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LinkedIn is a Virus

a.wholelottanothing.org

21–30 of 113 posts

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#21
I've got a feeling that just about everything in LinkedIn interface is made to be intentionally broken or deceptive, I think there's a lot of "discourage through bad ui", for example, here's a past tweet of mine, I've actually had to GOOGLE to find out how leave a group:

"http://t.co/RTAOpvTo 10 minutes to find how to leave a group on linkedin and need to follow step by step... discouraging through bad ux?"

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#22
post #18

My version: I was on the iPad, somehow hit a link to send invites to everyone on my "you might know" list. Much embarassment ensued. Surprisingly, about 75% of people who I've never met (online or IRL) accepted the invite. I'm not exactly sure why Linkedin is worth a damn anymore.

LinkedIn was designed to clone myspace, but for grownups instead of high school kids. It's essentially myspace for realtors.

I've found linkedin to be massively useful when looking for new contracts. I'm a contractor based in the UK.

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#23

This is wildly off topic, but I'm genuinely curious... What is with the profile pictures of people looking up and to the right, with usually a circular gradient solid color background? I see it a lot in the SV/tech industry, and am wondering if it's a particular "startup photographer", or some meme I don't know about. Any ideas?

I think it's just a spoof of your average high-school/glamour photo:

http://www.joblo.com/movie-wallpapers/step-brothers/9659/128...

https://twitter.com/ukpearlgirl/status/309009109540294656

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#26

My version: I was on the iPad, somehow hit a link to send invites to everyone on my "you might know" list. Much embarassment ensued. Surprisingly, about 75% of people who I've never met (online or IRL) accepted the invite. I'm not exactly sure why Linkedin is worth a damn anymore.

That explains why $random people I've never met send me connect invites. I normally ignore them, but still waste time trying to figure out if its important or not. -.-.

Can one safely ignore all these "Business" networks? Wonder what people get out of it.

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#27
post #6

I wonder how many of the 1,138 accepted the request?

Last I checked, about 400-500 had accepted. I put the blame squarely on me for not reading carefully, but also on LinkedIn for not warning me, but Google as well. Turns out Google has a group in your contacts for everyone you've ever emailed and it's at something like 6,000 for me, so I guess about 1/5th of those were on LinkedIn, who got invites. Some of the invites went to people I'd banned from my sites for spammi…

Supposedly LinkedIn has a karma system where you will be punished for anyone not accepting your requests.

You may end up banned from making future requests, although that might come as a relief and it sounds like LinkedIn might be BSing there given that combine that with support for mailing >1k people at once.

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#28
I hope "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." applies here, but I just can't get the picture of the management over a LinkedIn laughing their asses off because this is exactly how they designed it.

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#29
Rule 1: Make sure your linkedin password is not the same as your gmail password. I've tried to login to linkedin a couple of times in too much of a hurry, thinking I was logging into linkedin from some request and not reading the actual page. Luckily my passwords are different.

I'd have to say I'm not sure how someone who is tech savvy can knowingly give a company their gmail account info and expect nothing bad to happen. I only connect with people I know on Linkedin (and generally on g+), so I've never wanted to let them use my gmail info. If you willingly let Linkedin scan your gmail, I'm not sure what you would expect to happen, other than it inviting everyone on your contacts list, just like it says it will.

I'm not exactly a fan of Linkedin, but handing out any credentials to a website you aren't absolutely certain about seems a little naive. Also he admits he pushed the 'connect' button, which is clearly going to connect you to someone. I can see asking Linkedin to put a bigger warning or something, but knowingly giving them your info and hitting connect without scrolling down isn't the act of innocence professed here.

Post should be titled "Be careful giving information to websites".

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#30

This is wildly off topic, but I'm genuinely curious... What is with the profile pictures of people looking up and to the right, with usually a circular gradient solid color background? I see it a lot in the SV/tech industry, and am wondering if it's a particular "startup photographer", or some meme I don't know about. Any ideas?

That's the "Disruptor's Stare", founders deep in thought about the next industry they're gonna crush.

"Shoelaces! Yeah, I'm gonna disrupt the shit out that industry. I'll be the Warby Parker of shoelaces"

No offense to the blogger the OP referenced, I didn't even look at the image but knew exactly the what he was talking about :)

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