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LinkedIn is a Virus

a.wholelottanothing.org

61–70 of 113 posts

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#61

Am I the only one who read that and thought "perhaps you should have paid attention to what you were doing?" I know it sounds dickish, but seriously, why not own up to the fact that not every user interface is tailored to you, and that sometimes you are fallible?

It's a form that is intended to trick people. You should have to check all the people you want to email rather than uncheck.

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#62
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people have a right to expect "find contacts in your address book" not to mean "indiscriminately spam contacts in your address book", especially from a service marketing itself as being a professional network and whose user guidelines expressly forbid you from connecting with people you do not know . Its UI explicitly violates the guidelines it expects users to follow by defaulting to inviting people -thousan…

Valid points, but they don't support the unnecessary flame bait in title. A virus is something completely different from an inconsistent UI.

And a viral pathogen is different from a computer virus, but that term has been adopted because it effectively used an existing term to clarify the behavior of an unfamiliar phenomenon. Like both, LinkedIn uses subterfuge to coerce a host into propagating it, often against the host's best interests.

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#63
post #5

I'm willing to wager that the "ease" by which this "feature" is executed was not entirely by accident (supporting the headline's premise).

I tried LinkedIn Pro as a try free for 30 days . This required a credit card as it will bill you if you forget to cancel. After a week or so, I was unimpressed and canceled. Or I thought I did. $150 later and three months of not seeing the recurring transaction on my credit card I realized that I had not clicked the right buttons to cancel. I felt cheated by deceptive UI design.

Hope you got your $150 back. (You can probably get them to refund your money, or, failing that, issue a chargeback with your credit card)

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#65
This happens to 13.000 people for me! I kid you not, I wish I made a screenshot, but it said that on the browser, I also tried the "close the browser" thing. It was not my intention at all to invite people to Linkedin, just to invite like 30-40 people that I know well and were also using Linkedin.

Although I never received follow-up on this. Maybe everybody rejected my request and ignored the e-mails, or the invitations/e-mails were never sent.

I felt really bad when I saw that I just sent an invitation to 13.000 people... including ex-girlfriends, connections so long ago, I checked my e-mail box for the next 2-3 hours, but FORTUNATELY nothing came up.

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#66

All of social networking is a virus. They all rely on viral growth, viral "features" are often pushed despite no one liking them (see everything Facebook ever did). And most disturbingly if they succeed in growing big enough (Facebook again) then not having one can become a bit of problem in real life. Of course LinkedIn is a virus. It's what works.

true. the paradox is in the fact that without these crazy tactics the network won't grow. And once it does the network gains massive power.

Facebook did this. Guess why it worked out? Now that it's big enough nobody looks at how it got there and says "well its evil in it's marketing so we'll abandon it"

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#67

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?

There was a study done that said that people not looking at the camera are found to be more attractive then those who look directly into the lens. Also, the left side of your face is more attractive than the right.[1] [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/21/face-left-side-more...

Now this is interesting. I'm not sure if this is the reason for what I'm talking about, but it's certainly good information to know!

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#68
post #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 ha…

>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.

Believe it or not, this had happened to me. I mistakenly typed in my Gmail password. When I realized this I started hating LinkedIn with a passion. They're a spam company.

That incident made me stop using easy to remember passwords and move to using KeePass to manage all my accounts.

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#69

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.

Hanlon aside, I interviewed there in, oh October or so, and my sense of the general trajectory of LinkedIn in light of that experience is that they may have a terminal case of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

Re: LinkedIn is a Virus

#70
post #59

Here is an example of another LinkedIn Virus (or may Crunchbase-linkedin virus), that I experienced the other day and got really pissed. 1. Go to this page: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/facebook 2. Click on the "In" Widget 3. It says X connections work at Facebook. with "X connections" hyperlinked. There is another link below that says "Follow Facebook" 4. Now you'd think that clicking on "X connections" will sh…

How to unfollow a company:

1. Go to this page: http://www.linkedin.com/companies?dspFllwed=&trk=hb_tab_...

2. Click 'Stop following' under the company you wish to stop following.

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