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LinkedIn won't show you your own connections without paying?

94 points by jmartens ↗ HN
Yesterday I ran a bunch of searches, looking for specific types of people in my 2nd degree network. After a dozen or so, LinkedIn start limiting my results, saying I needed to activate a premium plan to see all results. Fair.

Today, I went to search my own connections, 1st degree, and they will only show me 3! To see the rest, I need to pay for a premium plan, which start at $29.99 a month. Bull!

Screenshot: https://twitter.com/Jmartens/status/953698471415918593

59 comments

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jayashe
https://www.linkedin.com/mynetwork/invite-connect/connection...
jmartens
Helpful, thank you, but my frustration still stands
gnicholas
Can you use the filter feature within your Connections list to effectively accomplish the same type of search you were looking to do? Or does it lead you to the same blocked result? For me it works, but I haven't done much searching recently.
jmartens
I can search by name only. Can't search by title, location, or anything that isn't first name or last name.
zwetan
like any other social network: you are the product
hkmurakami
Typically they don't sell yourself to you though.
solarkraft
Better than being sold to corporations. But holy shit, that's brazen. I hope I'll survive without Linkedin for some more time.
dabockster
They are selling a job board service by having "millions of qualified candidates" on the LinkedIn service (paraphrasing, not a direct quote, but still gets the point across).

So yeah, you're being sold.

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hkmurakami
In your example, you are not being sold to yourself, only to someone else, which is par for the course.

Having your own data taken hostage so that you have to pay to buy info of yourself is pretty next level.

Gustomaximus
Being the product does not have to equal a bad experience. You linking to two problems that don't have to be.
maerF0x0
Stop giving them your business. The business in this case is your data.
robertlf
I stopped using StinkedIn a couple of years ago and don't regret it at all. You might do the same.
Zaskoda
Once upon a time I had hoped some day we would just link to our LinkedIn profiles rather than send resumes. That hope is dead. That said, is there an up-and-coming alternative to LinkedIn of some kind? Is there a popularly accepted place to maintain your professional profile other thank LinkedIn?
matte_black
Yes, a .txt file on a domain you control is the new trend.

Easy to link to, easy to copy and paste, fully responsive, straight to the point, no frills.

dabockster
I stopped publicly posting my resume on my website when I started getting 2-3 calls per hour from sketchy consulting firms in India trying to sell me on some contract-to-career nonsense.
sshine
Besides GitHub there's StackOverflow's job section.
apercu
I need to write book called "StinkIn and the rise of the slow web" one of these days.

("From Web.20 to the Slow Web and all the crappy websites we hate")

expertentipp
The only value of having LinkedIn account for me is entry level network validation for companies I'm applying for a job to. Slowly, LinkedIn is starting to fail even at this.
sien
What's the alternative to the LinkedIn trainwreck?

Angelist?

gxs
It looks like he hit some kind of limit from accessing too much/too often.

I get linkedin is evil, but I've never run into this issue myself.

jcadam
Egads! Why must we watch this pattern unfold over and over again?

1. Startup launches useful service

2. Service amasses huge user base

3. Pressure to monetize service degrades usefulness over time.

4. Service eventually becomes utterly useless, and never would have been successful if it had launched in its current state.

5. Inertia keeps service going until a worthy competitor in its 'eschew profitability and grow user base' phase arrives and the cycle repeats itself.

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e40
You forgot this one:

2.5. Company goes public and a bunch of people make lots of $$$.

lima
Recent example: Blablacar, Europe's largest car sharing platform.

They became popular in Germany after a money grab by Mitfahrgelegenheiten.de a few years ago. Now, it's Blablacar doing the money grab and people start looking for alternatives.

PinguTS
Blablacar brought Mitfahrgelegenheit.de. So in Germany, both are basically the same.
lima
Mitfahrgelegenheit was the previous market leader, money grab happened, Blablacar became popular, Blablacar ended up buying them later.
j1elo
In here they stayed free for several years, but in the end they started charging a service fee at around mid-2014. They penalized the lack of anticipated planning, i.e. the earlier you made a reservation, the less you paid. Likewise, if you were planning for the following day, you would pay the most, regardless of how many travels were being advertised for that day. I don't know if that's the price scheme still today, I haven't used it since then.

There was a big movement of users to Amovens and similar clones. And, some big Whatsapp groups were created by people who do some trips regularly and wanted to avoid paying. Still today some of those groups exist, they are almost always full (max. 250 people or so in Whatsapp groups) and there are waiting lists of people interested in getting added. I assume similar groups exist in Telegram.

bryanrasmussen
I'm not sure step 1 ever happened for LinkedIn,
withdavidli
As much as I dislike LinkedIn purposely hiding information (this goes for paid and free users), it has been incredible for people with wanted skill sets to connect with possible employers.

It has made a public resume something to be expected instead of a red flag by HR that you’re looking to leave. Only a decade ago it was mostly job boards like Monster/CareerBuilder, and Dice for the Tech focused.

It’s a wealth of information on how companies are structured, and great research material for what accomplishments people have in roles/companies you want to be apart of.

Gustomaximus
LinkedIn is not useful for you. Fine. But recognise they make a billion+ in annual revenue. Clearly they are useful for some people.
choward
Exactly. This is why I'm always hesitant to use 3rd party services. Whenever I use a new app, I make sure there is an exit strategy. It needs to either be open source and self hostable or have a way to export data easily.
jcadam
Yes, although Free and/or "Freemium" services seem to be the worst offenders here.
inopinatus
My experience of LinkedIn has declined from a marginally diverting way to follow career progress of former colleagues (2005-2009) through a pointless recruiter circle-jerk (2010-2014) to being an unremitting fountain of scam sales-lead invites from profiles of dubious credibility (2015-).

I disabled all notifications long ago.

It is possible that this is the unavoidable fate of any professional-oriented social networking service. Nonetheless the value of LinkedIn to me is now effectively zero. I don't know anyone who respects their brand, and I'm left wondering if there's a gap in the market; c.f. Facebook vs Myspace ca.2008.

stevekemp
I made the mistake of clicking on a link in a linkedin email last week.

Now I'm getting one email a day tempting me with "offers". Until last week I was lucky enough to get one email a year,which was about the right frequency to not annoy me.

I wish there were a less-evil linkedin site, but as things stand I'll be deleting my account soon I think.

jcadam
> I'm left wondering if there's a gap in the market; c.f. Facebook vs Myspace ca.2008.

I strongly suspect there is. I'd love to take a crack at it, but I rather doubt a new social network is something one would realistically be able to bootstrap these days (you would need some serious funding for marketing to get it off the ground).

jmartens
The form should probably be different than what we think of as a social network anyway.
jcadam
True. Social networks as they are today have become rather tedious and vapid and I've largely stopped keeping up with them. Something new is needed. Maybe I'll let my subconscious chew on the problem for a while :P
jdtang13
LinkedIn's product design is generally pretty backwards and delusional from my experience. The latest "redesign" only made the app worse, which I had previously thought impossible. It sucks since the core product is theoretically so useful.
titanix2
The first redesign after Microsoft bought it motivate me to create my own personal page because it was so bad and broken. Now it is less broken (more content is displayed) but still not as fine as before. So I’m mot maintening my profil there anymore.
dingdongding
LinkedIn is just copying FB pixel by pixel in terms of design. Just compare LinkedIn feed and FB feed side by side.
avenoir
I feel like this is more about confusing functionality and bad UI more than it is about LinkedIn being evil. Seems like you're on the global network search and you're applying a filter to remove everyone who's not your 1st degree connection. However, the search engine isn't smart enough to not apply the API limits in this case since you're technically only searching your own network. There is however a page that does what you want under My Network tab [1]

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/mynetwork/invite-connect/connection...

jmartens
Yes, that link provides a list of all my connections, so we've made progress. However, they don't allow filtering on anything but first or last name. Pretty limited, but yes, they do let users see all their connections.
shmed
There's a button "Search with filters" right next to the search box.
apercu
Wow. That's interesting. I was looking for contact info for an old colleague and I was having a hard time finding how to browse my contacts list in LinkedIn after the redesign. I assumed at the time it was just horrible UI, and I gave up and located the info by searching old emails.
snowwrestler
My latest frustration with LinkedIn are the growing number of people who post every day with "controversial" first line like:

> I absolutely never take a bath.

or

> I was devastated at what she said.

And then a video of them talking straight to the camera for minutes on end.

When did LinkedIn become a vlog??

magic_beans
Absolutely right. WHY does LinkedIn need to be another social experience? It's ridiculous.
valar_m
My strategy has been to remove connections with people who post like that. It has served me well. I recommend it.
d--b
That reminded me I needed to delete my account. Done.
jmartens
OP here. Someone from LinkedIn Product Management reached out to me yesterday on Twitter, then followed up today. He said "We reset your counters this morning. We're in the process of updating our logic as we obviously don't want to get in the way of you interacting with your network. The limit is there to product our member data from scraping and commercial use. We misclassified some of your queries and are reviewing ways to prevent this going forward."

A fair and appreciated response.