Ask HN: Why is Linkedin such a low quality?

17 points by Leander_B 12 years ago | 5 comments

It is supposed to be a professional network, but the quality is lower then my facebook feed.

Meaning the 'Pulse' which shares outdated or irrelevant (x tips to y) stories, updates, the timeline which is filled with absolutely useless/annoying content. The groups who are owned are taken over by recruiters/spam.

I guess its only real power is to be connected with (previous) colleagues and to see what they're up to. And ofcourse the job postings for companies (although I would never look for a job starting on Linkedin..)

Am I the only one?

pixelmade 12 years ago |

I use LinkedIn's news feed to build my personal brand among my connections, and to keep my face in front of some connections with the power to hire me. In general, the news feed is full of boring articles, but that's simply because the people posting them are trying to reinforce their brand image of "boring".

I've been sharing 1 article a day for the past 6 months, in addition to responding to group questions. Since my objective is branding, it's not easy to quantify results. But anecdotally, some contacts have mentioned to me that they enjoy what I've been sharing.

brianmcc 12 years ago | |

Be genuinely interested to hear what others think about this. I have contacts who do this (often sharing links) and it makes me cringe - I'm quite capable of discovering my own news - and I find it a bit too attention-seeking. I tend to hide such people. But, I am a grumpy old man these days :-)

I would find original content, infrequently posted and of decent quality, much more impressive.

I guess like so many other things this can be done well, or done badly, and there's a skill in doing it well.

kohanz 12 years ago |

No, you are not.

In fact, this excellent column [1] states this viewpoint (and some reasons behind the problem) better than I ever could.

[1] www.thebaffler.com/past/all_linkedin_with_nowhere_to_go

lauradhamilton 12 years ago |

As far as I can see they don't seem to have a good algorithm to distinguish viral content and quality articles from spam.

I think that's the crux of the issue.

pouetpouet 12 years ago |

I just ditched my account. It's overrated. It doesn't provide much value to me whilst bringing the same problems as Facebook.