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LinkedIn Invites Gone Wild: How To Keep Close With Exes and Strangers
sholto writes "An aggressive expansion strategy by LinkedIn has backfired spectacularly amid accusations of identity fraud. Users complained the social network sent unrequested invites from their accounts to contacts and complete strangers, often with embarrassing results. One man claimed LinkedIn sent an invite from his account to an ex-girlfriend he broke up with 12 years ago who had moved state, changed her surname and her email address. ... 'This ex-girlfriend's Linked in profile has exactly ONE contact, ME. My wife keeps getting messages asking 'would you like to link to (her)? You have 1 contact in common!,' wrote Michael Caputo, a literary agent from Massachussetts."
From what I can gather, people are using the "upload your contact list" / "connect to your email account" feature, without realizing that it automatically sends out invites to your contacts. I'm pretty sure it spells that out quite plainly, though; at least I vaguely recall that it did last time I decided not to use the feature.
They've always been aggressive and aggravating, as far as I'm concerned. When a family member signed up with them I got a request. And another. And another. And they kept coming. I finally followed a link and told them to shut up and stop bothering me, but then another associate signed up and it started all over again. I can understand one invite, but they sent far more than was warranted, or could be considered reasonable or polite. I refuse to use them, not just because of the grudge, but also because I don't want them spamming friends or family based on my registration.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
I guess most people aren't aware of how this actually works. Notice that if you visit LinkedIn on a computer that you normally use, it already knows who you are without having to sign in. So when you think you are casually using LinkedIn to look up an old girlfriend or co-worker that you detest, it logs that activity. Then it WAITS A FEW DAYS AND THEN ASKS THAT PERSON IF THEY KNOW YOU. Yes, it is that creepy.
So many of these sites do that "hey, give us your username and password and we'll find people for you".
No way no how would I give any of them my password for my email account to sift through and find people. If I want to put information in there, I'll do it myself.
Though, it wouldn't surprise me if they used some other annoying mechanism to do these invites the user didn't do.
Like all social networking, your contacts and friends are extremely valuable to them. They want to expand it as much as possible, and might get a little overzealous in doing that.
As it is, I periodically get invites from people I don't know in LinkedIn, but if I don't know you or haven't worked with you, it's not happening.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Second hit for "linkedin email preferences." You're on Slashdot, and you don't know how to do this?
http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/67
Email notifications can be added, changed, or stopped in the Email Preferences section of the Settings page [...] The following options are available:
Individual Email
Daily Digest Email
Weekly Digest Email
No Email
Please help metamoderate.
"endorse" is a completely different, new, feature.
The endorsement messages do not come from the individuals you might endorse. Again, these are generated by LinkedIn, and the language makes that clear. Did you actually read them?
LinkedIn is asking you to validate that one of your connections "knows" some skill that they have listed.
I like the feature myself. It's meant as a bit of a BS filter, to give some credibility to people's claims. If you've got 100 connections and say you know "x", and nobody endorses you for "x", there's a good chance you're just making it up.
It's actually fun. Whenever I go on LinkedIn (which isn't very often) I'll plink-off a few, knowing that I'm helping people I've worked with validate their skills. If I worked with a person who was doing "x" when I worked with them, and I'm asked to endorse them for "x", I endorse them for "x". If I know they are BSing or simply don't know, maybe because their experience with "x" was later, then I pass it by. It's the way it's supposed to work. (There is no negative endorsement.)
Obviously, though, it will take time for the system to work, since it is a fairly new feature.
Does anybody use LinkedIn? I do. It's replaced my resume'. However, I don't follow the standard resume' advice to keep it to recent history. I've been a developer for 30+ years. Every job I've ever had is listed.
There are recruiters that will toss your resume if they can't find information about you, but not all. I know several younger generation recruiters, including my sister-in-law, and they do use it heavily nowadays.
However, there is a value to it if you know how to restrict from the features that do not add value. The features that don't add value are individual to you however. I know several people who are involved with small businesses and startups in a marketing function, and many small companies want to know how social media savvy you are, so LinkedIn can be useful there. I'm an operations guy myself, and I have my LinkedIn page mimic my resume pretty closely; it's taking the place of Monster now. In terms of contacts, I add every person that i have met and worked with individually and refuse accepting people whom I've never met face to face; the nice thing there is you can tag them so 2-3 years down the road when you're looking to change jobs or need someone for some random project, you can look up your LinkedIn contacts and remember who you met and why, and there's your opening to call them for their assistance. In addition, if I do an exceptional job I ask someone to write a recommendation for me related to that job; their recommendation is usually glowing when it's near the time I did a great job and yet through LinkedIn it stays forever glowing; I don't have to have them dredge up that review 3-5 years later as a recruiter can already see it. Also, recruiters are now finding me for my LinkedIn resume, which means jobs are coming to me; not that i'm in the market looking but it never hurts.
I basically use it as an online, organic resume. I keep it up to date with various projects so that way when I'm looking to position myself for a promotion or a job change, it's already up to date. That matters to me because I'm in my early 30's and have decades of work ahead of me; for someone in the latter part of their career perhaps not so much, but it's worth looking into to see how you can utilize it.