[ta3334445]

I still don't understand why people would give their information/data to LinkedIn. Their tactics over the years have been extremely scummy (harvesting contacts and sending spam is the one that immediately springs to mind).

Its a solution looking for a problem.

A lot of these comments seem pretty dubious too.

[wpietri]

I don't understand how you can't understand this. Yes, I have a lot of issues with them. But they are definitely not a solution looking for a problem.

They supposedly have 128 m accounts in the US, and there are circa 150 m total people employed here. Even assuming account inflation, I'm sure the majority of professionals have accounts. Certainly when I'm screening resumes, it's very rare for a person not to be on LinkedIn. They've been going since 2002 and are a profitable business that sold for $26 bn. This should be a sign to you that even if it's not your thing, somebody's getting value.

Paper resumes were a giant pain in the ass. LinkedIn is a pretty obvious solution to the problems with paper resumes, including that they are hard to write, a pain to update, hard to format, impossible to search, and impossible to use in aggregate. This is obviously great for people hiring, but also great for those seeking employment. During a job search, LinkedIn lets you ask questions like, "Who do I know who works at company X? Who do I know who can introduce me to somebody at company X? Who used to work at Company X so I can get the unvarnished truth about what it's like to work there?" Try that with paper resumes.

TL;DR: People use it because it makes finding jobs and/or employees easier than what went before it. Lots of people.

[matte_black]

I'm also inexplicably giving money to LinkedIn. I signed up for their premium plan so long ago, back when it was 200 something a year. They recently shot the price straight through the roof nearly doubling it while removing some features and restricting them to even higher paying tiers.

I however, have been grandfathered in to the original price and keep all the original feature set. However, if I quit or cancel my subscription or there is a lapse in payment I lose this benefit forever.

It's scummy as fuck. Designed purposely so I never let go.

[lmartel]

That's not the purpose of grandfathered pricing, they just want to raise prices without upsetting active users.

If you cancel you're not an active user anymore :)

[kevin_thibedeau]

You would prefer they charged you more or reduced your features?

[icebraining]

All the info I (and, I suspect, most people) put into LI is explicitly supposed to be public, so why wouldn't I give it to them too?