
LinkedIn won't show you your own connections without paying? - jmartens
Yesterday I ran a bunch of searches, looking for specific types of people in my 2nd degree network. After a dozen or so, LinkedIn start limiting my results, saying I needed to activate a premium plan to see all results. Fair.<p>Today, I went to search my own connections, 1st degree, and they will only show me 3! To see the rest, I need to pay for a premium plan, which start at $29.99 a month. Bull!<p>Screenshot: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Jmartens&#x2F;status&#x2F;953698471415918593
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jcadam
Egads! Why must we watch this pattern unfold over and over again?

1\. Startup launches useful service

2\. Service amasses huge user base

3\. Pressure to monetize service degrades usefulness over time.

4\. Service eventually becomes utterly useless, and never would have been
successful if it had launched in its current state.

5\. Inertia keeps service going until a worthy competitor in its 'eschew
profitability and grow user base' phase arrives and the cycle repeats itself.

~~~
inopinatus
My experience of LinkedIn has declined from a marginally diverting way to
follow career progress of former colleagues (2005-2009) through a pointless
recruiter circle-jerk (2010-2014) to being an unremitting fountain of scam
sales-lead invites from profiles of dubious credibility (2015-).

I disabled all notifications long ago.

It is possible that this is the unavoidable fate of any professional-oriented
social networking service. Nonetheless the value of LinkedIn to me is now
effectively zero. I don't know anyone who respects their brand, and I'm left
wondering if there's a gap in the market; c.f. Facebook vs Myspace ca.2008.

~~~
jcadam
> I'm left wondering if there's a gap in the market; c.f. Facebook vs Myspace
> ca.2008.

I strongly suspect there is. I'd love to take a crack at it, but I rather
doubt a new social network is something one would realistically be able to
bootstrap these days (you would need some serious funding for marketing to get
it off the ground).

~~~
jmartens
The form should probably be different than what we think of as a social
network anyway.

~~~
jcadam
True. Social networks as they are today have become rather tedious and vapid
and I've largely stopped keeping up with them. Something new is needed. Maybe
I'll let my subconscious chew on the problem for a while :P

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avenoir
I feel like this is more about confusing functionality and bad UI more than it
is about LinkedIn being evil. Seems like you're on the global network search
and you're applying a filter to remove everyone who's not your 1st degree
connection. However, the search engine isn't smart enough to not apply the API
limits in this case since you're technically only searching your own network.
There is however a page that does what you want under My Network tab [1]

[1] [https://www.linkedin.com/mynetwork/invite-
connect/connection...](https://www.linkedin.com/mynetwork/invite-
connect/connections/)

~~~
jmartens
Yes, that link provides a list of all my connections, so we've made progress.
However, they don't allow filtering on anything but first or last name. Pretty
limited, but yes, they do let users see all their connections.

~~~
shmed
There's a button "Search with filters" right next to the search box.

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jdtang13
LinkedIn's product design is generally pretty backwards and delusional from my
experience. The latest "redesign" only made the app worse, which I had
previously thought impossible. It sucks since the core product is
theoretically so useful.

~~~
titanix2
The first redesign after Microsoft bought it motivate me to create my own
personal page because it was so bad and broken. Now it is less broken (more
content is displayed) but still not as fine as before. So I’m mot maintening
my profil there anymore.

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bob_theslob646
Yeah. They started doing this in 2015

[https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/80074/what-is-
th...](https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/80074/what-is-the-search-
limit-on-linkedin)

Don't even get me started on them removing the ability to search your own
group(s).

After they did that, I drastically stopped using the service.

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snowwrestler
My latest frustration with LinkedIn are the growing number of people who post
every day with "controversial" first line like:

> I absolutely never take a bath.

or

> I was devastated at what she said.

And then a video of them talking straight to the camera for minutes on end.

When did LinkedIn become a vlog??

~~~
valar_m
My strategy has been to remove connections with people who post like that. It
has served me well. I recommend it.

------
jayashe
[https://www.linkedin.com/mynetwork/invite-
connect/connection...](https://www.linkedin.com/mynetwork/invite-
connect/connections/)

~~~
jmartens
Helpful, thank you, but my frustration still stands

~~~
gnicholas
Can you use the filter feature within your Connections list to effectively
accomplish the same type of search you were looking to do? Or does it lead you
to the same blocked result? For me it works, but I haven't done much searching
recently.

~~~
jmartens
I can search by name only. Can't search by title, location, or anything that
isn't first name or last name.

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leozardoda
Hmmm. I think it may just be the fact that you accessed that page through the
'People' tab.

By going through 'MyNetwork' it seems to work just fine?

[https://www.linkedin.com/mynetwork/invite-
connect/connection...](https://www.linkedin.com/mynetwork/invite-
connect/connections/)

------
expertentipp
The _only_ value of having LinkedIn account for me is entry level network
validation for companies I'm applying for a job to. Slowly, LinkedIn is
starting to fail even at this.

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jmartens
OP here. Someone from LinkedIn Product Management reached out to me yesterday
on Twitter, then followed up today. He said "We reset your counters this
morning. We're in the process of updating our logic as we obviously don't want
to get in the way of you interacting with your network. The limit is there to
product our member data from scraping and commercial use. We misclassified
some of your queries and are reviewing ways to prevent this going forward."

A fair and appreciated response.

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gxs
It looks like he hit some kind of limit from accessing too much/too often.

I get linkedin is evil, but I've never run into this issue myself.

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maerF0x0
Stop giving them your business. The business in this case is your data.

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apercu
Wow. That's interesting. I was looking for contact info for an old colleague
and I was having a hard time finding how to browse my contacts list in
LinkedIn after the redesign. I assumed at the time it was just horrible UI,
and I gave up and located the info by searching old emails.

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sien
What's the alternative to the LinkedIn trainwreck?

Angelist?

~~~
matte_black
.txt file

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zwetan
like any other social network: you are the product

~~~
hkmurakami
Typically they don't sell yourself to you though.

~~~
dabockster
They are selling a job board service by having "millions of qualified
candidates" on the LinkedIn service (paraphrasing, not a direct quote, but
still gets the point across).

So yeah, you're being sold.

~~~
hkmurakami
In your example, you are not being sold to yourself, only to someone else,
which is par for the course.

Having your own data taken hostage so that you have to pay to buy info of
yourself is pretty next level.

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robertlf
I stopped using StinkedIn a couple of years ago and don't regret it at all.
You might do the same.

~~~
Zaskoda
Once upon a time I had hoped some day we would just link to our LinkedIn
profiles rather than send resumes. That hope is dead. That said, is there an
up-and-coming alternative to LinkedIn of some kind? Is there a popularly
accepted place to maintain your professional profile other thank LinkedIn?

~~~
matte_black
Yes, a .txt file on a domain you control is the new trend.

Easy to link to, easy to copy and paste, fully responsive, straight to the
point, no frills.

~~~
cat199
even magically includes your handle directly and simply in the url!

[http://domain.tld/~user](http://domain.tld/~user)

~~~
matte_black
Or even

yourname.tld/resume

------
d--b
That reminded me I needed to delete my account. Done.

------
w00bl3ywook
I wish everything was free.

