
LinkedIn’s new UI proves it doesn’t know it’s value to users - Nanite
https://hackernoon.com/linkedins-new-ui-proves-it-doesn-t-know-it-s-value-to-users-7535df767cc7
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crypt1d
Linkedin is really terrible.

You are constantly spamed by career 'advices', recruiters, life coaches and
people bragging about their work-related achievements... Its really difficult
to find any interesting content there. I tend to spend no more than 10 seconds
on it, unless I need to respond to a (recruiter) message. Feels like the only
people getting anything out of Linkedin are those who are new to their
respective fields, and need to network a bit and maybe land a new job.
Otherwise, it feels like waste of Internet bandwidth.

Frankly I have such a low opinion about Linkedin, that I'm amazed that nobody
came up with an alternative yet. Maybe its the whole 'professional social
network' concept that feels weird to me? While I socialize with my colleagues
on regular basis, I dont want _work_ to be at the center of my socialization.
I prefer to talk to people about other things in their lives.

~~~
stevekemp
> I'm amazed that nobody came up with an alternative yet.

Writing a replacement is something I've pondered for several years, but the
problem is you need the network effect. It's like starting a dating site
(something I did once!) - if people visit and nobody else is there it becomes
an empty graveyard of dead dreams.

Sure you don't need to scale to 6 million users immediately, but you need a
good way to seed with users, and you need to make it captivating and
interesting for those early users.

The other thing you have to consider is that LinkedIn is the master of dark-
patterns. To contrast that you'd want to make almost as much as possible open.
So export the resumes in JSONResume, or similar open fashion. Of course when
you do that you remove a reason for your visitors to stay.

It's not an impossible task, but scaling and growing are hard.. I'm sure if
you launched something it'd be popular, but would it be popular _enough_ to be
worthwhile, and keep growing? Maybe if you launched on a per-country basis, or
some other artificial constraint. (An alternative would be to allow signups to
students and record course-histories, etc not just positions. That lets
youngsters show their skills despite a lack of job-history.)

~~~
drewrv
I've thought about writing a new Linkedin for years too. It's the curse of the
engineer: you use something that sucks and you want to make a better one.

But when thinking about a new Linkedin, I feel like making a new social
network with less spam, less clickbait, and a better UI isn't enough to make
people switch. What you really need to do is make a strong community centered
around a particular industry with serious news, occasional gossip, and heavily
moderated comments. In other words for our industry it exists: it's Hacker
News.

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whistlerbrk
I'm sorry but the posts' author doesn't know what LinkedIn's value is and
neither do most people in this field. Sales and recruiting, functions most
engineers avoid. Saying it has only "the foundations" of a lasting business is
naive at best. It is wildly dominant in its niche and will remain that way for
years and years to come.

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trose
META: This blog post is super low effort. Basically just reiterating some
really basic UI principles and complaining. I think we can do better on HN

~~~
raverbashing
Confusing "it's" with "its" is a good proxy for bad texts as well

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kristianc
> It’s not too late to bring content to users in the way Snapchat has. Because
> the user’s resume is online, LinkedIn knows far more about them than
> Snapchat knows about its’ users. I still have hopes that my LinkedIn feed
> will be full of informative content from credible publications and my
> network’s opinions on them.

I'm slightly tired of reading think pieces that end with utopian thoughts
about what corporations can do with all the data they collect on us.

Not that I really agree with this anyway - my resume and indeed my
professional network probably doesn't yield that much insight into the kind of
content that will interest me beyond broad brush stroke topics like
'Technology'

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r3bl
Worth pointing out (but not mentioned in the article):

Since switching to a new design, there's actually no way to view anyone's
profile without logging in, not the basic info as there used to be, nothing.
By following the link to someone else's profile, you're being greeted with the
signup/signin page.

So, you can't effectively open _anyone 's_ profile without triggering the "who
looked at your profile" thingy (other than opening a spare account for that
purpose, of course).

~~~
achamayou
Profile viewing options > Private mode will let you do that. You lose your own
"who's looked at your profile", but that seems like a fair tradeoff.

~~~
accountyaccount
Here's the rub though: if you pay for premium you can turn on private mode and
still see who's looked at your profile.

~~~
bnw06
This sounds like a fair and valid premium feature?

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vinhboy
Instead of using all that resources on a new UI, they should have fixed their
jobs search.

I only go to linkedin when I need a job, yet their job search is terrible.

It has no real filtering or sorting. And what it has doesn't really work
right. Like, why would you filter by job title, when that varies greatly by
company.

I ended up spending most of my time on StackOverflow job board, because the
searching and filtering works as expected.

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return0
> it doesn't know _its_ value to users

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virmundi
Ask HN: what is LinkedIn's value? I hate almost all forms of social media.
What value gave all y'all gained?

~~~
bane
It's a professional social network. For example, I just had an acquaintance
message me via linkedin, send me their resume which then let me refer them,
getting them a job and myself a nice bonus.

Could it have been done via Facebook or email? Maybe, but we're not social
friends, so no Facebook connections between us, and we don't know each other's
email addresses so they couldn't have discovered me easily.

The semantics of linkedin are what matters. It's not a social network that's
highly interactive in the way that email or facebook is, it's more an on-line
resume post + people you've worked with that help establish the milieu you
live in.

Does linkedin "get" it? I dunno. I suspect that they do, but their growth
targets can't accept this, so they keep doing things weirdly.

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thedevil
Also: The new UI freezes up a lot.

And when I try to log in from my linux laptop, it tells me I need a more
modern browser (because my Chrome is a single year out of date?).

But it's correct in telling me to use a different browser: LinkedIn (and only
LinkedIn) crashes constantly otherwise.

~~~
Encounter
Why do you use a year old version of Chrome? You're just exposing yourself to
dozens of public vulnerabilities.

~~~
thedevil
Laziness. Although your comment will probably guilt me into finally doing an
update.

So, I think I owe you a "thanks"?

~~~
user5994461
You really should keep your browser updated.

------
sparkzilla
Since LinkedIn changed the UI, signups to my Showcase pages that are newsfeeds
about famous entrepreneurs [1] have dropped by over 70%, making the work
involved in curation almost worthless. If they are trying to make a social
network that allows people to share business-related content they are failing
badly.

[1][https://www.linkedin.com/company/elon-musk-
newslines](https://www.linkedin.com/company/elon-musk-newslines)

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frik
LinkedIn changed the backend in 2012 from Rails to Node.js:
[http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/10/4/linkedin-moved-
fro...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/10/4/linkedin-moved-from-rails-
to-node-27-servers-cut-and-up-to-2.html)

Are there any more recent write ups what LinkedIn uses on Frontend on Backend
at the moment?

~~~
searchfaster
Frontend, I believe they use Ember now.

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fuzzieozzie
New UI REMOVED notes you make against contacts (this is how I remembered who
the people I connected with were!)

This totally undermines the value of the network! The redesign may help them
make more money short term, but will undermine the business long term!

~~~
dbg31415
Wow, I didn't even realize this until now... Filthy. I had a lot of notes in
there... just deleted I guess?

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huangc10
Not much of a LinkedIn user but I've noticed that they are trying to hide the
slow load times with placeholders. Let's just say it's noticeably slow.

------
dbg31415
What I see when I look at LinkedIn is a company that has too many teams and
not enough communication. "We're in charge of the side bar... but we don't
talk to the people who are in charge of the profile... or the people in charge
of the feed..." They need better unification on the product team.

They don't use anywhere near the full screen on desktop / laptop, it's some
sort of crappy non-responsive tiny little center column for content.

SO much sponsored content with the new UI. Between through "stuff you may
like" and jobs and "people you may know" and just ads... and then you finally
see what your friends posted. Of the top 10 posts in my feed, 7 of them were
ads. Even when you hit "hide stories like this" on the sponsored crap, they
come back again. If I'm not looking for a job, why do I have to see the jobs?

* [http://imgur.com/SVOlvWW](http://imgur.com/SVOlvWW)

Page load times are SOO long. 4.5 seconds to load a profile page that doesn't
even have never-ending scroll? I'm using Google Fiber 1000.

* [http://imgur.com/PvwNAbT](http://imgur.com/PvwNAbT)

It's just ugly a lot of spacing just seems off. Colors seem off... like they
don't have a style guide. "Let's slop in some yellowish there, that'll be
fine..."

* [http://imgur.com/9CPsYSi](http://imgur.com/9CPsYSi)

* [http://imgur.com/Hg4lexp](http://imgur.com/Hg4lexp)

We lost functionality... ability to see profiles, ability to print your
profile to a PDF and see endorsements / recommendations. Now all you see is
where you worked.

* [http://imgur.com/ySwydsy](http://imgur.com/ySwydsy)

UX seems like it's some totally compromised middled ground between junky non-
responsive and where it wants to be in 5 years... it is just not very good at
all right now.

EDIT: A few more...

A least they don't have 4 different main navigation bars within 1 click inside
of the main navigation away from each other... oh wait...
[http://imgur.com/BAfojwJ](http://imgur.com/BAfojwJ)

At least they don't add frivolous scroll bars to their menus... oh wait...
[http://imgur.com/iKiIkuF](http://imgur.com/iKiIkuF)

At least their main navigation controls are consistent throughout... oh
wait... [http://imgur.com/rwffoqT](http://imgur.com/rwffoqT)

------
sofaofthedamned
I keep getting recommended somebody who is the 4xBikini champion. Why?!

------
ChairmanPao
"its"

