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Comment by aaronbrethorst | Hacker News Reader

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aaronbrethorst·

Here's his LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rossulbricht

(browse logged-out to see the full thing. If you're logged in and not connected to him, you won't see anything.)

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Why does LinkedIn do this? It seems so stupid and such a waste of time. Anyone know?

I assume it's because they want the SEO juice and Google frowns on showing different content to the Googlebot vs a human being, but they also want their users to make more connections. So, they sometimes show more content to logged-out visitors.

Not just because of SEO, although that's one reason. Logged in users are already sold on LinkedIn, so LinkedIn wants to encourage them to make more connections. The aim for guest visitors is to get them to sign-up, so showing them a more useful page is a better way of showing what value LinkedIn can offer them.

Interesting. Someone should build a browser add in that shows logged out views of LinkedIn profiles even if the user is logged in, with the ability to toggle between the two views.

SEO

They don't think people know. Or they assume you won't logout to look at somebody's page, I guess somebody forgot to tell them about Incognito browser windows.

I don't know, but I frequently open up incognito windows to see people on linkedin.

But a non-trivial proportion of people unfamiliar with cookies and what you can do with a combination of additional windows and google buy LinkedIn subscriptions...

We need to be careful that we are not linking to someone who merely has the same name. Are you sure this is him?

This is the LinkedIn profile described in released report. I had to check because we got the same major at the same university within 5 years of each other.

Incognito/Private browsing also works.

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