Slightly OT, but can someone explain to me what I'm getting from LinkedIn? I've codified a historical record of my coworkers. Occasionally a recruiter contacts me – 90% of the time, they're bozos carpet bombing by buzzwords.<p>I've given it something like five years to click and I'm still missing something. It's just not a fun web application to use. Twitter, Facebook, Stack Overflow, Quora and many others do a better job at the tasks LinkedIn half-heartedly attempts. If I want to connect with someone I don't know, I send them an email. The Rube Goldberg business where a chain of connections passes you around always felt weird and imposing to me.<p>At this point I feel like a cow at the feedlot, and LinkedIn sells me to staffing professionals.<p>Entirely willing to be put onto the right path, I'm just not seeing it right now.<p>edit: The score for jobs I've gotten through social sites:<p>LinkedIn: 0<p>Facebook: 0<p>Twitter: 2
This is also an opt-in feature of OKCupid.<p>I personally opted out, because people's whose profile I viewed but didn't contact are exactly the people I <i>don't</i> want contacting me- which they could do if they saw my profile name/info.<p>Namely, these are all the people whose profile I looked through and said "meh." If they knew who I was they might contact me when I already determined I wasn't interested.<p>I imagine it might be the same for LinkedIn; say you were looking to headhunt someone but found their resume lacking. Would you really like them to have the option to then contact you and ask for a job?
When Linkedin released this modal feature - i.e. if you don't agree to release more information to everyone, then we will restrict your usage rights - I placed Linkedin alongside Facebook into the basket of sites where I will actively try to reduce my usage until I can phase them out completely.<p>I know Linkedin is free, but I have invested a lot of time plowing their fields and cultivating business contacts (from which you make revenue) and now this?
Friendster (at least for a while, perhaps still) had a similar feature. If I recall correctly, to see who'd browsed your profile, you had to let others see when you browsed theirs.
Mixi (the most popular social networking site in Japan) has had this feature since the beginning and it certainly changes how people use the site.<p>Actually a year or two ago they finally added the ability to delete your tracks after viewing someone else's profile. I think you can only delete 5 per day though, so you still can't stalk on Mixi all day without any trace.
Orkut, Google's old attempt at Social Networking had this feature.<p>I doubt anybody really cared. This was not really a game changer and was just another feature.<p>It's a nice feature for your ego to know who is secretly stalking your profile but beyond that (and after the initial novelty) its usage fades.
Feels like they are holding aspects of the site hostage - only released if you give up more privacy. I am simply not comfortable being forced to give up my privacy in order to use aspects of the site. Would rather pay - to maintain privacy.
Lack of concern over 'user privacy' was the primary reason I quit Facebook. If the average person really knew what was going on in the back room connecting all their data - without their knowledge or approval - they would be astonished.
Re: the "what if" Facebook scenario:<p>And so a thousand jilted exes had their egos soothed.<p>("<i>OMG</i>, he forgot to opt out, and he's been stalking me <i>every day</i> for <i>two months</i> even though I unfriended him. He's like, totally still into me.")
LinkedIn have always had the feature if you had a premium account you could always see the names of your visitors. I guess they're changing it now to make it available to all of their users.
I'm sure if fb had a feature to allow checking who has seen your profile, a lot of people would be happy to pay for it. Maybe it could be a new way for facebook to make money? I'm not pretty sure facebook users have more value than they cost to facebook (based on money from ads (to my knowledge, the only way fb gets money from users 'directly) vs bandwidth/server/development expenses)
studiVZ (German Facebook clone, something like six million members, 17 million if you add the other two VZ social networks) has always (or at least as far as I remember) allowed you to see who viewed your profile. You can opt-out so others won’t see you but you will still be able to see who viewed your profile.
I looked for this on LinkedIn briefly and couldn't find it. Apparently you have to opt in to letting users whose profile you've viewed learn about you.<p>The default setting is for the text to read "someone at <i>SOME TYPE OF COMPANY</i> has viewed your profile".
Just checked LI - I can manage how somebody will see me if I visited his or her page. I can remain fully anonymous if I want to. So FB or LI do not de-anonymize profile views but users themselvs when they want to. No reason for panic.
(Btw, it might be just me, but the byline (Posted by...) hides the word 'stalk' in the title. It becomes semi-transparent if I mouseover article text, but it looks amateur.)
xing a networking site like linkedin, already has this feature since a long time. But you can only use it if you are pro member and pay for that feature. You have to pay to see who stalked you, normal user don't see any details who visited their profile.<p>Punchline: you have to pay money on xing to see who's stalking you ;0