Creepy visitor tracking using Linkedin
andrisatteka.blogspot.com
andrisatteka.blogspot.com
I don't know about you but if there was some other network for professionals to showcase profiles I would jump on that immediately. Linkedin is so horrible that if you make something and market it as 'Not Linkedin' you'll have the first few years of growth handed to you for free.
> I don't know about you but if there was some other
> network for professionals to showcase profiles I would
> jump on that immediately
Xing is made by a Perl company in Germany, specifically Hamburg. Having had some experience with other web-related companies, most german software is written with german content first, and little thought spent on localization, since serving an audience outside of germany is risky in that it means a lot of the company (support, etc.) has to be duplicated first, and it might end up having little draw. On the flipside, most Perl web frameworks are build with only one language in mind, English. Adding localization is extremely easy if you start out with it in mind, and i've actually been working on tools to ease that process, but after the fact it's a massive investment.
Due to all these factors the cost is simply too high for most german companies to even try.
> Neat. Why is it limited to Germany?
I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemies. Or the friends of my enemies.
What features would make this a killer? We are working on something that is in this general space and have a few ideas, including the ideas that started the project, but I'm curious what other pain points you can enumerate.
What would be a perfect linkedin substitute for you?
The big problem with LinkedIn is that it's a Jobseeker Database masquerading as a social network. They make their money by selling you to recruiters. That's the central cause of almost all the behaviour people don't like. The second part of that is that the social network part - the stickiness angle - really isn't a natural part, which is why it's so irritating that it wants to notify you that someone you worked with once published an article.
I'm afraid I don't know the killer features or the solution, but that's the root issue.
Very, very creepy and this isn't even the NSA we're talking about, this is a recruiter.
(Obviously this doesn't apply for things like shopping profiles, but probably that's not what you were talking about.)
When the government forces Facebook, Google and LinkedIn to be complicit in their compromise of user data, people can no longer trust these companies to safeguard it, and it hurts the companies' bottom lines.
That's why I sign up for services with a custom email address, that is linkedin@domainname for linkedin, meetup@domainname for meetup, etc.
I guess using random@domainname may work better?
> talentbin.com
... and, of course, also sign out of Google and any other online service you are logged in!
Edit: For Firefox
The UI is pretty bad, but it seems to be doing its job.
Probably not what you want in case of e.g. Google.
- Google Analytics
- Google+
- Twitter
- whatever else my URL blocker preemptively neutered
I generally only log in to LinkedIn with Internet Explorer now. It's the only site that I use Internet Explorer for.
Is there really no alternative? What is it that makes it compulsory to use?
I have a very out of date profile, but rarely use it. For some reason I don't seem to get spammed. I don't see any use for it, so I don't visit.
It would be very easy to build an alternative. The hard part would be amassing the critical mass of recruiters. For a while Forrst was on the right track but it no longer exists.
Now, the story of how I got my current job: met guy at local Meetup, talked to him a bit and found out the company was hiring, and he would mention my name to recruiter. So, I add him on linkedIn, but get no call whatsoever from any recruiter. I see that there's a company recruiter on his connections and add her; explaining that I had met so and so at a meetup and there is an opening for a person with my skills so would she be kind enough to set me an interview? It takes some time, but I do get the interview, clear it, and all the other interviews as well.
Didn't get the job -- at least not yet :) But it was an interesting exercise.
However my most interesting recent usage of LinkedIn was signing up to pay for Inmail in order to be able to message a few high level executives at DHL to complain when a delivery was stuck in limbo. One day later and two Senior VPs (out of 3 I messaged) in different offices had told their staff to sort it and I was Cc:'d on a flurry of message exchanges that started or ended with pointing out that "SVP so-and-so wants to be kept in the loop".
Two days later the package that DHL for a month had told me they didn't have (and had told the sender was on it's way back to them), and couldn't have corrected the delivery address on even they did have it (it was accidentally - my own fault - sent to our old office) turned out to be sitting in a depot 5 minutes away, and was promptly delivered (to our new office).
That to me highlights a benefit of LinkedIn: Everyone can get access to relatively high level people, in part because the barrier to hassling them is high enough that it's not massively abused: If you're not in their immediate network you can contact them directly only if you've paid, and only quite few at the time. While it's annoying to have to pay, it's better than not being able to reach these people on occasion.
I'm going to consider using InMail that way whenever someone annoys me enough to be worth the cost of another month of InMail subscription from now on given how well it worked with my DHL problem.
Presumably most people want to do the right thing for their customers, but frontline staff often don't have authority, and soon gives up escalating systemic complaints (or even gets punished if the continue to bring it up), so if you don't get help right away the solution is often to find a way of bypassing the layer(s) that are powerless or have given up trying, and you find people that often do care deeply when they get to hear about such problems, but rarely do hear.
The moment something like this becomes common, these people will retreat from LinkedIn, or LinkedIn will take measures to protect them (win-win for LinkedIn: Let extra busy people make it more expensive to reach them)
I've used Twitter too, as well as my blog + Twitter. A few years ago I'd problem cancelling my cable subscription, and ended up getting a call from an assistant to the CEO of Virgin Media on the Saturday morning following a posting on the Friday. But in the case of DHL, Twitter too was a dead end - they seem to not care much about their Twitter feed.
For me, it's because not being part of the network is worse than being part of the network. LinkedIn is probably more prevalent in the business world than even having a Facebook or Twitter account, so to me it would look odd if I were not at least findable there, even if I don't maintain my profile.
e.g. I already sell a product to lawyer John who practices speciality X. With LinkedIn it's easy to find all the people who look like John, and then try to pitch them on my product.
When looking at a profile, LinkedIn shows you lists of other profiles people who have looked at this profile looks at. You should presumably show up there far more often if your profile gets seen far more often. As a result your numbers will be skewed - you won't be able to tell who visited your website vs. came to your profile because it's suddenly showing up all over LinkedIn.
On other hand, that means actual human views of your profile is likely to go up substantially too.
Backstory: An acquaintance of mine requested a connection soon after I met them for the first time. I was a little wary so didn't accept before speaking to them.
I found out later that it was a fake profile copied from his real one and they were a victim of identity theft.
You can get a token from Linkedin itself.
"With Premium, you can see who's viewed your profile over the last 90 days, not just the last 5 viewers free members see."