I hate LinkedIn

I wonder if Robert would have made this post if USVP had funded LinkedIn instead of Sequoia Capital?

From my perspective, LinkedIn seems fairly harmless. Hate seems too strong of a word when they make it hard to unsubscribe from their service.

There is a lot of injustice in this world. Difficulty in unsubscribing from a social networking site just doesn’t seem to rank up there.

My guess is that there is something else going on here. Who at LinkedIn put that bee in your bonnet Robert?

Mark: yes I would have. I don’t give a hoot who funded this stuff. Obviously you haven’t read my blog very long. When I worked at Microsoft I regularly said similar things about teams at Microsoft.

Anyway, I hate it cause it adds to my email stream and doesn’t bring me any value. But, like someone else said, I’m an edge case cause I already have a blog and already have a killer rolodex and already have my email address and phone number on my blog so that people who want to get ahold of me can do so. No need to go through five of my friends just to get to me.

Don’t mind LinkedIn but I hate Yahoo! Here is why:

LInkIn is VERY useful to keep track of people’s changing email addresses as they change companies.

That’s all folks! At least for me.

Robert,

Sorry about the ad hominem. Actually, I have been reading your blog on and off since you made the move from NEC to MS and now to PodTech.

I think your comments would have been much better if you would have said, “I don’t like so and so because…”

Saying something like “I hate so and so…” makes you sound like you are a big blowhard and I don’t think you are like that.

LinkedIn helps me find people I need to reach personal and business goals. I can also make it easy for my friends to do the same.

There’s no other way for my friends to know who I know otherwise ( and I want to help my friends connect). Once you start getting blind pitches it is a bit annoying, but I ignore that. Also, it would be nice if your could have more granular control over who see’s what e.g. Cat 1 – see all my contacts, Cat 2 – see my “public” contacts.

LinkedIn is one of the very few recently created services that I actually find of considerable value. The emails it sends out are far from burdensome. Not sure where the hate is coming from.

For someone like Scoble, LinkedIn could serve as a decent gatekeeper.

Robert, won’t one post have been enough on your displeasure with LinkedIn? Now, three really is the limit, ok?

fools: I really, really, really, really hate it.

I signed up for it and now I get all this damned email.

Robert’s honesty on his user experience should be honored and cherished. If I have to conduct a usability test, I wouldn’t want to have a user tell me what I like to hear. I want the user to tell me what he thinks, where the problem areas are, and what users really want.

Konstantin Guericke: It is a bad business strategy not to give user easy way to cancel the account online.

First of all, it frustrates user. I have seen my friends signup twice because they make mistake for the first account. Your customer service doesn’t seem to response very well according to the above posts. Or it didn’t communicate well with user that your team is working on fixes.

From the analytical standpoint, you are hiding the true attrition rate. Not allowing user to cancel the account, user become “inactive user” and go into “inactive” pool data. In fact these users are dead and they hate linkedin. Not only they hate linkedin, they also tell their friends and blog about it. You never find out why they hate linkedin in the first place. Your designer and engineering team will run business as usual. Management is always the last to know until something happen.

Can you imagine what if you allow users to easily cancel the account online? What valuable information you can gain? It’s a gold mine to dig. Compile the log files and database to find out the visiting path, user behavior, and data trends. Cluster analysis. It will give you new insight and discover something new for improvement.

Every dead user has its story to tell. Like a soldier die in the battlefield.

It would be great if Linkedin was operationally competent and was able
to deliver renewal of invite supply on a timely basis. Companies come
and go based on their ability to execute. Waiting 5 days now for
Linkedin to followup on its 1 day customer service SLA. In contrast,
one of the webhosting companies I use in an emerging market, responds
immediately with a message and ticket # and usually has my issue
resolved in 6 hours. All for $2 a month. They also have a phone
number that a live person answers and directs you to if it is urgent.

Feel free to linkin to me.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/martysecada

Join IvyPlus, http://www.ivyplus.biz

LinkedIn just made a major change in how invitations are handled and put some policies in place that should almost completely eliminate unwanted invitation spam:

http://linkedintelligence.com/linkedin-makes-it-easier-to-connect-with-people-you-know-harder-with-people-you-dont

HELP!!I cannot stand linked in. i have asked for my account to be closed. yet my link is still on google with my name, weeks after cancelling. i find it appaliing thay are using my name as a portal and advertising for their servoce. does anyone have a phone number that i can call linked in and get them to sort this out? many thanks!

I recently joined DooStang only to get booted off because I invited too many people at once. The server will not even recognize my e-mail address, which it sent e-mails too minutes before. If someone could please re-invite me to DooStang I would greatly appreciate it. My e-mail address is drew.cesario@gmail.com

LinkedIn sucks. Period. In the end, it will amount to no more than a handful of companies/headhunters/”users” circle-jerking over how many contacts they can accumulate. The data will go stale and the company with not be able to reasonably charge for its service. It will become as significant to Internet/Life experience as Roy Rogers has become to the world of fast-food.

Read some of the “positive” comments here – tell me they don’t look like cut&paste “testimonials”. Probably LinkedIn employees.

“Anne Stanton” “says”:

LinkedIn has been very useful for me lately. I love the updates when one of my contacts updates their profile. It can be so hard to keep up with everyone that this little feature makes a big difference in my world.

I’m pretty sure that if you went to the Ronco (Ron Popeil) site you could find something along the lines of:

“Judy (not the ‘Judy’ from ‘Time/Life Books’) Clark” “says”:

THE RONCO(TM) INSIDE-THE-EGG-SCRAMBLER has been very useful for me lately. I love SCRAMBLED EGGS when I USE THE RONCO(TM) INSIDE-THE-EGG-SCRAMBLER. It can be so hard to SCRAMBLE EGGS BY CRACKING THEM INTO A BOWL AND MIXING THEM WITH A FORK that THE RONCO(TM) INSIDE-THE-EGG-SCRAMBLER makes a big difference in my world.

I hate LinkedIn. At first, I was a big fan like many of us. However, my page experienced some technical glitches and I was not able to access MY OWN PAGE! I emailed for customer support – NOTHING! I emailed again – received a lame response and no resolution. I had at least 150 people in my network that I put there. After complaining about the craphole service they gave me, they canceled and deleted my account without notice. Linked In sucks and I hope that Dan Nye reads this and fires his lame customer support staff!

LinkedIn. One day I logged on and my profile had gone from 90% and over 200 contacts with 3 referrals to a profile of 25%, 3 contacts, no referrals and my picture was even gone. I sent many emails to the LinkedIn help desk, but to no avail. I am not happy either. What is this phone number for linkedin?
Thanks!

I’m a big fan of social networking sites in general, but I find LinkedIn to be sluggish, feature-poor and cluttered. As far as address book functionality is concerned, I think plaxo is more useful. For staying in touch with friends and colleagues, facebook does the trick. It seems to me that the main selling point of linkedIn is its traditional-sounding, un-scary name.

Lets be serious. Linked in is shit! and not that nhelpful at all. Please so boring. most of our accounts just rot in there. stuff linked in seriously a boring and unfriendly site. wish i had never joined.