LinkedIn Tumbles 30% on Earnings Guidance

What are you smoking? Google's worth half a trillion dollars (don't Alphabet me, that's just splitting hairs)

I've been arguing just this for quite some time.

I also think I just accidentally downvoted you (damned mobile UI/UX failure), for which I apologise.

Speaking for myself, not OP, and as someone who's criticised G+ strongly on numerous grounds:

Google+ started, at least, with a rather strong professional cachet. Its inaugural user cohort trended very strongly to Googlers, Xooglers, their immediate contacts, techies, and a number of folk with aligned interests.

And, unfortunately, SEO and marketing types. A very nearly fatal disease in a content-sharing community.

Google had a number of tremendous mis-steps. Privacy and confidentiality were very large among them, and I've little confidence that Vic Gundotra's G+ of 2012 could have executed on a professional-networking G+ successfully.

I think that with many of the very, very hard lessons Google's experienced, and I very sincerely hope has learned from, it could today.

Google could offer a G+ professional network which, at the very least, would benefit Google itself as a recruiting device. Possibly paired with other activities (women in STEM outreach, summer of code), and platforms (something Github-esque).

Google offering a general interest recruiting platform is probably a non-starter, in that it's a direct conflict of interest (Google would want the best candidates for itself), and in light of the illegal anti-poaching collusion case (still ongoing IIUC). Pity.

Google also don't need to directly monetise G+, an could avoid many of LinkedIn's more obnoxious practices.

> Google wanted to take on Facebook.

Indeed, the internal argument was that Google was blind to all the data within Facebook, and thus FB would be in a stronger long term position to sell targeted ads. LinkedIn, in contrast, is already Google indexed. It'd be difficult to bootstrap their company without exposure, since it's a double sided social network.

> the awful "inspirational" memes I see so often on my LinkedIn feed

Heh- my instagram feed is clogged up with inspirational memes. Interestingly, they're posted the most by the least successful people.

Linkedin skeeved me out and I stopped using it after they started spamming me constantly to add all these random people I barely know to my professional network, like a dude I sold a couch to on craigslist in 2007. No thanks, Linkedin. No thanks.

At my last couple jobs there was actually a running joke that any time someone updated their LinkedIn profile it was because they were looking for another job. It seemed to actually be mostly true.

I work in tech.

People find jobs through it all the time. Sadly LinkedIn seems to have put their Groups on the back burner, but they're still a good way to chat with people in your industry, especially niche and non-tech industries

That's how I find most of my long-term work.

As someone else mentioned, I update it when I'm looking for a job. That kicks off a bunch of messages and invites from recruiters.

There's the usual hits and misses, but it works fine for me.

You're a developer, i'm guessing your profile plays that up. Are you expecting anything other than a recruiter to contact you?

Now imagine you're a buyer for a large furniture retailer, if you have your profile open, it might not be unusual for a supplier looking to get into somewhere bigger to contact you.

I've worked with a few sales guys, what they tend to do is use linkedin to build a tactical map. They then strategically expand their network until they get close to who they want.

LinkedIn, when used correctly probably won't come in the form of an inMail, but in the form of a phone call out of the blue from an acquaintance.

Do you actually know anyone that doesn't work in it? Those people do.

> positions that don't match anything in my profile

It's funny you mention that because I feel like in the last year or so LinkedIn recruiters have caught on a bit. I've received far less solicitations than years past (at one point I was getting 5-10 per day). In fact I rarely ever get LinkedIn spam these days. Instead I'm seeing more spam from Dribbble and AngleList.

I personally don't care for the site, but when I do use it, it is to learn more about people before contacting them to avoid wasting time. For instance, reading an article that quotes someone, and then finding out if they're still doing work in that area and what their contact information is to see if they're interested in collaborating. Or figuring out which geographical regions some company was doing a project in if I was interested in learning more... people usually like talking about their interests after all.

Also good for finding well respected people in my field, figuring out from that which companies are doing good work there, and keeping tabs on the companies so that I have a clue what the more global picture is outside of my immediate circles.

I do not work in programming though.

Yes, I use LinkedIn all the time to figure out who in my network knows someone else, so that I can background check someone before I walk into a meeting or ask for them to send a backchannel recommendation. Not for hiring, but for various other kinds of business deals. I don't use it at all for the social network stuff--I find that a complete waste of time. As a network map + living resume of people I'm meeting with it's fantastic.

Well, I found several jobs using linkedin, so for me, it works. You have to be a bit harsh on accepting links with people you don't know, but I can't complain...

And there's the odd funny joke too -- once I got a job offer for building a supermarket on the south coast. You know, I'm a 'software architect' after all, got to know how to build supermarkets...

(well I did participate in projects that looked a lot like oil refineries, to be fair ;-))

Spooky isn't it? I always wonder how they do it. I'm not on fecebook and all that, and they still find people I had completely forgotten about from completely out of context with sometime even zero electronic communication involved!