Hacker News Reader

Comment by curiousjorge | Hacker News Reader

why hasn't anybody disrupted linkedin yet? what would you like to see instead of linkedin? snapchat for business professionals?

View on HN

How cool would that be? The use case for me for Snapchat is stupid easy video and image sharing to directed parties. What if you could interface with companies that way? Usually when I see a job I'm interested in I have to go spruce up my resume and then have a bunch of formal conversations with the company in question yet I never get to see a true picture of the job because of that.

Some instant low-friction point-to-point type of communication could make job hunting interesting and fun. It would be nice to send a quick video message with low-pressure to ask about a job. Maybe it could keep you in the mind of the company for jobs that aren't available now but will be coming up in the future.

AngelList already seems on that path.

This is a good question.

First, I think that LinkedIn includes too many features. Influencers, groups, pulse and stuff like that. I'm still trying to find a use for groups. Something more focused on networking would be great.

Second, as I mentioned in a previous message, LinkedIn caters to recruiters because that's how they get their money, and to me it makes it insufferable. There is this running joke "Being a developer on LinkedIn is like being a woman on match.com".

I believe it would be really hard to monetize a sane and clean website for professionals without turning into this spamming juggernaut.

Ideally, the LinkedIn replacement would also be the recruiters replacement.

Anything that eases communication and discoverability between companies and professionals without either getting flooded with barely-relevant matches.

Lens.io seems to be a new competitor. https://www.lens.io/

The site took 4 seconds to load because of a 5.2 MB .gif used at the bottom of the page. These guys have a lot to learn.

(Disclaimer: I work at Lens.)

We do have a way to go in terms of optimising the site, but we are currently only open to a small number of alpha users. I can safely say that by the time we open the floodgates to the general public, these issues will have been addressed.

Thanks for the feedback!

Network effects.

Is Network effects a company? If so, can you give the url. Googling doesn't help much in this case. EDIT:If you were talking about social network effects, this is embarrassing.

That seems like too logical of a business name for these days -- it'd probably start as "Network Effects" but end up as "ZephyrLimbo.io" or something.

It's embarrassing ;).

I don't know that all business professionals can be catered to by the same service. I wonder if some (e.g., recruiters) have needs nearly diametrically opposed to others (e.g., developers).

Or maybe it's just a matter of getting the feature set right, something that seems rather off on LinkedIn now.

I think this is probably right. For example, the LinkedIn competitor OilPro is doing extremely well focusing on a specific oil and gas market segment. I think "LinkedIn for Computer Scientists" or more specific genres would do as well as OilPro.

Isn't that StackOverflow careers?

The only thing I use and it is really quite valuable is just the simple database of resumes and how I'm connected.

LinkedIn is so ridiculous that it now limits how many searches per month you can do. Not only that, but the $30/month service I am trialing does not increase/remove the limit!!

whitetruffle is pretty good (I have no affiliation w/ them whatsoever, I just hate LinkedIn that much I would like to help out its competitor)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com