Ask HN: Do people want a LinkedIn alternative?
I was wondering if the HN community wants a LinkedIn alternative. I hear many people complaining that it has become a place for humble bragger. If you were to replace LinkedIn, what would you want it to be? What to emphasize more or less on?
Update: I am thinking of building a LinkedIn alternative. Could you please kindly drop your email here (https://forms.gle/RT6pmzEqpxPccG5q7) so I can reach out to you? I need validation from people that want a better LinkedIn.
80 comments
[ 6.2 ms ] story [ 195 ms ] threadNot, say, CEO of Myself, Inc. ?
Imo, it feels like a solution for the world a decade ago than the world a decade from now. Would love something that focuses more on skills, projects, and capabilities than job titles.
I haven't put the effort into it yet, but occasionally bump into a profile that has upgraded - it took a few views to understand, but now I can see far more of their portfolio / projects / case studies before going into job titles and company history.
Yes, there is indeed a lot of humblebragging on LinkedIn but it's fine. Don't go there if you don't like that kind of thing.
hmmm, but I'm still afraid that a push for monetization and YOY growth would eventually ruin whatever good is made.
Maybe I'm wrong, dunno about price points, I do know I find it quite easy to support someone on Patreon with $5 per month if I find the content valuable. And this should not be viewed as more valuable, people are not constantly looking to switch jobs or take on more work, for many it would be pretty passive network (as is LinkedIn).
A network site has value only when the people I want in my network are on it. That’s pressure for growth, whether driven by me inviting them or you enticing them somehow.
I doubt you’ll find many people willing to pay for a subscription to a new upstart LinkedIn that doesn’t have at least some critical mass of users already. Would I pay $20/yr for an actually better LinkedIn? Probably. Would I pay $100/yr for news.yc? Absolutely. Would I pay $20/yr for a networking website with 50K users, 0-3 of which I know? No.
Problem (that I see) is getting something like that off the ground, to reach critical mass.
Also if it goes public, would it remain like that without further pressure to bring more income. Courses do sound like a quality idea from Linkedin, but other (MOOC) platforms seem to be doing it better. Perhaps a partnership with a MOOC platform...
I use it to stay connected with professional connects many whom are friends and then I message them on the platform. It works well for this i.e. mantaining one's professional network.
LinkedIn is a perfect containment zone as is. Leave it. Any alternative will die an unused death, or will gather a critical mass of recruiters blindly spamming their jobs/thought influencers shitting out their opinions to as many “connections” as they can.
Any place that tries to target LinkedIn will only replicate its terrible SNR.
In the very early days, it was probably only about -30 dB or so.
I DO NOT WANT:
Randoms contacting me to add to their network. i.e. people I've never met, nor worked with.
Recruiters spamming me with jobs that I am NOT interested in. Recruiters asking to be added to their network (see previous point).
Invitations to seminars, conferences, etc that have nothing to do with my profession.
"LinkedIn" staff wanting me to sign up and pay for yet another feature that I don't need.
As others have mentioned, no personal updates, humble brags, etc.
In my case, I don't want to hear anything about what people are up to. I don't want articles, or other such stuff. I don't want to be messaged.
For me, I just want a work history validation mechanism, and a way for legit job offers to appear.
The perfect linkedin for me, would be a way to link to work contacts without ever talking to them. Once linked (eg, when people allow it), I could get contact info if a person has it setup. That is, an email address or similar.
Again, the platform would have zero communication on it, so if you want to talk, then take that email, and email the person!
Outside of that, I want nothing. No communication, news, etc.
I set communication settings to let only people who know me (ie are in my contact list) to contact me (Settings -> Communications -> Who can reach you). The contact list is culled mercilessly once a year (eg. recruiters who specialize in jobs no longer relevant to me are removed). The Email settings in the Communications section are also quite detailed and there are a bunch of preferences you can choose from; I don't get any emails from Linkedin except inmails.
LinkedIn is my only social network (HN doesn't count IMO), and unfortunately I can't get rid of it without impacting my career, so I have incentive to bend it to my requirements. It thankfully isn't too difficult.
But how do you curate this in anything resembling an automated fashion? I suppose you might add a box for the requestor to the effect of "how do you know this person" ... but that's way too easy to game
HEAR HEAR.
I just want to know about what others are up to professionally.
How "big" is "too big" to you?
This could be based on job title, job postings, a correlation between a job posting and the hiring manager, individual posts, etc.
At one point, I was paying 200/month for Sales Navigator. I found that while the tools were were nice, they weren’t really worth paying for and I was still doing a lot of manual work.
It's web3-focused for now (and the blockchain is core to how it works: i.e. to collect certified attestations) but I think it has much broader ambitions.
To replicate this, you'd need to find some other way to incentivize everyone to sign up (or at least for som niche). It can't just be the technical capability of adding a profile.
And then people can add contacts to their network, but I'm not sure how much weight you should give to the social network part. The profiles should be in the foreground. Though it is interesting to see who is connected to whom. You could have the "vouching for skills" thing LinkedIn used to have. If you are looking to differentiate from other platforms, maybe you could add discussion groups / mailing lists, that alumni groups, or shared interest groups would use (e.g. Electronics Hackers in Berlin).
There are also several ways to monetize it without being obnoxious. You can offer to host the profile on custom domains for a fee, and you can sell custom themes for profile and CV. Also you could make money selling physical business cards in a matching theme, and other nicely printed accessories.
What I would not do is to sell the users data, or sell premium accounts which see more data. Everything people put in the site is public anyway, and should be easily accessible - that's the whole point of getting a landing page. Also stay away from social media. Nobody wants another feed of reshared news articles or artificial inspirational posts.
The problem there, just like with any other social networking site, is the monetization. Many annoying features are actually generating revenue. So you're a product and that won't change. And after a period of developmen and growth you'd end up in similar situation like LinkedIn.
It's already tricky to convince your friends to use a different messenger, it's even harder to convince your coworker, boss or other peers to join a new network and putting your reputation on the line of being the person sending out invites.
Linkedin isn't great, but it does the job, everyone is there and I guess nobody is spending hours on the platform except recruiters or influencers.
As a tool to have an address book of professional acquaintances for getting an intro, referral or reference in the future it works well enough.