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LinkedIn shares drop 40%, erasing $10B of company's value

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Re: LinkedIn shares drop 40%, erasing $10B of company's value

#131
post #20

Not super surprising. The majority of their revenue comes from recruiters, and I expect the majority of paying recruiters are in tech. So any downswing in tech will be substantially felt. Especially for a firm whose earnings are negative, losing growth is bound to be a problem. On a related note, how much of Facebook's mobile revenue is for mobile apps? Should we expect a similar decline as the economy declines furth…

I'm sympathetic to your post, except the last bit. Where do you see the [broad] economy declining, only sector I know declining is energy.

Energy always takes a massive hit when oil is low.

Re: LinkedIn shares drop 40%, erasing $10B of company's value

#132
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No sure I understand. Wall Street had certain expectations of LinkedIn's growth. That was reflected in the stock price. I was incorrect. Q4 earnings were great, it was the fact that LinkedIn released 2016 guidance that was far below market expectations. [LinkedIn released their earnings and they were way below expectations, so the stock took a massive hit.] Does that seem unfair to you?

Imagine if I bought "stock" in your job. I monitored your performance and set expectations for your work. You fail to meet those expectations, so as the majority shareholder of your job, I have you fired and replaced with someone else. Or you underperform once and I use this threat every single review. That's how Wall Street ruins good business.

Or, worse, you have a Really Damn Good Year, but I ding you at your performance review. Even though you were the best you've ever been, and better than your peers, you weren't quite as good as I was hoping you to be, so ... sorry, no raise this year.

Re: LinkedIn shares drop 40%, erasing $10B of company's value

#133
post #55

Lots of angry sentiment towards this company here. I understand it doesn't necessarily bring this demographic as much value since most here are probably happily employed and don't need it. There's plenty of others who count on a service like LinkedIn, which doesn't have a good comparison (e.g. Twitter to Facebook). Personally, I've found value in it from the potential clients I've received (I'm a contractor) and the…

The angry sentiment isn't because people don't see potential value. It's because they do see the value - and how the company keeps spoiling what could be a good user experience.

Would the situation have turned out differently if users gave LinkedIn money in recognition of the referrals LinkedIn facilitated?

People like to hate linkedIn for being exploitative, while happily advancing their careers/businesses without paying LinkedIn for building the network infrastructure.

Re: LinkedIn shares drop 40%, erasing $10B of company's value

#134
post #55

Lots of angry sentiment towards this company here. I understand it doesn't necessarily bring this demographic as much value since most here are probably happily employed and don't need it. There's plenty of others who count on a service like LinkedIn, which doesn't have a good comparison (e.g. Twitter to Facebook). Personally, I've found value in it from the potential clients I've received (I'm a contractor) and the…

The angry sentiment isn't because people don't see potential value. It's because they do see the value - and how the company keeps spoiling what could be a good user experience.

My speculation is that without any comparable competitors, there's nothing to force LinkedIn to change the negative aspects of their service. If there were two competing services, we would see users gravitating towards the service they prefer and the other service desperately trying to correct itself. For example, when Yahoo introduced suggested searches, Google noticed and picked up the feature too. Alternatively, when IE6 was king, they let it stagnate and look at what happened.

So from that standpoint, I hope that LinkedIn doesn't fail, but rather a competing service nurtures an environment where LinkedIn has to compete. Then hopefully we can see improvements towards what users really want.

Re: LinkedIn shares drop 40%, erasing $10B of company's value

#135
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That happens to me too. But you know who is a thousand times worse than Linkedin when it comes to these things? Facebook. At this point, I honest /just/ /don't/ /know/ how to stop getting emails from them. In my entire life I've only had a facebook account for a few hours (created one out of necessity a few years ago -- closed it after just a few hours of use at that time). And I still get emails. I've clicked unsubs…

It would probably be pretty trivial to set up a filter or two to automatically delete those emails. Or maybe just leave your account open (though it sounds like you would refuse to do this on principle). I never receive emails from Facebook. I think it's a bit extreme to cheer for hackers to take down a big company just because they send you a few emails. How much time has it really cost you, in total, to delete thei…

> I think it's a bit extreme to cheer for hackers to take down a big company just because they send you a few emails.

It really just isn't the emails, it's rather that they're one of the biggest pioneers of dark patterns: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebooks-evil-interfa...

I'm extremely conflicted about all of this. I want the open web to thrive, but I'm beginning to realize that in a free and open internet parasites who partake in these such practices are rewarded all too well.

Re: LinkedIn shares drop 40%, erasing $10B of company's value

#136
post #14

Honestly I am feeling a bit of joy watching LinkedIn take a hit. Not because I think their product is terrible but because of the endless spam emails I keep receiving from them, despite how many times I click unsubscribe.

LinkedIn is the only mainstream service I've completely shitcanned in a Gmail filter.

Re: LinkedIn shares drop 40%, erasing $10B of company's value

#137
post #115

LinkedIn is full of people trying to get people to pay attention to them... but the people they are trying to impress aren't really on LinkedIn (they have a profile but that's it... they don't use it as an actual social platform). In that sense LinkedIn is mostly a wasteland.

To me it looks like a wasteland of recruiters. I used to think it was neat when some recruiter would contact me about a job, but now I realize they are just spamming everyone with (your framework here) listed in their skills. The over-saturation of recruiters, connections with everyone you even slightly know, and people endorsing you for skills they don't know you have has made it all meaningless.

If you were an outsider in need of a job, you'd appreciate the recruiter spam.

Re: LinkedIn shares drop 40%, erasing $10B of company's value

#138
post #14

Honestly I am feeling a bit of joy watching LinkedIn take a hit. Not because I think their product is terrible but because of the endless spam emails I keep receiving from them, despite how many times I click unsubscribe.

Agreed. In the end I deleted my account and haven't looked back. It gave me no value and just pissed me off.

Re: LinkedIn shares drop 40%, erasing $10B of company's value

#139

The idea that LinkedIn has enough market value to be able to lose $10B of it makes me sad.

Yeah, I would like to see someone justify the market value of LinkedIn. They seem to be losing money, and they have over 9000 employees (doing what exactly?).

Umm, did you read the earnings report? They are hardly losing money.
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