LinkedIn Edition: "Link To This: My LinkedIn Rant"

This is the special LinkedIn Edition of my story from Medium. The reason it's different is because LinkedIn has made a decision that it is special, better than the rest of the Internet and therefore it will keep everything it can within its eco-system. So when I posted the link to my LinkedIn news feed, it was not promoted or mostly noticed. As the editor from LinkedIn who asked me to post this said, "What you write will get distributed to the professional world, so the audience is much larger and more engaged." The reason the editor had to ask me to do this is that he didn't think the CEO of LinkedIn, Jeff Weiner, would see it or be likely to respond. I guess that means that Jeff doesn't like leaving the walls of LinkedIn to see how the rest of the social world is developing!

I always thought #LinkedIn was the rational, business-like internet company: Built an actual business with revenue from people who wanted what it was selling. Went public before anyone of the other new-generation internet companies at a reasonable valuation that allowed IPO buyers to make money. Established a reputation as a reliable, fast-growth company.

But increasingly I find myself pissed off at LinkedIn as a customer of its service. I am a customer, having been one since first paying $60 for what was known as a Personal Plus Account in February, 2006 and then paying an annual fee of $199.50 in advance every year since November of that year (when I guess I was prorated and only paid $182.08).

Slow: The company does not appear to be paying attention to performance of its service on any platform. LinkedIn is slower than any other service I use and value. On my iPhone, when I search for a person and go to their LinkedIn profile, the web site uses the URL “touch.www.linked.com”. I know that because I can spend 60–180 seconds waiting for the URL to resolve itself and show me the profile, 2–3 times slower than any other service I used (Amazon, Google, etc.)

In the web browser on one of my computers on a fast, wired Internet connection, it takes longer for LinkedIn to resolve a URL than any other web app. I get the feeling that LinkedIn is messing around updating its databases and composing the page before it bothers to show me any results. Kind of like the fussy old lady in front of you in line at the store, who has to search her purse for the correct change to buy a pack of Kleenex.

Performance on the internet, regardless of network or device, feels to me like it should be tablestakes for any company as rich and successful as LinkedIn (LNKD $32B market value; $4B in cash; $500M cash flow).

Out Of Date: Do you ever use the “Get Introduced” feature of LinkedIn or write an “InMail” message? From what I can tell, no one at the company has reviewed whether these features are relevant or functional years after they were introduced into the system. I just got a request to be introduced to Ev Williams (founder of the service I’m using to write this rant! Just you wait, Ev, since I’ve got another rant in me about Medium). NFW Ev Williams is going to take a LinkedIn introduction, so I forwarded the introduction request by email (actual email) to the requester and told her to send me an email so I could do a “proper” introduction with copies to other people who should be copied.

Point? Get Introduced is so out of date that it doesn’t actually work with the level of connections most people have and the way they work in 2015. InMailis not actual email (anyone more than Facebook Chat, iMessage, WhatsApp, or the other dozens of messaging services that have popped up), and hasn’t been redesigned since it was introduced to accommodate changes in how email works. LinkedIn’s mission statement“Our mission is simple: connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.” Actually, it feels more like LinkedIn’s mission to trap you inside their systems and make it hard to connect with people who aren’t also trapped inside the system.

Inconsistent: On the iPhone, neither the Web app nor the native app will show me the email address a connected person has chosen to show to people they have approved as a connection. Same is true of the native IOS app on iPad. But on the Web app on iPad (or a computer), I get a link on each person’s profile page without scrolling called “Contact Info” that shows their email address and other info they’ve chosen to reveal. Why?

As a relatively well-informed customer who has no actual knowledge about LinkedIn as a company, it feels like no one is paying attention to each instance of the service. For me, it feels like LinkedIn iPhone is different from LinkedIn iPad and both are different from LinkedIn Web, to such a degree that they could be different companies.

It doesn’t stop there. LinkedIn acquired two startup companies that had introduced two of my favorite new services for people (like me) who actively manage their networks — Cardmunch and Newsle — and have done absolutely nothing with them to improve the basic service called LinkedIn! Cardmunch has shut down but doesn’t show up in LinkedIn’s service: No way to scan business cards with your camera phone and automatically add their people to your network. Newsle was “only” acquired nine months ago, but has not been integrated with LinkedIn’s news feed or improved it (as far as I can tell) in any obvious way. Maybe nine months isn’t enough time to do that integration,but when combined with the number of issues that exist in the LinkedIn service, one does begin to wonder if the Corporate Development arm of LinkedIn is buying companies on behalf of the Engineering & Development arm of the same company!

My news feed spends the majority of its time (and my space) trying to get me to make new connections or showing sponsored links. The observant customer might think that the company is using its news feed more to make money (by getting more people connected or by selling the space) than actually helping me use my network for my benefit! I actually never look at or post to my LinkedIn news feed, preferring other services for my outbound media and communications (mostly Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, about.me, and Medium).

So there’s my rant. I wonder exactly what I am paying $199.50 every year for. I don’t know if I’m the only one, but I think I might publish a link to this particular piece on LinkedIn and see what the reaction is!