Comments on: What is Linked In for? Anybody know?

By: Daniel J. Andrews

Daniel J. Andrews — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 17:27:36 +0000

Not sure myself. Have professional contacts on mine, but so far haven’t had to use linked in to find contracts–word of mouth and personal contacts is still by far the more productive method in finding my next job.

By: tenine

tenine — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 14:30:58 +0000

I have signed up for several archaeology-related groups and get some interesting content.

By: Wow

Wow — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 10:53:56 +0000

It seems to me the only purpose of LinkedIn is to spam people with invites to LinkedIn.

Yes, it’s less of a timewaster than Facebook, but mostly because there’s other uses for Facebook.

LinkedIn only spams people. I guess the idea is that once you join, their system won’t spam you any more, therefore an advantage.

By: travc

travc — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 19:14:18 +0000

Sorry for the dup above… I swear I only hit submit once.

By: travc

travc — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 19:12:58 +0000

Bawga said: “The sole purpose of LinkedIn is to extract data from its users in order to facilitate hyper-targeted marketing. See also: Facebook, Google.”

Not quite so. That may be the way they generate revenue, but a real business model isn’t just about revenue. At a minimum there is also “acquire and retain market share”, which necessitates providing a good or service (or at very least pretending to).

For me, Google provides very useful services which I’m quite willing to pay for by giving them info. Facebook, not so much. I’m not on Linked-in, but may soon since the branding around business (especially technical) may have created an emergent filter of sorts appropriate for me at the moment since I’m looking for technical work.

By: travc

travc — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 19:12:33 +0000

Bawga said: “The sole purpose of LinkedIn is to extract data from its users in order to facilitate hyper-targeted marketing. See also: Facebook, Google.”

By: Bawgh

Bawgh — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 16:59:22 +0000

The sole purpose of LinkedIn is to extract data from its users in order to facilitate hyper-targeted marketing. See also: Facebook, Google.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 03:20:01 +0000

LinkedIn is helpful for keeping tabs on past business and professional contacts, and not as much of a timewaster as Facebook. I find it helpful. I don’t have anything very personal on LinkedIn, since I expect recruiters to seek me out there; nothing too embarrassing to leak.
When you say your “password was published”, are you referring to the 6,400,001 password hashcodes recently revealed as leaked? If so, that’s a reason to change your password but not to panic. The password hashcodes are not by themselves sufficient to login to your account, they just make it easier for someone to hack in by reducing the possible permutations of your password to check. It’s still non-trivial to break into an arbitrary account, and a neglected account is not of much value. I assume LinkedIn has put in some more measures to counteract the kind of attacks that would exploit this leak. The thing I worry about is, what else was leaked that we don’t know about?
According to http://www.leakedin.org, my old (and not very strong) password is leaked but not known to be cracked.

By: F

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 01:13:16 +0000

@JL
Because all and only real jobs are available via LinkedIn, right?

By: JL

JL — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 19:44:27 +0000

Linkedin is not important if you never expect to have a real job.