LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts • Hacker News Board

Re: LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts

#61

Post by jonathankoren » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 10:23 PM UTC

lemevi wrote: post #9

LinkedIn has never been interesting to me for anything other than looking at what past coworkers have been up to. I've never once had an experience where LinkedIn led to a job and in fact after I deleted my account my recruiter email volume dropped by an order of magnitude. I've also read that potential employers search candidates LinkedIn contacts to see if there are any existing employees and if so ask them about t…

> The users are what is for sale on this site.

Isn't that true of pretty much every advertising driven site?

Full disclosure: I used to work at LI.

Re: LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts

#62

Post by bduerst » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 10:28 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #52

bduerst wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get what you're saying but your trial subscription example isn't that unusual. A better example of dark patterns is how they repeatedly try to get you to sync your email contacts by sneaking it in at random points, where you may accidentally click through it. Their website has also become a minefield of upsell links, some disguised as benign engagement (e.g. "Add a new skill") while others are much more spammy (e.g…

[deleted]

I'm not disagreeing that a trial period is a dark pattern. The harm a dark pattern causes is inversely proportional to the ability of the user to spot them. The prevalence of trial periods means that many people see it as common sense to not fall for them.

Re: LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts

#63

Post by jlees » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 10:30 PM UTC

zeeed wrote: post #5

They changed a process to make it slower?! o.O 3 days sounds an awful lot as if human intervention were required. What purpose would this serve?

Since LinkedIn shut off their contacts APIs, folks have been looking for other ways to get at LinkedIn connections data. Export is an obvious solution - even though it requires some friction on the part of the end user, people are often willing to jump through a couple hoops if your app solves a real pain they have. By increasing the friction, people developing apps which try to make use of LinkedIn data have to try harder and inflict more friction on their users, hopefully (in LinkedIn's eyes) shutting down more of those apps for good.

Re: LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts

#64

Post by kohanz » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 10:31 PM UTC

lemevi wrote: post #9

LinkedIn has never been interesting to me for anything other than looking at what past coworkers have been up to. I've never once had an experience where LinkedIn led to a job and in fact after I deleted my account my recruiter email volume dropped by an order of magnitude. I've also read that potential employers search candidates LinkedIn contacts to see if there are any existing employees and if so ask them about t…

Although this was my experience as a FT employee, since I've switched to consulting, LinkedIn has brought me leads and some of those have converted. No active advertising by me either, just the fact that people in my network know that I'm working independently now has caused them to ping me with projects.

Re: LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts

#65

Post by bduerst » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 10:32 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #23

Are there any tools out there that can create something akin to a LinkedIn profile for static hosting? Something like Jekyll?

Part of the value that LinkedIn adds is that there is some degree of authenticity to the resumes.

There are some API standards for background checks between businesses and agencies, so that could be a good place to start. You could offer authenticated profiles, where people can't lie on their resume about where they worked.

Of course, LI could just implement this if you became too competitive to them.

Re: LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts

#66

Post by eonw » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 10:34 PM UTC

actually, this feature was being exploited by spammers. a pending contact was still exportable.... so you add thousands of people, then export the list and send them email. easy way to gather targeted business email addresses that are worth money.

as much as i may or may not like linkedin(i dont much), i think this little bit of info is useful when judging the reasoning behind the decision to turn it off.

Re: LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts

#67

Post by jlees » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 10:35 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #33

Not sure I share the experience w/LinkedIn that apparently the majority of HNers have. I get very, very few recruiter messages through LinkedIn. The ones I do get are thoughtful and do a very good job of matching skill-set, background, etc.--they have obviously read my profile and are not just fishing. This has not always been the case. I used to get the hated torrent of "I see you have 12 years of development experi…

I also have found the recruiter email to have gotten a lot better recently. As an experiment (as my startup is hiring - I wanted to see what the candidate experience might be like these days), I expanded my LinkedIn profile to trigger as many recruiter-friendly tickyboxes as possible, expecting a deluge of spam. I got about five messages, all fairly well crafted and personalised to some extent. Honestly, I get more spam to my email address than InMail these days.

I also ran a fun experiment where I set up another LinkedIn profile nearly identical to my own, changing the name and gender and writing a very terse summary for each job. Boy, does he get a lot of random spam. I wonder if by writing a more detailed description of my skills/experience/contributions, I somehow generate better inbound messages...

Speaking to the point about "what would you export", I definitely have contacts who I am only connected through via LinkedIn; a key example being former colleagues whose personal email addresses I never got, and whose work emails I barely remember. I think it depends on the kind of network you have built there, though. The more work you've put into your LinkedIn connection pool, the more you want to export it.

Re: LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts

#68

Post by notahacker » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 10:37 PM UTC

droopyEyelids wrote: post #36

jcroll wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recruiters add liquidity to the labor market. I really don't see how they are a bad thing.

Adding fake liquidity actually removes liquidity. Imagine if you were selling your house, and I created a service that would bombard you with 10 fake potential buyers a day. You only have time to deal with 2 buyers a day. Chances are, you'll miss out on everyone who is actually interested. While LinkedIn does not intend to create fake recruitment attempts, it works out the same in the end.

But the liquidity isn't fake, hence why the firms pay recruiters rather than waiting for the actually-interested people to beat a path to their door. The jobs are real, as are the candidates willing to actually show up to an interview. If you have a job and no suitable candidates, sourcing them is a valuable service, even if a few people get annoyed by the recruiters (better by them than by the employer...) along the way.

Re: LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts

#69

Post by pbreit » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 10:37 PM UTC

lemevi wrote: post #9

LinkedIn has never been interesting to me for anything other than looking at what past coworkers have been up to. I've never once had an experience where LinkedIn led to a job and in fact after I deleted my account my recruiter email volume dropped by an order of magnitude. I've also read that potential employers search candidates LinkedIn contacts to see if there are any existing employees and if so ask them about t…

Everything you write is pretty terrific except somehow you think it's bad?

Re: LinkedIn quietly removes option to export contacts

#70

Post by pbreit » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 10:41 PM UTC

curiousjorge wrote: post #11

why hasn't anybody disrupted linkedin yet? what would you like to see instead of linkedin? snapchat for business professionals?

The only thing I use and it is really quite valuable is just the simple database of resumes and how I'm connected.

LinkedIn is so ridiculous that it now limits how many searches per month you can do. Not only that, but the $30/month service I am trialing does not increase/remove the limit!!