I still use LinkedIn b/c well it's the market leader.
However I do have one thing to vent about: LinkedIn uses a phishing technique after you're logged in by showing you your email address and then a password field which makes it very easy for you to mindlessly input your email password (as they want) so they can spam all your contacts.
I've been saved from this mistake many times by having different LinkedIn and Gmail passwords, but this really shouldn't be acceptable...
I deleted my LinkedIn account several months ago because the value is gave me, as a professional, did not outweigh the buggy site with its highly dubious strategies. I've received one job offer through the site in the years I've been on it, but I've also been spammed to death by emails that I couldn't turn off and had made something like a hundred connections to people that I mostly will never actually need to be 'connected' to ever again.
I think there is value to be found in a professional networking / career site, but for me, LinkedIn did not cut it.
A couple of months ago I got an email from them along the lines of "We noticed you haven't logged in in awhile. You have a message waiting from someone in your extended network!". I log in, and no message - but I am presented a page prompting me to let them scrape my gmail and/or add people from a list they think I might know.
I haven't used LinkedIn in a long time, and I should really attempt to delete my account.
Zerply may be the best thing since sliced bread in its design, but I'm not going to be the one to spam all of my business connections with yet-another-social-network.
If I started getting lots of invites from people I trusted, then I might consider joining. But I'd never even heard of them before reading this article.
LinkedIn goofed up ONCE in allowing your face in ads when you have some connection to the company. That's nowhere near as slimy as Facebook putting your face on ads you'd never even CLICKED on (famously a woman saw her HUSBAND in a picture advertising a singles site...), and that's just the tip of Facebook's privacy betrayals.
And since LinkedIn has a totally dominant market share (and mind share) in "business connections," it's going to likely take a lot more than a better design and easy import to dethrone them.
It looks like the hook is "use us to host your online resume! We'll make it pretty!" That approach has some potential; I'll keep my eyes open for a Zerply-hosted resume moving forward.
In this case, it was not Facebook who put that picture there, but an advertiser, who got and used that picture in a way that was against Facebook's Terms of Service, and Facebook then blocked that advertiser.
But this is the internet, where anything which in any way involves Facebook is Facebook's fault, and, furthermore, was completely intentional and malicious.
The thing I like about Zerply is finding people to work with. Which is kinda the point of a professional network when you think about it.
It's only fairly new, but I think the value will come from endorsements more than connections.
If you're looking to hire a developer, does it really matter if you know me or know someone that I know. What's the point of linking to people you already know anyway?? If you're looking to hire someone, it's far more important to understand their reputation than it is to understand how you're connected to them.
Isn't this an obvious marketing play by people behind Zerply?
edit: Look at the one line positive comments that appeared straight after posting this article. Really funny.
Besides the general attention that an article like this gives this is also a perfect SEO tool.
Personally, what I think that these dudes are doing is building a linking pyramid that passes on the famed Google juice from Y Combinator (PR 7) via the blog article (contextual links, a big thing after the Google Panda update) to their own site.
Anyone can find person X to write a semi-beliveable article about their service or tool and submit it here. Clever stuff but not clever enough.
Actually, kind of dumb, because sooner or later, people running this message board will have to rethink what types of articles can be linked to.
Once you start doing stuff on the business end of things it's really useful:
• You've got a conf call with 3 people from a company and you want to figure out what their roles there are and other useful bits (where they studied, where they've worked, and other tidbits that can warm up a conversation).
• You want to figure out the rough size of a company you're doing a sales call with.
• You're cold calling and you want to figure out who to cold call.
• You meet a half dozen people at a networking event and would rather have their LinkedIn info than their business card for future reference.
• You want an intro to somebody who you suspect is only a contact or two away, but don't know which contact or two.
• You want to background check a potential consultant / hire and want to figure out who to run those checks by.
Before I started a company I found it pretty useless too. (All of the jobs I'd gotten had always come via intros in my offline personal network, so I never saw its utility there.)
Doesn't that basically mean that LinkedIn is a fool's game? In almost all of those cases, the person whose details are publicly available is putting themselves at a disadvantage in some way. Of course you like it as the person running the company/getting the advantage, but what's in it for the other guy to make sharing worthwhile?
I sit around hoping that they'll sell my email to recruiters. Y'know, for a job I actually want.
I've only had one recruiter approach me in several years on linkedin (and even he didn't have anything more interesting to sell me than DE Shaw, who had already collected my resume for their "Hey look how many people we reject" pile).
I think the key is having experience at a major corporation (Dow Jones 30 or equivalent profile). After I listed that, I went from no contacts to once every month or two.
> I sit around hoping that they'll sell my email to recruiters. Y'know, for a job I actually want.
Exactly. If they had a way to mark a job from a recruiter as irrelevant which caused their account to be flagged then they may create an actually useful service for job seekers, but until then I just keep getting emails about .net jobs in Omaha.
Yes, actually. I've been able to reconnect with past coworkers who I otherwise would have had a hard time tracking down.
I also no longer need to maintain another resume online. It IS my online resume. And instead of saying "recommendations available on request", they're right on that same page.
Finally, it's a way to find people to work with you, if you're hiring. If you're always on the "being hired" side of the equation and never on the "hiring" side, then you won't experience that, but it's hard to find good people, and it's great to have friends-of-friends available as a resource.
LinkedIn recommendations are a joke really, everyone can always get their friends to say nice things about them. E.g. one former colleague of mine, known as "Captain Panic" for well-deserved reasons, has recommendations praising him for being calm in a crisis! And I think everyone on the hire-side is well aware of this problem.
On an unrelated note, I expected that to be the website of Martina Hingis.
As someone who's been reviewing job applications lately, I would say that LinkedIn profiles are of value. It's an additional data point in looking at somebody's job history, even if it's oftentimes redundant. I don't write off recommendations either, provided they're from the right people.
> It's an additional data point in looking at somebody's job history, even if it's oftentimes redundant.
Are you trawling through LinkedIn profiles for candidates? If you use LinkedIn to research current applicants, what information would you find on LinkedIn that is missing from a traditional resume?
Having an online presence is very important as an accompaniment to a CV. I always google job applicants that I receive. If I don't find anything, I am disappointed and tend to file those applicants with the ones where I find their fully open Facebook profile showing what that person did with a stripper at their mates stag party. LinkedIn provides a good fill for the void of wanting to fully lock down your Facebook profile.
Recent uptick. LinkedIn will also "flag" recommendations from being tit-for-tat, meaning, the "savvy" now wait a week or several days before "returning the favor." Ergo, recommendation quality does not mean as much as pre-IPO (IMO). It is also saturated as of late by more spammy recruiters (I'm a recruiter..value out of LinkedIn recruiting has dropped dramatically since IPO due to the flood).
LinkedIn, however, is the "disruptive" potential company in the third-party recruiting space. It will be interesting to see if they do so :)
They made a bit dent in many contingent recruiters introducing pay-for-job posting (versus posting jobs in groups, which is SPAM heavy).
LinkedIn answers and groups, however, has gone the way of mostly spam or, those trying to establish "LinkedIn" expert status' (statusi? :D). I believe many thought that owning a large group would somehow lead to monetization. Currently, groups are only moderated by the group leaders, with LinkedIn more hands-off in the approach, killing nice networking potentials.
As a caveat, day job = LinkedIn recruiting on a 10% basis, whereas off work, I like to actually interact with the groups, Answers (not lately due to poor quality) and connect with interesting people unrelated to technical recruiting.
I got a lot of value out of it last winter when I was looking for a new job. It helped me learn a lot more about the companies and often the people who I was talking to. Two companies where we progressed to in-person interviews told me in advance the first names of the people who I would be talking to and I was able to figure out who they were and read their resumes before I went in. That made a huge difference for me in feeling comfortable during the interviews and helped me ask good questions pitched towards the actual interests of the interviewers.
I know several people, as well as myself, who are head-hunted reguarily on linked in, and have seen multiple job offers come across this table. All in all, it's not bad. But more importantly, if you've been a part of a big company and worked across teams, then keeping track of all those aquaintances is valuable - they might be your 'in' to finding a job again some day. In that regard, it is near priceless.. I don't want the other software devs on my facebook, but I do want to keep in touch.
Yes, there is a huge benefit for someone like me who has worked in many different cities. It allows me to keep in touch with people I've worked with and see where they get new positions. The key here is that it's a tool: it's only as valuable as what you put into it.
It has essentially replaced the Rolodex people used to use years ago.
If you aren't open to recruiters reaching out to you, you can make that plain and clear in your summary... "I don't speak with recruiters" or "Not looking for a position."
I have not. Furthermore, everyone I've ever asked has said that they also just have an account because they feel like they might need it some day. None of them ever actually use it.
Clearly it's not the case that no one gets any value from LinkedIn, as evidenced by the other commenters and the fact that they still exist. Perhaps its use falls along age or professional lines? I and my friends/contacts fall on the younger side of things; is it more prevalent among an older crowd? Among non-programmers? Among programmers at larger companies?
I suspect members of larger organizations benefit more. You build a very large network simply by connecting with everyone you interact with at your own organization. These large orgs also experience a lot of churn and voila, you have a large, distributed network.
I do. But I run a small development shop where besides engineering I have to wear a business development hat a lot. I've made some long lasting professional relationships with partners met via linkedin groups and I've been able to get at little bit of insight into people I'm going to be meeting with who I frequently don't know.
I think its got more value for people in sales or business development then day to day engineers. But YMMV
I use LinkedIn to vet people for a mailing list I help manage. Mostly to verify that they're real people and not accounts which a spammer will use. It's not perfect as many people don't have the address they use for the mailing list aliased on their LI account.
On the other hand, every single contact I've received from recruiters has demonstrated that not a single one managed to actually READ my LinkedIn profile.
Anyone else have a problem with their T&C? Essentially, "you post it here, we get to do whatever we want with it":
> "By placing any information or other material on such publicly accessible locations on the Website (including but not limited to posting messages, uploading files, inputting data or engaging in any other form of communication), you automatically grant (or warrant that the owner of such content has expressly granted) to Zerply a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable, unrestricted, worldwide license to use, copy, sublicense, reproduce, distribute, redistribute, modify, adapt, publish, edit, translate, transmit, create derivative works of, publish and/or broadcast, publicly perform or display any materials or other information (including without limitation, ideas contained therein for new or improved products or services) you submit to public areas of the Website (including but not limited to chat rooms, forums and bulletin boards) alone or as part of other works in any form, media, or technology whether by any means and in any media now known or hereafter developed and to sublicense such rights through multiple tiers of sublicenses."
The key phrase that makes this T&C fine is "... [that] you submit to public areas of the Website". This is a standard clause that means "don't sue us for copyright infringement when we publish the content you asked us to publish." IANAL.
I don't think that's what it means... I've read many T&C (IANAL either) and some of them state, to the effect of, "your stuff stays yours, even if you put it on our site". That, to me, would be closer to "we're not responsible for your copyright infringements."
Just because I post something publicly doesn't make it publicly owned (or in this case, owned by the host)—I want to retain the copyright to my works, and this T&C says "nope, we own whatever you post here."
In the end, it was too much for me, and I didn't complete the signup process. If I'm completely wrong about it's meaning or intent, well, shrug, they should write T&C that you don't have to be a lawyer to grok.
LinkedIn is like my credit score. I have no use for it now, but I might need it one day, and having it ready for One Day requires less than 30 seconds of thought/week.
I went to zerply, clicked on a url in one of their testimonials, saw a page where I had to scroll waaaay down to get past all the huge header text and pointless graphics to read a few small snippets about the person. Then I clicked on the person's link to linkedin, and immediately got much more information about them, without pointless "I'm so hip" graphic over-design.
LinkedIn isn't perfect, but I use it for the following purposes:
To find out about companies (who do I know who works there? how big are is the company? what sort of people do they employ?)
To find out about potential co-workers (job applicants, or interviewers when I'm on the other side of the desk, or people I meet other ways): who do we know in common (maybe someone I know who's worked with them can tell me how they were), what else have they done, etc.
Some of their discussion groups are interesting, some are useless.
I haven't yet used them for job hunting, but I expect eventually I may. I have used them for background research on a company I was already considering working for.
I don't go to LinkedIn for the "beauty" of their design, I go there for information. I don't need "profile pages themed by world-class designers" for that.
Poor spelling shouts "limited resources and lack of professionalism" loud and clear.
If you're asking people to trust you with their data and put time into profiles, you need to show that you're big and serious.
I don't use LinkedIn because it's the coolest kid on the block, I use it because I need to find people to hire, network with, and in the past I've needed it to find gigs and jobs.
I'm going to go where the most people are, and where I feel most confident that my data will be managed professionally.
I'm not going to jump ship for a startup just because LinkedIn is requiring me to opt out if I don't want my picture to appear near an ad. That's not Armageddon, it's just a minor, and ultimately inconsequential, annoyance.
So a multi-billion dollar behemoth that uses your image without your permission in an advertisement for a product that you don't support is a "minor, and ultimately inconsequential, annoyance", but a tiny little startup has a typo on an ERROR page and that's a deal breaker?
Wow. High fives to you for supporting the little guy.
If you're referring to "Oh noes!", that's more of a meme than poor spelling.
Personally, I think there aren't enough sites with a personality and sense of humor. I get the point that the very serious career types will not appreciate this, but they might not be Zerply's target audience. I'll also point out that the home page looks fine, nothing silly there. It seems they are just trying to diffuse tension on an error page with humor.
I agree that having ads use some of your information to target an ad isn't the end of the world. But I definitely disagree with your statement about Zerply's 404 page. Yes, they made one grammatical mistake (if you're willing to accept the "oh noes" slang), but they're programmers and designers, not english students. While that might suggest that they could have taken more time to review the details of their site, that doesn't mean they don't have an awesome and trustworthy service. I think you're comparing apples and oranges there.
Good spot! We are planning to do a full site audit of that stuff, just been too busy with start-up life. We have 6 full time staff and not over a thousand like others.
It's not really about the spelling error itself. It's about the fact that you don't have the time to look for things like that, because of start-up life.
My point is that if that detail is missed, I begin to worry about other, more important details - such as security and the safety of my data.
I spent 5 minutes trying to figure out what the fuss was about before I realized they fixed it! Woops.
However, a question remains: will they eventually sell out and do similar privacy-controversial decisions as LinkedIn? Will everyone have to move again? I'm sure 3 years ago LinkedIn would deny that they would do anything like their recent move, but here we are. People keep moving from a service to another, hoping that it will be better, but what's to stop the new service from doing the same tricks once it gets big enough?
You could also tone down the deliberate cuteness. "Hmm what? Oh noes, looks like..." six nothing words before getting to the point: 404. It's wasted space, tediously hip and cloying. I hazard to say most of us older than 12 aren't amused.
I actually find that when a website takes the time to create a personal and interesting 404 page, it signals the fact that they really care about user experiencer. 404 pages can be some of the most jarring things for a user and the fact that they shared some personality and helped the user get back on track says to me that the team is focused on the right things.
LinkedIn is the surprise of the year for me-- I had pretty much written it off a couple years back, but it turns out that LinkedIn is incredibly helpful for connecting with my company's technology partners, potential hires, and business advisors.
I've recently found LinkedIn quite valuable as a tool for doing Customer Development. There's a wide range of people on it, not just techies and designers, many of whom (I've found) are pretty open to helping someone out who isn't trying to recruit or hard-sell them.
LinkedIn definitely has its good and not so good parts, but overall it's an excellent tool for startups. It's great for business development, seeking out strategic partnerships, and reaching out to other professionals in your industry. It's also a great reality check for web startups with little experience in their specific verticals; you can almost instantly communicate with experienced professionals to measure demand, get feedback and even new customers. There's nothing out there that can match it for now.
Also, where else can you find so many "Social Media Marketing Experts" in one place ;).
I hate LinkedIn with a passion, always have. It just seems like an old, kludgy online dating site (like Match). I never use it unless I have to, and I still can't figure out how to turn off their damned weekly emails - they have no easy unsubscribe option and I've gone to their "notification management" (or whatever it's called) area in my account several times, without any clear option to turn off the emails (wtf?!).
I don't use LinkedIn very often. I just keep it updated with my info just in case someone is looking for someone with my skill set. It's a pretty good idea I think too for stuffy business types, and they are constantly surprising me on their use of HTML5 and great startup/founder posts.
Is LinkedIn anything more than just craigslist for resumes? For whatever reason, the virtuous circle of recruiters and resumes settled on LinkedIn. You don't go to LinkedIn because it's good; you go there because everyone else goes there.
I was never in love with it to begin with. In fact having had an account there for years, with various biographical details, I've gotten very little value out of that site.
That's my #1 criticism of LinkedIn: everything about it screams corporate, from the design all the way down to the behaviours it encourages. They need to really simplify the design and make it sleek and visually interesting.
Agree that endorsements are extremely valuable in a professional network. And, making it much easier to weigh in on endorsing someone should increase this activity. I also might not be willing to endorse every aspect of a person, (so would be unwilling to write out a paragraph of endorsing them), but I would be willing to endorse the one aspect of their professionalism I am willing to put my own name behind.
In the same vein, I'd rather endorse a particular ability or skill someone has than an entire position they held like LinkedIn makes you do. In an economy where we have periodic high unemployment, your skills are more important than how long you have held a particular job.
I got tired of the constant email updates about who is connected to whom and people that I should be connected with (yeah, I know you can turn that off, but ehh *linkedin offered no value to me) so I closed my account.
I must give them koodos on how easy they make closing an account.
However I do have one thing to vent about: LinkedIn uses a phishing technique after you're logged in by showing you your email address and then a password field which makes it very easy for you to mindlessly input your email password (as they want) so they can spam all your contacts.
I've been saved from this mistake many times by having different LinkedIn and Gmail passwords, but this really shouldn't be acceptable...