I’ve been using LinkedIn since 2004. It’s been a constant past of my working life for those 13 years. I’ve been a subscriber for about 7 years. In that time my monthly subscription has crept up surreptitiously to now be more than double what it was when I started paying for additional access to the service.
A few weeks ago I received the updated User Interface. From a design perspective it’s fine. A bit more “modern”. Slightly more coherent, perhaps. From a usability perspective it’s a horror show. The addition of subtle blue loading bars has drawn particular attention to quite how slow every page is to load, and as they slowly load there is nothing on the page.
But what the change has really alerted me to is how little value I now get from the service. Apart from the inverted stalking of being able to see who has viewed my profile there’s little of the paying service that’s of any use. One fundamental change (it appears one can no longer search by business function- IT, legal and so on) is the killer blow. £32/month? Way too much to pay for a bit of vanity.
So subscription cancelled. And that’s the point I realised how little LinkedIn care. If you’ve tried to cancel from other subscription services you’ll know that it’s usually a fairly tricky process. Hidden away somewhere, when you eventually find the unsubscribe button you’ll be bombarded with messages of “are you sure?”, “Are you really sure?” And maybe even a tempting discounted offer or too to keep you as a customer (which reminds me- must “cancel” NowTV again soon…)
With LinkedIn? Nothing. No following up on the tweets or LinkedIn status updates saying I’ve cancelled either. A big, fat indifference.
I don’t expect supplier loyalty, in the same way that there is no such thing as customer loyalty (and it sure as hell won’t get rewarded). But people, please, at least go through the motions!
So there we are. I’m LinkedOut. I’ll still use the free service. But Twitter and WhatsApp and Facebook and a bunch of other platforms now perform the functions LinkedIn once did. It’s now basically just a networked address book with a very slow UI.
mmitII 
The harsh reality of users voting with their feet. I’ve seen so many frustrated (and on occasion very angry) LinkedIn customers voice the same concerns in the last few weeks. The paid service never really felt like value for money to me, I tried a few times but just couldn’t justify it. The recent changes are a massive move backwards. Small really useful features like the connection tags have vanished. No notice, no warning. I can imagine some users used to manage their whole network around this feature. But what’s worse is the lack of notice and warnings. This feature is EOL. You’ve got 6 weeks.Here’s how you can save this information for use offline. After that it’s gone. Treating a paying customer that way is just wrong and LinkedIn will find out the hard way, in the next quarters income statement…
Startup anyone : )
Yep…for almost 2 years now, LinkedIn has made it progressively less and less useful for me to go there. Consequently, I go there less and less. From what I read and hear, I don’t think I’m alone.
The first rule for social media users is always remember that you’re the product, not the customer; you’re being given features so that they can get your data. LinkedIn seems to have forgotten the second part of that.
I’m with you Matt, like you u dropped the subs model a while back. It’s a business address book that’s all.
Any correlation with Microsoft purchase, those bastions of customer service…
I still use Skype, but there is a reason they blocked downgrading.