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February 20, 2008
LinkedIn - Missing the obvious 
LinkedIn is apparently missing the most obvious and basic function of a social network: email based search.
I couldn't believe this when I realized it the other day.
I was looking for the resume of someone who contacted me online, only to find a handful of possible matches to people with the same name in the same industry in the same city. I figured I'd just enter in their email to get to the exact one.
Surprise: the keyword search field on LinkedIn don't scan email. ( though if someone puts their email in their bio, it will).
Surprise 2: there is no email search field for LinkedIn.
That's just silly, I thought.
So I contacted their customer service , and this was my response:
"You might opt to initiate a new Introduction through another user of our
business networking website.
It was our pleasure to help you with this issue. If you need greater
assistance with your future service issues, please feel free to respond
back to us. Thanks for being a valued member of the LinkedIn
community!"
Either LinkedIn outsources their customer service to India , or their staff is high.
I'm still in awe of this *extremely* simple omission.
Posted by Jonathan at February 20, 2008 6:46 PM
Comments
The thing to understand is that LinkedIn is holding the social graph hostage. By building the Social Graph, they're collecting all the necessary information to do what you want, but then to "leverage" the social graph, they're keeping back one part of the information space, because they believe they can use it to "add value" (ie, generate traffic to their site, force you to upgrade to communicate with others). When what they're really doing is keeping the value of the system from being what you need.
Posted by: Zen Of Jazz 
at March 27, 2008 10:57 AM
Hi Jonathan,
its gr8 that you have such an amazing idea that Linkedin people so easily forgot. and its quite sad that you got a not so great response for submitting your idea (for free) to them... what a nobel job.
Just a small query.. have you ever been to India? do you by any chance have Indian friends or even better, ever had a chance to interact with Indians???
Its sad that people hear from web and other media and make a opinion about the country and the service from the place, the people and critisize it so easily and openly !!!! please handle your words a little more carefully while writing things like 'Either LinkedIn outsources their customer service to India', please get your facts right before having writing it. And... if you think we Indians are so inefficient, then stop running into our country to find people to work for you.
Btw... just for your information, please check the IT industry or NASA or many other industries of this world... were Indians are the most visible people now!!!
Take care!
Regards,
Snehal
Indian!
Posted by: Snehal at March 30, 2008 1:52 PM
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