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LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

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Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#42

Post by Zigurd »

I see LinkedIn as something akin to going to networking events. They really really want you to network, and they make some reasonable assumptions about your inhibitions. That's what their paying customers are there for.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#43

Post by mindcrime »

joelandren wrote: post #12

Yes, I also noted the creepiness of "viewers of the profile also viewed." https://twitter.com/joelandren/status/251417778643406848 If I were a woman, I would be turned off to see something like this.

I'm not sure how much one should read into that. I mean, ok, there are probably some guys (and some women, as far as that goes) who click on profiles solely due to the attractiveness of the picture. BUT... there are other reasonable reasons to explain a picture like shown above. For example, note that all of the people listed appear to work in related domains (marketing, event management of some sort). Given the nature of linkedin (business networking, with a heavy emphasis on recruiting) it makes sense that somebody looking to, say, poach an event planner or marketing person, would look at those profiles. And, from what I've seen, those are a couple of domains where women are heavily represented. Recruiting is another one.

Anyway, just as a little anecdotal test, I just logged into LinkedIn and looked at two profiles, both attractive women, where one is a recruiter and the other is a developer. In the recruiter case, every single entry in the "people also viewed" list was female (and also a recruiter), in the case of the developer they were almost completely male (with two exceptions) and are either developers or work for the same company.

I don't know... maybe this is indicative of something that should be considered "creepy" but I have my doubts.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#44

Post by nthj »

vidarh wrote: post #22
Caerus wrote: post #11

Facebook does the same thing and it's just as creepy. I closed my "real" account around 2011. A few months back I created a new blank account because I needed access to a couple organization's pages. The only information on that account is my name (a fairly common one) and an email address which is different from the one on my original account. It's possible they have some geographic info linking the two accounts as…

I set up a test Facebook account while doing a Facebook app that uses an e-mail address that has never been used for anything else. Yet it keeps suggesting people I actually know. The second account also does not have my full name (if it had my full name it'd be less weird, as my name to my knowledge is globally unique - there's only a few hundred people with my last name worldwide) The account has not been used for…

> The only thing connecting the two is that the "fake" e-mail address is a "real-user-part+something@gmail.com" address, and that I've logged in to them from the same machine.

So, to summarize, a simple regular expression matching emails against /\+[^@]+/ and replacing with '' is some 1984-level creepiness?

Come on.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#45

Post by WilliamSt »

alex_c wrote: post #21
jere wrote: post #18

Here are some things I find more creepy about LinkedIn: -It tells people when I view their profile. So now I never view people's profiles because I don't want to look like a stalker. Imagine if Facebook worked this way. -An andecdote, but maybe you've experienced it: a guy I worked with about 3 years ago (and only for 2 weeks) has "endorsed" me several times recently. I don't know if this is some kind of quid pro quo…

In fact, Facebook does quite the opposite - there's always been demand for "see who looked at your profile" apps on Facebook, and Facebook has always gone out of their way to squash them. It's something they most certainly don't want to happen on their platform, with good reason.

You can bet Facebook is storing that data though. And who knows what the future holds, perhaps Facebook will be forced to sell that data to its users in order to increase revenue and make stock holders content?

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#48

Post by jtbigwoo »

saraid216 wrote: post #37
TallGuyShort wrote: post #2

I've had the same experience. Register on LinkedIn, log in, "Would you like to connect with ?" We hadn't spoken in years or connected on any other site, I could only come up with one thing: she emailed me once. I bet she gave LinkedIn her email credentials to find connections. I hate that feature.

What confuses me is that I've had the correct contacts show up in Facebook for an email address no one else should know about .

It's probably just name, location, and interest matching. Especially if you have a fairly uncommon name.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#49

Post by corwinstephen »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #34
vidarh wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I set up a test Facebook account while doing a Facebook app that uses an e-mail address that has never been used for anything else. Yet it keeps suggesting people I actually know. The second account also does not have my full name (if it had my full name it'd be less weird, as my name to my knowledge is globally unique - there's only a few hundred people with my last name worldwide) The account has not been used for…

Cookies? From marketting networks? It's amazing how much the marketting networks can figure out about you, and keep track of you with a cookie.

I'm sure this is the case. They probably keep track of all the accounts that have been logged into from your computer via a cookie, and then suggest friends based on those accounts. Creepy, but understandable.
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