71–80 of 215 posts
I don't have a linkedin account. Should I? Does it provide value I can't find elsewhere?
I think it's the best / most ubiquitous way to always have your up-to-date resume available, and to keep in touch with industry contacts.
I was shocked, for example, when I learned that a certain social network gives universal profile access to employees as a perk. That would not happen at Google. If you looked at your high-school ex-girlfriend's email, you'd be fired immediately (and deserve it).
Social is creepy, because it's all about being defined by other people, which is ridiculous and horrible. What, so do I suck at Programming Languages because I haven't trolled my 25 closest acquaintances for endorsements? Am I really going to become more credible in Machine Learning if I get 15 strangers to "endorse" me?
The major conflict in "Social" is what I call "Document vs. Improve" (or: Exploit vs. Explore). A social app can expand the web of social connections and make it more efficient, but (a) that's really hard, and (b) there isn't a lot of short-term money in it. Or it can document social relationships that already exist, and make a shit-ton of money off the data. That's easy, but it doesn't actually make anyone's life better. Guess which one the mainstream social players favor?
What I find depressing about LinkedIn is how much it has play-by-play replicated the old, broken way of doing things. Resumes. Titles and dates of employment. Recommendations. Recruiter spam. It feels like the Wayback Machine took us to 1995.
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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.
The only thing I can think of is that it's matching IP addresses and concluding my two accounts are the same account.
Y'all know that I worked for Google. On this topic, I can only say good things about the place. When it comes to privacy and PII, Google holds itself to an extremely high standard. Many of these "social" innovations that are popping up on the market place were rejected out-of-hand at Google because it holds itself to an extremely high ethical standard regarding user data, as it actually respects them. I was shocked,…
How would you do it differently ? Genuinely interested in your opinion on this.
Y'all know that I worked for Google. On this topic, I can only say good things about the place. When it comes to privacy and PII, Google holds itself to an extremely high standard. Many of these "social" innovations that are popping up on the market place were rejected out-of-hand at Google because it holds itself to an extremely high ethical standard regarding user data, as it actually respects them. I was shocked,…
LinkedIn seems to be expanding as a magnet for scummy and crappy recruiters. Awesome strategy guys. I love getting unsolicited phone calls from clueless strangers. At least I can ignore emails.
I think the business model for LinkedIn is to try and replace salesforce.com. Eg, maintain customer contacts on an interactive database.
The job search aspect is useful, but it needs work. targeted postings seems a lot less intrusive. the recruiter angle, selling premium access to my contact details is just obnoxious. gives us a good reason to shut down the profile.
What's most relevant here is that it's downright illegal in most Western countries LinkedIn e.a. operate in. Both collecting this information and sharing it without explicit (as in: not just default checked boxes) informed (as in: information about why, what and shared with whom) consent is not just unethical, it's a violation of most known privacy laws.
The widespread practice of blatantly unethical business practices in our industry by both high profile companies and small start-ups alike is something we as professionals should take more seriously.
If we don't, it doesn't only harm the image of our industry, but we'll be faced with ever more regulatory hurdles. The infamous EU cookie law is just the beginning if we don't act to clean up our own industry.
Every second web company seems to have a business model that directly or indirectly generates revenue through stalking people on a massive scale. This cannot possible be sustainable without a huge backlash.
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Are you logging in from the same locality, perhaps the same building, perhaps from the same computer and perhaps still using the same IP as you had when you closed your account in 2011? It doesn't take a lot of work to come up with some new-user-matching-old-user algorithm with a decent success rate using geographic/IP data.
It would have been the same major metro area, but moved about 8 miles in the middle. Same ISP, different IP. Same computer, but there's no way I didn't completely clear the browser a few times in those 2 years.
Or maybe Facebook is using a real-life https://panopticlick.eff.org/
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you logging in from the same locality, perhaps the same building, perhaps from the same computer and perhaps still using the same IP as you had when you closed your account in 2011? It doesn't take a lot of work to come up with some new-user-matching-old-user algorithm with a decent success rate using geographic/IP data.
It would have been the same major metro area, but moved about 8 miles in the middle. Same ISP, different IP. Same computer, but there's no way I didn't completely clear the browser a few times in those 2 years.
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…
However, if people you know found the account, then that's also something that Facebook uses - I've had "do you know X?" suggestions from people with whom I have no traceable connections (not in my address book, don't even know their email addresses) - turns out (when I asked one of them) that he had been looking at my profile (without friend-requesting me) a few days before.