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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

#181
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post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really. I've been in that situation, and spammy recruiters are just looking at "Oh, he's got $buzzword in his profile, and $company needs $buzzword!" If $buzzword = bash, that's not really useful. It's used everywhere, and isn't really an exclusive skillset. They don't pay attention to company culture, pay, or even location.

Obviously YMMV, but IME, they pretty much just throw everything against the wall, to see what sticks.

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

#182
post #153
post #146

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Anything from a Facebook domain hitting my mail server is bounces them back to Facebook's abuse and postmaster addresses. I know categorically that it is abuse, because I am the sole user of my mail server and do not now and have never had a Facebook account, and have repeatedly asked them in various ways to stop spamming me. Useless, of course. But just because they ignore internet norms of decent behavior doesn't m…

That seems like it would make it harder for Facebook's abuse team to deal with actual abuse reports.

I am making an actual abuse report.

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

#183
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 intern…

You made me feel ashamed for being angry for a really petty reason. :-)

L-in bought Pulse for my iPad and closed it down to replace it with something else.

If they instead had extended the app with their social network, I'd have grumbled but started to use it. I'm hardly alone, so they shot their own foot, too.

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

#185

I never put a lot of value in the data on LinkedIn. Where else can I get "endorsements" for random technology keywords like SOA from people who cannot possibly know what SOA means?

I really want to see the code for how that works. My great aunt did not endorse me for python, because she has no clue what that is. I'm curious if they trick people into clicking that? or if they just purely make it up.

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

#187
post #172
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.

I am completely happy with this. LinkedIn is showing off as a site to facilitate businesses while indeed is a service for recruiters. Some examples, posting original stuff to groups with thousands of members and not receiving a single comment or click to some link. Very basic bugs in their mobile offering that makes you think nobody cares about developing a good one or it was developed by a freelancer on vacation. Th…

For me, this is the most surprising missed opportunity:

"posting original stuff to groups with thousands of members and not receiving a single comment or click to some link"

LinkedIn had the chance to build some amazing forums. LinkedIn should be the place that you think about when you want to have a conversation about business. They clearly have the traffic. They could have done something amazing with their groups and discussions. They have wasted all of their chances.

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

#188
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 intern…

I've noticed a lot of user hostile behavior like this from all of the large public social companies (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc...) It's really a shame but I think that when your business is built off of trying to monetize user engagement with ads and you're under the scrutiny of the public market it's only a matter of time before this starts to crop up. I imagine there are/were many people at all of these comp…

> I've noticed a lot of user hostile behavior like this from all of the large public social companies (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc...)

It appears so. This is amusing to me -- because when I was involved in a startup setting 2 years ago, I remember distinctly having conversations with my coworkers about the frequency of emails we were sending. We argued against sending too many emails because it would waste the user's time, it wasn't right, etc. And in the end we followed through - we were very mindful of not bothering our users with anything other than what is very necessary and important. But Facebook et al. have more of a 'fuck the user' philosophy and they seem to be faring well for it. This is very much a trend, little players are playing strange tippy toe games while the big players selfishly and shamelessly mess it all for everyone.

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

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, w…

The reason a LinkedIn competitor hasn't emerged is the same reason a viable Facebook competitor hasn't emerged: at this point the network effects are too strong, and it's extremely difficult to beat incumbents because of that.

Besides, think about how much flak some HN submissions get for being "just another social network." I think the whole social network market has fully saturated and there will be additional difficulty in convincing people there is room for more social networks (aside from certain niche differentiators such as centralized vs distributed, which 99% of users don't care about).

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

#190

I've been registered on LinkedIn for a long time and found it a fun an useful way to catch up on people moving around and advancing their careers, what used to be done at the occasional cocktail party or celebration could be done faster and quicker by scanning the changes. And that has helped me stay in professional touch with people with whom I might otherwise lose touch. But that said, I've recognized their maniaca…

I paid for premium for about 4 months while job searching. Being able to deep-dive into some companies and directly contact people helped me get my current job. It was definitely a helpful tool as a job-searcher.

Now that I have a stable job, it has no value and I ended my premium account.

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