Slashdot Mirror
How LinkedIn's Project Inversion Saved the Company
pacopico writes "Shortly after its 2011 IPO, LinkedIn's infrastructure almost collapsed. The company had been running on decade's old technology and needed a major overhaul to keep up with other social sites. As Businessweek reports, LinkedIn initiated Project Inversion to fix its issues and has since evolved into one of the poster children for continuous development and creating open source infrastructure tools. But the story also notes that LinkedIn's technology revival has come with some costs, including constant changes that have bothered some users."
I smell a Slashvertisment... Seriously, LinkedIn? Biggest spammer in my Inbox. Of dubious professional value. Facebook, *please* buy them?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
What bothers me about LinkedIn is the constant goddamn spam...uh, I mean emails telling me my "limited time offer" for premium membership so I can unlock all the nifty features is almost up.
First of all, it's decades without an apostrophe you doof. Secondly how can a company that's only a decade old run on "decades" old hardware? They bought ten year old computers in 2003?
So, an article with no technical details? Cool. What are they doing thats so new?
A while ago I noticed their name on the bottom of this : http://www.playframework.com/
That would be about the time that LinkedIn started making the search features LESS effective. For example, in the past, I could review lists of new LinkedIn members that worked for the same companies as I did, at the times that I was there, When I had determined that I did not know them, it would not show me those names again.
The classmates search is completely useless to me. I can no loger add search terms to the search to narrow down the results (I used to be able to do this). All I can do is get the same list of classmates that I have seen before. Since I left university decades ago, I don't have many existing connections to classmates, so a graph search for related classmates is little use to me. I want to search by looking for common courses or interests at the time I was there. Probably, for people only a few years out of college (the Facebook generation), this isn't a problem, since the connections were established while at college.
So, perhaps the infrastructure is better, but from this user's perspective, the site has got worse.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
LinkedIn is complete garbage.
BETTER FIND SOME WATAH!!!
Then again, Linked In rarely gets hacked as often as other social media, because there is no API
I never really understood what Linkedin was supposed to be doing for me in the first place but, for me, Linkedin has turned into just another platform for suppliers to barrage me with sales attempts. I didn't want to buy your terrible products in a meeting yesterday, I sure as hell don't want to talk to you while on on a computer at home.
That bothers me. In the beginning sure, I knew those people. Now, the emails have been for the last several years that I might know people that I have absolutely no idea of how I would even know. It looks desperate, LinkedIn.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
that's pretty interesting
Does this company do anything other than generate SPAM?
I wish these spammers and all their ilk would go die in a gutter.
LinkedIn used to be a job board for consultants. I'm not sure what it is now. I haven't logged in for months.
Is changing the features of a web site three times a day actually useful?
Unless you look at it as not being able spam out emails fast enough. It's all the Facebook-like "features" LinkedIn has been adding that I hear people complain about.
Who is decade and what old technology of theirs was LinkedIn using?
Somehow, my mother was was suggested to my wife for a Link or whatever they call it.
1. I'm not on LinkedIN because I think it's just like Facebook in many ways - like data pimping.
2. My wife is a medical practitioner.
3. My mother is in finance.
What in the World is in their algorithms that figured that out?!
I highly doubt they were running on equipment from the early 90s...
THEN GET TO DA CHOPPAH!
I know how to cook a ribeye to clog my arteries but I don't know exactly what they did in any detail other that "concentrate on infrastructure."
Not sure what I was expecting from BusinessWeek though.
Where is all the tech stuff? I want to know what systems were swapped out, what was used in place or what was swapped, what the steps were (did they set up unit tests first followed by architecture changes and scalability testing), what new coding practices they employed etcetera. I'll sum up this horn-tootin session: "LinkedIn had to change to grow, and they did".
MouseClass extends ScrollClass, which extends TabClass, which extends SidebarClass, which extends PowerClass, w
It's hard to believe that former colleagues I haven't seen in over 2-3 years care this much about me. :|
It also makes me feel bad that I don't go through and fill out endorsements for them. :(
Who the hell wants to be social on an online resume? Sharing photos and crap, that's just a termination or lawsuit waiting to happen.
What decades old tech could power a website in 2003? That titles says it's decades old, unless they were running SUN lunchboxes I think that's more than hyperbole. Seriously this isn't like the airlines tying their ancient system to the web which was dog slow.
I did read the FA, at least first page. It didn't mention the technology just that they redid things within 2 months. Sounds normal enough - get a chunk of money and improve your service which is the whole reason for an IPO (Well other than letting investors cash out).
I was hoping for some more technical details but the Business Week article basically says nothing.
Running on decades old technology? hardware?
Uh.......... that shit hasnt been around for decades...
Nothing related is decades old... Unless you get down to um... wires?
After they spammed my gmail address book with invites. The request page to do this, looks just like the log in page, so thinking that they need your password to log in you end up spamming mailing lists and people you haven't talked to in years.
I'm not the only one, http://community.linkedin.com/questions/19949/why-did-you-send-invitation-emails-to-my-entire-gm.html#comment-31842
I am no affiliated in any way with LinkedIn.
I am surprised by all LinkedIn hate. As an active user I configured it to never email me under any circumstances and only had this rule broken twice (not sure how/why) in all this time I have been using it.
Yes, spam is annoying but there is a clear opt-out.
Technical content is nearly zero. Puff piece for techno bystanders.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
What a surprise, a story that does indeed have a technical basis on the overhaul of dated infrastructure but in pure slashdot form nobody gives a shit about technology and instead the comments are flooded with braindead morons who think they are uncovering some advertising conspiracy or just bitching about how they don't use/like linkedin. No doubt this will just do as all comments sections do on this website these days and devolve into a discussion about IP, patents, privacy and data mining by the lawyer-types that have infested slashdot.
LinkedIn is a moras of inconsistency, unethical imoral ethos and does break many State's Laws including International Law.
Glad I saw the truth very early on many years ago an did not buy (stock) into the hype.
1) US history is short
2) GLOBAL warming is not US warming
3) Not all whores are hot women
Screw LinkedIn and the horse they rode in on. If I get one more unsolicited LinkedIn message from some total stranger, I swear to the godz I'm calling in that airstrike the Air Force still owes me.