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Comment by bad_user | Hacker News Reader

I totally agree with you, but there's something here you're missing.

When I joined LinkedIn, I did so because I wanted to keep in touch with people I worked with, like you know, a curated Facebook - which works well, because the people I worked with aren't necessarily interested in pictures of my baby boy or of me getting drunk this Holiday season and this goes both ways.

Unfortunately LinkedIn failed and failed hard at being that kind of social network. Nowadays the only thing I receive in return for my membership is Spam from incompetent recruiters that don't even bother reading my profile, and no matter what I do I can't turn those emails off (a perk you get for paying them), which is why I simply flag all LinkedIn emails as Spam.

I feel like LinkedIn missed a great opportunity here and now it's too late, their role being filled in my life by Twitter, GitHub, Google Groups and even Facebook.

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"which is why I simply flag all LinkedIn emails as Spam...."

That's really not what the "spam" button is for, and you probably know that. You most certainly could turn those emails off - just go to email settings and click "introductions only". There's even a link at the bottom of each email to adjust your settings.

Don't make it more likely that my LinkedIn messages get marked as spam through Spamhaus or gmail algorithms just because you don't want to click twice to unsubscribe or prove some kind of hate-point.

(source: used to take care of an opt-in service's email spam rankings and had tons of people not use the "easy unsubscribe", and others angry they couldn't get their expected/important notifications sometimes when it got sent to a spam folder)

The problem is that they keep expanding the list of emails and auto-subscribing everyone to each new one. So LinkedIn really is behaving like a bad-faith spammer. And when I click the "unsubscribe" link in the email, I don't get one-click unsubscribed, but instead it just dumps me on the "user preferences" page, then I have to hunt for the email settings and the specific box to uncheck.

The thing that infuriates me the most is when they send me a "reminder" email about an invitation I've already ignored. It's like they expect me to immediately log in and immediately respond to every piece of recruiter spam and "connection request" from people I don't know.

Dear LinkedIn: If I'm ignoring an "invitation", it's because I don't care about it, and I'll just click the "decline" button the next time I happen to log in. I don't want the "invitation reminder" emails, and there is no setting that I can find to unsubscribe from the "reminders".

I don't know if it's still like this, but I actually went through a ton of trouble trying to unsubscribe from LinkedIn emails. I dug through all the preferences and unchecked all the email notification boxes, but the LinkedIn emails kept coming. After googling I found that I wasn't alone in having this problem, as if it were some kind of bug or something.

At this point, I gave up and started marking all LinkedIn emails as spam.

This all happened a while ago, so they may have fixed it by now. But quite frankly, I don't care. I would delete my account, but many legitimate companies I've interviewed with specifically ask for my LinkedIn profile to keep in touch. It's kind of annoying.

I've been using careers.stackoverflow.com as an alternative for an online resume, but it's unexpected to potential employers.

I still get their invitations to join a year after closing the account. I don't remember how many times I clicked the leave-me-alone button.

Give all the discussion regarding usability and user experience on HN I find this post baffling.

Why would anyone go through 5 steps and 15 clicks when 1 click achieves the same goal? Do you really expect users to consider and care about the side effect?

> Do you really expect users to consider and care about the side effect?

And then there are people who consider this side effect and completely don't mind it, or even find it desirable.

I'm in that boat.

There is a reason PG has talked about e-mail being broken, this is a perfect example.

Any email that violates the CAN-SPAM act - as LinkedIn's messaging does - I mark as spam. When I can unsubscribe from their emails with one click and no login-wall as they're legally required to allow, I will stop doing this.

I'm sorry if it hurts your experience, but they absolutely deserved to be punished for their flagrant disregard of the law. When they realize that their abusive email tactics actually hurt their users, maybe they'll stop - and then we'll all be better off.

"I wanted to keep in touch with people I worked with, like you know, a curated Facebook "

I have used linkedin since its early days (06-07ish) along with facebook. I learnt that "keeping in touch with ppl" is quite different b/w fb which is personal vs. linkedin which is professional. fb is more engaging where u can share pictures, stories, wall posts, fun stuff whatever. But it is extremely difficult to keep oneself engaged on linkedin just to keep in touch. Other than sharing a status update and checking linked profiles, what else can you really do on linkedin actively? Thats why, if you try and use linkedin thinking along lines of facebook, you will fail.

In my opinion and experience, linkedin is more effective about keeping track of who is who in the industry specfiically in industries/domains you are interested in. Lets say you found a job listing for a company somewhere. You can actually go to linkedin and try a search "Company xxx recruiter" or "company xxx talent aquisition" etc. You can probably get a result of actual recruiters who are on linkedin for that company. You can then try and reach out to them directly (through linkedin or whatever). Btw, I did this successfully once for a job posting that I was interested in and this possting was on the company's direct careers section. Insteaed of filling out "Apply now" crap, I found a direct recruiting contact in the division through some search skills on linkedin and called the guy directly. He was happy to talk to me since I was a good fit for the role. He said that the online application portal is probably going to reject me auto (dont ask why) and hence it was a good idea to find him.

Have you tried Coderwall for connecting professionally? you actually get relevant technical tips from people you connect with so you are technically connected and learn from each other. There is Pitchbox (trypitchbox) for replacing recruiter spam with more meaningful career opportunity stream.

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