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LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

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Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#131

Post by mephi5t0 »

Just go to LinkedIn, in the top drop down menu "Network" select Add Connections. You will get a list of "imported" users. That's the users LI tricked you to give to them when they asked you to grow your network and you let them connect to your gmail or other email. They sucked in not only your address book but probably all people that ever emailed to you.

In that list just go through all users and check all that don't have little LI icon next to them (no LI profile). Click Delete button and you are all set. You can just delete all of them if you want. I clicked on "allow access LI to GMail" by accident once, when they gave me some tricky pop up during my roaming on LI. Very shitty behavior IMHO

Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#132

Post by res0nat0r »

cma wrote: post #121
wyclif wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what they did. It should be noted that in the announcements that I've seen, Google has counted only active Google+ users. This is the "ghost town" ruse all over again. It's weak sauce and demonstrably facile. You can bash Google+ all you want, but it's not going to impress people who enjoy using it very much. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/the-loyal-users-of-...

Does "active" Google+ users include people who are logged in and have plus-related stuff-they-don't-care-about in their standard google header? Or people who just reciprocate circle-adds but don't engage whatsoever?

All of the complaining about ghost towns isn't going to change the fact that G+ isn't going anywhere as long as Google stays as successful as it is right now.

Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#133

Post by dpcheng2003 »

weixiyen wrote: post #24

Really surprised by all the comments here. This seems like a solid business decision by LinkedIn, riding the line of what a user is willing to accept and balancing it well with the potential rewards. Look at every famous company and you'll find tactics that you don't agree with, and sometimes downright illegal (Path). If you're not willing to do desperate things, to do what is necessary for user acquisition, good luc…

Can we simultaneously vilify LinkedIn and other companies that use (some would say morally questionable) growth hacking techniques and appreciate that they're still hungry, doing things that a desperate startup would do?

I find the innovator's dilemma happens when you aren't hungry, or paranoid, or willing to cannibalize your existing product or users.

Posit: There is no other dedicated professional social network that has scaled (>1M users) beyond one vertical/cohort (which excludes networks like HN, Spiceworks, Behance, etc.) except for LinkedIn.

How do you think they got there?

You may not like how the sausage is made, but I had a bacon-wrapped hot dog last night and it was delicious.

Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#134

Post by durga »

wyclif wrote: post #108
waylandsmithers wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds a lot like Google+ at the beginning. "We have 100 million users!!!" Well no, you funneled people using search, gmail, and youtube into some annoying screen where they clicked around to make it go away.

That's not what they did. It should be noted that in the announcements that I've seen, Google has counted only active Google+ users. This is the "ghost town" ruse all over again. It's weak sauce and demonstrably facile. You can bash Google+ all you want, but it's not going to impress people who enjoy using it very much. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/the-loyal-users-of-...

Don't buy the "x million use the google+ site regularly every month" number. The number of people who actively use g+ is miniscule. Don't believe me? Put a status message on fb and ask how many of them use g+. Or post it on linkedin or email all your contacts.

Pretty much any decent product has a small number of fans. That doesn't make it "successful" by any statistical standards.

Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#135

Post by incision »

michaelochurch wrote: post #116

My issue with LinkedIn is philosophical as well as practical: it's fucking dangerous . In the career game, most of us have to be spies-- careful and immensely tactical with information-- in order to have success. A lucky few are so good at what they can do that they can shoot their mouth off (like I do) and tell the truth, for the good of the world. But most people will need to reinvent their histories at least once,…

>"The downside: you can never reinvent yourself, because you've put too much information out there and people can find out that you actually were only a Director, not a VP, at that job in 2007, or that you spent 4 months at a shitty startup you've since taken off your resume."

This is one of the reasons I've been thinking about killing my LinkedIn account. Profile stalking with intent to discredit seems pretty damn common.

I'd always been aware of this, but only in the last five years or so have I apparently become influential enough (at work) to be a target of it.

Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#136

Post by wyclif »

durga wrote: post #134
wyclif wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what they did. It should be noted that in the announcements that I've seen, Google has counted only active Google+ users. This is the "ghost town" ruse all over again. It's weak sauce and demonstrably facile. You can bash Google+ all you want, but it's not going to impress people who enjoy using it very much. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/the-loyal-users-of-...

Don't buy the "x million use the google+ site regularly every month" number. The number of people who actively use g+ is miniscule. Don't believe me? Put a status message on fb and ask how many of them use g+. Or post it on linkedin or email all your contacts. Pretty much any decent product has a small number of fans. That doesn't make it "successful" by any statistical standards.

The number of people who actively use g+ is miniscule

[citation needed]

Weak sauce, I say. It's readily apparent that they are the #2 social network in terms of actual usage.

Put a status message on fb and ask how many of them use g+

Shall I also ask MySpace users how many of them use G+?

Seriously, that "ghost town" bullshit simply isn't going to fly. It's been done to death, everybody's heard it, and anybody who is actually, you know, active on Google+ laughs at people who repeat it.

Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#137

Post by notahacker »

blumkvist wrote: post #32
weixiyen wrote: post #24

Really surprised by all the comments here. This seems like a solid business decision by LinkedIn, riding the line of what a user is willing to accept and balancing it well with the potential rewards. Look at every famous company and you'll find tactics that you don't agree with, and sometimes downright illegal (Path). If you're not willing to do desperate things, to do what is necessary for user acquisition, good luc…

I've tried to explain this line of logic previously on HN and my experience is that the majority of the people here live in their own world. Much like people who enjoy reality TV, just more technically savvy. They babble about how FB decreases audience reach or how they hide their ad targeting instead of realizing the massive opportunity that is presented to the people who are willing to put the work. They besmirch g…

Bullshit. Nerds might grudgingly admire LinkedIn for their clever use of dark patterns. Your average business person gets suckered into the dark pattern and then wonders how they've accidentally pissed off their ex, sales prospect's CEO or rival's legal counsel by trying to "connect" with them. And they're not really any more impressed by growth generated through more-or-less inadvertent signups than they were by Enron's accounting practices.

It's not like ad-targeting, which normal people generally don't care about too much unless the retargeting gets really creepy.

Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#138

Post by notahacker »

dspillett wrote: post #54
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #12

> "LinkedIn allows you to sign in to your email account and it will scan your contacts..." Hand my contacts list to a website? No thank you. When is letting a website have this a good idea, not just Linkedin, but ever ?

As well as being a stupid thing to do, it is usually also a break of the agreement between the user and their mail provider. These usually have a clause stating that you agree to never share your credentials with a 3rd party except where required to by law.

Honestly, it's a pity that one of the big email providers doesn't just tell LinkedIn that if they continue to solicit email passwords, especially for the purpose of inducing people into accidentally spamming their entire address book, LinkedIn signup emails will be heading to their users' spambox by default.

(Granted, Google has to be pretty careful about how they act towards rival social networks)

Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#139

Post by michaelochurch »

incision wrote: post #135
michaelochurch wrote: post #116

My issue with LinkedIn is philosophical as well as practical: it's fucking dangerous . In the career game, most of us have to be spies-- careful and immensely tactical with information-- in order to have success. A lucky few are so good at what they can do that they can shoot their mouth off (like I do) and tell the truth, for the good of the world. But most people will need to reinvent their histories at least once,…

>"The downside: you can never reinvent yourself, because you've put too much information out there and people can find out that you actually were only a Director, not a VP, at that job in 2007, or that you spent 4 months at a shitty startup you've since taken off your resume." This is one of the reasons I've been thinking about killing my LinkedIn account. Profile stalking with intent to discredit seems pretty damn c…

I wrote on this earlier: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/why-i-wiped-m...

Profile stalking with intent to discredit seems pretty damn common.

Precisely. Take start and end dates, which are often not well defined (consulting arrangements that become full-time, severance agreements). Then there is the issue of title. Sometimes you want to inflate it, but just as often you want to deflate one (to establish trend, or reduce one's role in an unsuccessful venture) and possibly to a previous title you held at that company, which few would consider dishonest. You rarely know, at the time, how you'll want to tell a story 5 years in the future.

However, to the Clueless, any whiff of inconsistency suggests poor integrity, while such people still get demolished by real unethical people and their long cons. Actual unethical people don't fudge their titles or dates or references, they extort their managers and companies into giving them accolades "legitimately".

I would rather hire the guy who lied about his executive title/role on his resume than the (more common) one who actually had it but got it (as most corporate executives do) through extortion.

Re: LinkedIn is not using email contacts to find people who have an account already

#140

Post by ianstormtaylor »

wyclif wrote: post #136
durga wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't buy the "x million use the google+ site regularly every month" number. The number of people who actively use g+ is miniscule. Don't believe me? Put a status message on fb and ask how many of them use g+. Or post it on linkedin or email all your contacts. Pretty much any decent product has a small number of fans. That doesn't make it "successful" by any statistical standards.

The number of people who actively use g+ is miniscule [citation needed] Weak sauce, I say. It's readily apparent that they are the #2 social network in terms of actual usage. Put a status message on fb and ask how many of them use g+ Shall I also ask MySpace users how many of them use G+? Seriously, that "ghost town" bullshit simply isn't going to fly. It's been done to death, everybody's heard it, and anybody who is…

The reason the misconception is still around is because the group of people laughing about the ghost-towners on Google+ is so small to begin with that the general trend never gets corrected. In other words, because it's true ;)

PS. I think you're using "weak sauce" incorrectly.

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