for them and that
its users love. Do you think there's really a revelation in there? Do you
think that's never occurred to LinkedIn (or anyone who's paying attention)?

Making vague and obvious statements as a commentator is also easy. For the
article to have value, it should have offered some concrete examples of how
these problems could be solved.

------
jdlyga
LinkedIn's job search interface is pretty bad for tech employees. There's so
many better options out there. But there's nothing better for getting quality
recruiters to notice you than LinkedIn.

~~~
ryandrake
It might be great if your goal is to get "recruiters to notice you" which
might be OK if you don't already have a job (it's better than nothing). But in
my experience, recruiter attention is insufficient if your goal is getting a
_better_ job. I tried the LinkedIn thing for a while (and still maintain an
account there, because who knows?), but it basically resulted in a lot of
recruiter contacts and plenty of interviews, but apparently not a lot of
companies that were actually serious about hiring. They seem to mostly be the
dog jobs too, the crap "opportunities" that employers couldn't immediately
fill so they have to use recruiters. And in this job market, if you can't
immediately fill a position, you ought to take a good look at what's wrong
with that position.

You'll also have a hard time using it to change job function or for a career
upgrade. If your profile says "Senior Software Engineer" you'll just get a
bunch of recruiters spamming you to be "Senior Software Engineer" at some
other company. They'll never reach out to you and say, "hey how would you like
to try being tech lead, or managing a team of engineers?" The site's obviously
automated "suggested jobs" are also carbon copies of whatever it is you're
already doing, too.

Needless to say, I don't bother much with LinkedIn anymore.

------
rdl
I've never really found LinkedIn useful for recruiting, at least within fields
I've ever cared about (startups, security, infrastructure, satcom).

It is sometimes useful for sales/partnerships. "Who do I know at BigCo, or who
do I know who can introduce me to BigCo".

------
dreamfactory2
LI is irreplaceable right now as a business networking and lead tool, but
maddening and getting worse daily in terms of UX. I already pay hundreds on it
and ready to pay thousands as it's easily worth that to my business.

But I'm spending that money grudgingly and always reluctant to upgrade because
although it saves me time and effort overall, it also wastes my time every day
due to crappy UX, badly implemented SPA type functionality, and hateful mobile
experience if you don't want to use their app (LI: I will never use your app
if it needs access to my contacts list, particularly given the way you
leverage that valuable and private info).

That's a really really stupid position for an incumbent to put themselves in
as they will inevitably get their lunch eaten by an upstart at some point.

------
fanofyan
I mostly use LinkedIn to snoop on people I went to high school with.

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sitkack
LinkedIn uses too many dark patterns. I'd like to "link" with recruiters but
not have them pollute my graph. They really have pooped up the whole thing.

------
vadym909
I think the author just made this up in an hour with some weak arguments.

No doubt LinkedIn is becoming very spammy from all the puzzles and (gasp)
personal stuff like 'My son-in-law is having an operation, please pray for
him'.

However, the value that most people derive from it and the ease with which you
can ignore the spam will keep it being used until there is non-spammy, non-
recruiter funded and 'open networking' alternate.

------
SixSigma
I click on LinkedIn every day. I like the news feed, my network provides
useful stuff to read that I wouldn't find otherwise.

I have connections that are more appropriate than on Facebook because our
relationships are professional social not friend social. I don't want their
baby pictures & holiday photos but I do want to hear about their business and
comment on their business writing.

~~~
samstave
I've started a private slack group for my most active friends and business
associates.

I like that better than linkedin.

~~~
SixSigma
Good for you. Lots of my associations are pretty loose though. I have no way
to influence their decisions. I'm connected with them on LI because they were
already there.

I only joined because my University recommended it but then I found out I
liked it.

------
danielrm26
This reads like a hit piece for some reason.

~~~
lallysingh
"LinkedIn is now, at best, a business card holder. At worst, it’s a delivery
service for spam."

I see that, but I also don't find any of the critiques particularly egregious.

~~~
magicmu
They're all just a tad limited in scope. I guess it makes sense since I would
think TC's primary demographic is technical people (I can't back this up
though, may not be accurate). In general though, I agree.

------
zekevermillion
When I still had a LinkedIn account, I noticed that being an attorney on
LinkedIn made me a magnet for scammers -- mostly folks attempting to get me to
deposit bad checks in my trust account. They were a couple steps up from the
typical 419 scam, though fortunately were still easily detected. Between that
and the crappy articles that people would post in my stream, I eventually
decided that I got less than zero value from LinkedIn membership.

------
paulwitte253
I would hate it if LinkedIn fails to be successful as I'm a frequent IN user.
I agree with the fact that 40+ people tend to reply sooner than others. This
is one of the reasons I'm on IN as my target audience is on it.

------
Paul_S
Linkedin is a necessary evil. HR uses it to check out my references and that's
about it. I visit it only when I need to find a job - to update the details on
my last job. It's OK, just don't give them your phone number or (real) email
address and you won't get hassled.

------
programminggeek
Well, I keep hearing people say things like "I hate LinkedIn" or "LinkedIn is
so annoying" randomly at work or in business travel.

It's a small data point, but it seems that perhaps there is a negative
sentiment growing around LinkedIn.

~~~
HEYGRANDMA
This article actually prompted me to finally get around to deleting my
LinkedIn account

------
the_watcher
LinkedIn's best shot at remaining relevant and growing is if they can turn
Pulse into something businesses can get real value from.

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anshen
<iframe src="//news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167853"></iframe><a
href="[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167853"](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167853")
title="TEst">T</a>s

------
maxaf
If you think there's a lot of recruiter spam on LinkedIn, I dare you to have a
look at my email inbox. :P

------
anshen
find something!!<a href="/">t a</a>f

------
solidocracy
E

