LinkedIn: You Are Fired. | Hacker News Reader

LinkedIn: You Are Fired.

om.co

10 pointsjaredsohn9 comments

I think that blog post was a bit hasty. Sure, I can see how LinkedIn might have poor signal-to-noise for a well-connected venture capitalist type whose job consists largely of making connections. It doesn't work for HIM, and that's OK.

However, for many people it is an excellent way to keep in touch with colleagues. It lowers the difficulty threshold for maintaining vital professional contacts. For example, when I change jobs now, I don't have to think about manually digging up all my former colleagues' contact info and worry about pestering them with an awkward email about what I am doing. I just update my status, and voila, the news gets out and I hear from folks if there is anything interesting to them to say. LinkedIn is an awesome tool for job hunting and a nice place to log your resume bullet points.

That said, it really sucks at the open-ended social functions. Discussion groups are filled with incredibly stilted Q/A where everyone is fronting their best "professional" face. It is enough to give me a headache just reading it.

Maybe this is old news, but I really like Om's blog layout. Content is front and center with good typeface and size. Social buttons are easily found but desaturated so as to reduce distraction. Commenting isn't locked in to one auth system and encourages useful discussion. Does anyone know if this is a blog theme or is it custom made?

Obviously this is supposed to be negative, but it contains one very positive thing about LinkedIn:

> I will give them full credit for making it much easier than say Facebook to delete my account.

If it's true, then this is important, the kind of thing that LinkedIn ought to be pointing out on their main page, IMHO.

Is it that important from a marketing pov? "Come to my restaurant, you can leave anytime". You can tell from Facebook's existence that people don't care that much about privacy.

Every restaurant allows people to leave. Pointing this out does not make any particular restaurant stand out. But it does make websites stand out.

Also, we're not talking about privacy here. The question is whether signing up for an account is a lifetime commitment. A FB account essentially is a lifetime commitment; I think it would be good if people understood that. Apparently, a LinkedIn account isn't. That's certainly a plus in my book.

Is it? Try http://facebook.com/help/delete_account (after deactivating). You're only worried about the depth of commitment because your data is there, i.e., privacy.

Many people fail, for some reason, to understand that LinkedIn is for business. I make a point of not adding anyone I haven't met in a work-related setting, including friends. Just think of it as a directory, not a social network.

LinkedIn is like voicemail, more annoying than useful.

My question is, since everyone seems to agree with this assessment, how did they ever get all that IPO attention?

I use it as link juice for my projects. But since I'm not a head hunter, nor do I enjoy being "hunted" then it is otherwise useless.

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