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Comment by gtirloni | Hacker News Reader

> Surely this kind of thing will eventually come back to haunt them?

I doubt it. Network effects matter and nobody is switching from LinkedIn for fear of missing out. There is no other work-related social network like it.

It's different with FB/Instagram that there isn't much at stake so people will just switch to test something and then stay. With LinkedIn, the "what if I miss a job opportunity?" factor means there's pressure to ignore the UI issues and just stick it out.

I don't see a disruptor in this industry, do you know of any?

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From personal experience: possibly Twitter. Having a presence there has given me several serious offers to interview, for jobs worth having (FAANG and similar).

The folks in my field (ML/applied math/scientific computing) are all on there, and moreover those reaching out to me are always technical folks rather than recruiters.

(Twitter gets a bad rap, but the academic/dev parts of it are the single best way I've found to track the Zeitgeist of fields and topics I'm interested in.)

I had the opposite experience.

'tech twitter' is full of junior developers, developer advocates, and students, all trying to sell e-books to each other or virtue signal their way into a dev advocate role. I only found content creator and tech influencer sales pitches.

This is definitely true, but then I also see more experienced developers and researchers tweeting about these people making fun of them and calling them on their bullshit.

I think tech Twitter quality is heavily dependent on being thoughtful of who you follow.

I did. I deleted my LinkedIn account. Too much spam. My personal information was constantly being shared despite telling LinkedIn I didn't want them to. I still get a few emails per week where they shared my email address with recruiters. I'd rather not work with recruiters anymore at all. In the future the best opportunity will be from my website or direct contact.

Blind would be a cool one but it kinda defeats the purpose.

I see “network effects” cited so frequently as this impenetrable fortress, but… literally every site that now has “network effects” had to fight them to exist, so it seems kind of odd…

When LI started, it didn't have much competition so it was easier.

Network effects is not an impenetrable fortress. It just means your product has to have a really good reason for people to switch, and I dont see anyone in the work network space doing anything really better than LI. I wish someone was.

How about a video only (or video first) network - companies can promote but has to be videos. Tiktok meets LinkedIn (!)

That’s my point; nobody tries because harpies screech “network effects” every time it’s discussed…

We talk about exponential growth a lot more than exponential collapse. Historically, social networks collapse as quickly as they grow. Even mighty Facebook recently hit the peak, and in their most important markets the network effect is utterly collapsing.

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