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LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

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Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#2
I had a similar experience with the suggested name of a family member that was pretty unusual. It had her working for a different company than the one she works for. I actually asked her some months later whether she was enjoying her new job, and sue looked at me completely blankly. I have no idea hoe they extrapolate these false positives.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#3
Creepy experience from this week. We have hired someone for daycare, I only have exchanged a few mail with that person. And now, her husband is in "people I know".

I don't have shared my mail credentials with Linkedin, but I assume she has, and since we are both in her contact list, Linkedin assumed we know each other. It is somewhat correct but creepy nonetheless.

I am not going to add him but from my point of view, proposing you to add people you only know remotely diminishes the usefulness of the network. How can you trust the relation/recommendation/etc if you are connected to your second cousin's neighbor ?

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#4
It's creepy but its also cool from an engineering perspective. Statistically we can draw fairly accurate conclusions merely based on the actions of the people around us. LinkedIn is just taking the data approach to how someones face looks when someone they know walks into the room. -_-

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#5
post #2

I had a similar experience with the suggested name of a family member that was pretty unusual. It had her working for a different company than the one she works for. I actually asked her some months later whether she was enjoying her new job, and sue looked at me completely blankly. I have no idea hoe they extrapolate these false positives.

The only thing worse than a creepy panopticon that knows everything about you is a creepy panopticon that just thinks it knows everything about you.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#6
post #3

Creepy experience from this week. We have hired someone for daycare, I only have exchanged a few mail with that person. And now, her husband is in "people I know". I don't have shared my mail credentials with Linkedin, but I assume she has, and since we are both in her contact list, Linkedin assumed we know each other. It is somewhat correct but creepy nonetheless. I am not going to add him but from my point of view,…

> I am not going to add him but from my point of view, proposing you to add people you only know remotely diminishes the usefulness of the network.

The people I know who are the best at networking (I don't count myself in that class) are able to extract a remarkable amount of value out of contacts they only barely know or just have an indirect connection to. It might not be in your nature (or mine for that matter) to foster connections with people you don't really know, but it would arguably be beneficial to do so.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#7
LinkedIn's social graph is much more valuable to the company, if the graph captures only real offline connections. A fully connected network graph offers no information insights. As time goes on and LinkedIn's social graph becomes polluted with spurious connections this will devalue the company. They need more quality control around this, not more sharsee.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#8
If it's creepy it should just illustrate that it's not too difficult to make these sorts of connections based on address books and activity both on linkedin and on other sites that cooperate with linkedin.

What you do online is in most cases not very private. Act accordingly.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#9
post #3

Creepy experience from this week. We have hired someone for daycare, I only have exchanged a few mail with that person. And now, her husband is in "people I know". I don't have shared my mail credentials with Linkedin, but I assume she has, and since we are both in her contact list, Linkedin assumed we know each other. It is somewhat correct but creepy nonetheless. I am not going to add him but from my point of view,…

I'm always a bit surprised that people find this sort of thing to be creepy. It's done automatically at a large scale by an algorithm - I would bet that there isn't a single human being at LinkedIn who knows that this connection was made (or is even aware of your existence [sorry]).

Having said that, I completely agree that "proposing you to add people you only know remotely diminishes the usefulness of the network". LinkedIn should really dial this back a bit.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#10
post #3

Creepy experience from this week. We have hired someone for daycare, I only have exchanged a few mail with that person. And now, her husband is in "people I know". I don't have shared my mail credentials with Linkedin, but I assume she has, and since we are both in her contact list, Linkedin assumed we know each other. It is somewhat correct but creepy nonetheless. I am not going to add him but from my point of view,…

In my opinion recommandations on LinkedIn are fairly trustworthy because:

0. they are redacted from logged-in accounts (while still possible I believe the risk of having an impersonator write someone's a recommandation is rather low, YMMV)

1. the relationship between the two is clearly stated

2. you are 1 click away from finding more about the person that wrote the review

It's arguable, but a recommandation on LinkedIn takes more work than a recommandation by phone. The words you say on LinkedIn tend to stay, and rather openly accessible.

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