Slashdot Mirror
LinkedIn (Temporarily) Backs Down After Uproar At Contact Export Removal
Mark Wilson writes: LinkedIn caused a storm a couple of days ago when it removed the option to instantly download contacts. Many users of the professional social network were more than a little irked to discover that while contact exporting was still available, a wait of up to three days had been put in place. Unsurprisingly, users revolted, having been particularly upset by the fact the change was implemented with no warning or announcement. But the company has managed to turn things around by quickly backtracking on its decision after listening to a stream of complaints on Twitter.
Users can't be surprised by a company who makes money by having them use their site to maintain lists of professional contacts and eventually decides having a feature that can instantly export their contacts (and allow them to leave the site completely) might not be a good idea.
Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty dirty move to just up and do that, and a 3 day wait to export a list of contacts?? That's entirely unreasonable.
BUT..... put yourself in their seat. do you really want to make it that easy and painless to leave? Nope.
Signing up, they want your contact information from your email client. WTF! And people give it to them!!
And what sucks is that email addresses that I reserve for family and friends is now on LinkIN's site. I once created an account with my professional email and they knew exactly what my other email accounts were.
And then there is the spam. And the folks who look at your profile and yet are able to hide their identities. And the recruiters who have a great opportunity and after sending them a resume, the jobs are "closed".
LinkedIN is one big waste of time and it's worse than facebook in terms of privacy loss.
While they advertised their API removal, it was a giant mess as well. They removed almost all the functionality and rather than just remove the API functions from the admin console, they left them still there and made developers go manually switch off the ones they weren't allowed to use themselves. If anything was left on, your calls just wouldn't work.
removal of the regular download option had been "part of our ongoing efforts to combat the inappropriate export of member data by third parties." As a result of the vocal outpouring of disapproval, instant CSV exporting is back...
I have to wonder who outpoured disapproval? It doesn't seem like something most users would care about.
On the other hand, headhunters who use LinkedIn as a site for harvesting resumes would be angry. But isn't that the whole point of LinkedIn? To give recruiters your contact info so they can spam you?
It wouldn't surprise me if this was just a publicity stunt.
If they call everyone else scrapers, what is it exactly that they are doing when go through your contact list, browser cache etc. etc. to establish new and potential 'People You Might Know' graph nodes?
There was some guy years ago who exposed their somewhat 'gray' practices of using back-doors (Java, Javascript etc.) to extract user information and build up their social graph. He probably got silenced, but the web never forgets.
Google, Facebook, LinkedIn..they are all probably walking the line when it comes to browser trickery and exploit..they can afford the best engineers to do that.
http://www.quora.com/Who-originally-suggested-that-if-youre-not-paying-for-the-product-you-are-the-product
Sir Coward to my Enemies, ;)
I need to know, I don't want to do what cows do.
You use a 3rd party to manage your contacts, don't act surprised when that 3rd party does something you don't like. If you want control, manage them yourself.
Linked in is still relevant?
I have yet to meet ANYONE that has found linked in to be useful in any way. 99% of the "employers" are headhunters that are doing shotgun requests.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Woe betide you if you link with a recruitment agent because they will indiscriminately spam everyone who matches a keyword search. Repeatedly and often. These days I simple ignore all invites from agents and unlinked those that I made previously. If an agent is desperate to speak with me they can use one of their precious in-mails. That said, I've had these dummies send me an inmail telling me of "a role I may be interested in" without saying what the role is, whether it is permanent / contract, where it is, how much it pays, or anything else. I ignore those too.
LinkedIn is probably one of the most useless "services" ever.
I check it out maybe once a month and what I see, is people regurgitating same idiotic platitudes over and over again, to make their name pop up with a link to a click-bite article with no value what so ever.
As OP, I have never ever met anyone who has gotten anything valuable back from LinkedIn.
I have yet to meet ANYONE that has found linked in to be useful in any way.
I don't mean to be snide but if you think this then you are Doing It Wrong. LinkedIn can be absurdly useful and not just for recruiters. Speaking for myself, I've started and run a number of businesses. It's given me a great way to find specific people I need to talk to in companies I don't deal with every day or in large companies where finding specific people is difficult. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find the right engineer in a specific part of a company as large as GM to get a technical questions answered? For anything relating to business networking LinkedIn is incredibly useful and focused on business unlike Facebook.
If you aren't doing much business networking then no, LinkedIn will probably not be very useful to you. On the other hand not doing much business networking can be a career limiting move. LinkedIn certainly isn't required to do this but it can help. A lot.
99% of the "employers" are headhunters that are doing shotgun requests.
And most of what is on twitter and facebook is pointless nonsense. Still very useful to a lot of people.
LinkedIn was ever relevant?
Yes. Aside from Facebook and maybe Twitter it's probably the most relevant social networking site out there right now and it is top of the heap for business networking. I have no relationship with LinkedIn aside from being a periodic user but it is demonstrably pretty useful and very relevant in business networking.
but I'd never consider using them to find people to hire
Why not? I have and it works pretty well. I've found people I needed to talk to for technical problems, found job opportunities, found people to hire and had others find me for those same purposes. It's a great tool for a job seeker. It helps me get warm introductions for sales leads (I run a small company), find people I need to talk to, find experts in particular topics, find suppliers for products, etc. It's not the only way to do these things but its pretty helpful if you do it right. I'm not saying you should use it but I think just blanket dismissal of it is kind of silly. I don't have a Facebook account myself but I get why people use it and why they find it valuable.
LinkedIn is shit.
The only way it could be made worse is if it was purchased by Dice Holdings.
Dice Holdings juggles my nuts on the chin of the Dice Holdings C-level executives.
You are their slave
How is this news ... ?
Are there any viable alternatives where the casual networker goes?
Some people must have a high tolerance for this sort of treatment.
If the alternative is unemployment, which leads to starvation due to inability to afford food and imprisonment due to violations of city sit-lie ordinances, a lot of people are willing to tolerate a lot of BS.
The whole site is dedicated to outrageous pricing for marginal return. (Even Jeff Weiner's own LinkedIn page only has seven (7) recommendations.)
The angle they use is this: What's it worth to you to get a job? Ok, then pay us exorbitant monthly amounts on the slim chance that you might get it through us.
People use LinkedIn to validate searches. Really senior execs are RARELY on there -unless it's for marketing eg Bill Gates. It's just for us dweebs who are desperate for a job or a mediocre pay raise.
To actually use LinkedIn for profit (other than head-hunting) is very complicated and time consuming. I know - I've done it and it's barely worth it.
*** Don't be dull.***
Isn't it fun to know that a company took your contact data and now considers it THEY have more right to the people you link to than YOU do?
Perhaps Linked-IN considers me a data hoarding parasite, trying to beg for jobs while they do the important work of spamming everybody I will potentially know 20 years in the future.
I've currently got a junk email account I used to register with LinkedIN and I've received job offers to repackage packages from the year 2044.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"