From Directory

Related - LinkedInSurprises, LinkedInArrogance, Why, ItsNotYourNetwork

LinkedIn Issues, problems, and limits ... or LinkedIn giveth and LinkedIn just as easily taketh without replacing

Why

Please read Why for editorial on why LinkedIn continually restricts its service.

LinkedIn doesn't screw* with its users, though it may feel that way. If something doesn't work like you expect, remember, or want, there may be other reasons.  It's always best to contact Customer Service and complain. Sometimes they do respond.  Occasionally they acknowledge their bugs.  And once in a blue moon they fix bugs or revert changes.

* This is based on my personal experience and conversation with management, now several years ago.  Your experience may vary.

Technical limitations.

LinkedIn is so big and poorly architected that functions may:

• Not work.  Example - exporting your own connections if you have several thousand or more.
• Work differently depending on where you are in LinkedIn or randomly. Example - often you can't directly send a message to a fellow group member from their profile, but generally you can if you search for them in the group.

These bugs sometimes get fixed, sometimes they don't.

User settings

Sometimes LinkedIn adds or changes settings that affect what other members see of you and your activity, especially when there is a privacy or security matter.  If something changes it may be due to LinkedIn's addition of a different default setting or another user's intentional setting change.

Issues for all users

• (2013) LinkedIn Answers eliminated.
• (2012) LinkedIn Events eliminated.
• Number of maximum connections you can use to send an Introduction has been reduced from 4 to 3.
• InactiveMembers
• Search restrictions. Results are limited to 500 people in your network and can't be restricted only to your connections.

Issues specifically for ActiveNetworkers.

Or let's network ... but not too much

LinkedIn does not provide tools and features if you have many connections and contacts. Instead LinkedIn goes the other direction and increasingly programs the service to limit and make it difficult for ActiveNetworkers to use the service. Why? ItsNotYourNetwork - LinkedIn dictates how you can use their service.

Important Changes - See October 07 Disaster

The irony in a number of these cases is that LinkedIn isn't just targeting ActiveNetworkers, the limits also affect ANY user who may be away from LinkedIn for a few weeks or longer due to vacation, job change, etc. and finds a big pile of Introductions, Invitations, and other messages waiting for him.

The following is a partial list of features that LinkedIn has removed.

• Network View Restriction for Subs. (Dec 2012) Even premium subscribers can no longer view third level and out of network users.  You must have a recruiting subscription. 
  
• Connection Download. (Dec 2010).  LinkedIn member with many contacts, generally more than 10,000 cannot export their contacts. 
  
• Network View Restriction. (Nov 2010) Third level and out of network users are indicated by First name and Last initial with annoying upgrade notice. More here.  
  
• ConnectionLimit. (2009) Now at 30,000.  Initially this just covered the top 6 users, including yours truly.  But is slowly growing.
• InvitationLimit. LinkedIn limits members to 3,000 invitations. However, you CAN get an increase in your Invitation Limit by contacting LinkedIn Customer Service. That process however can take weeks or even months - even if you're a Premium Subscriber. The number of limitations granted may be up to 500. But it's typically closer to 100 for active networkers. That is not much if you already have 10,000 connections and receive 500 invitations a month from others.
• ConnectionDisplayLimit. LinkedIn limited displayed connection number to 500.
• ConnectionContactLimit. LinkedIn has increasingly limited your ability to directly contact your own connections! You can only send an update to 200 connections at a time.
• NoInboxControls. LinkedIn designed the Inbox to penalize ActiveNetworkers by displaying hundreds of messages that cannot reasonably be managed.Users should not have to individually archive every single message.
• No way to say No: AccountRestriction. LinkedIn used to have a simple ‘No’ button for recipients to respond to an invitation. They replaced it with ‘I Don’t Know’ (IDK). Recipients often know the sender but do not want to accept nor decide later for many reasons. Their only choice is IDK. Get five and your account is restricted.
• Don't say thank you. LinkedIn provides no way to directly contact or obtain the addresses of multiple NEW connections that you've added or group members that you've accepted if you're an owner. LinkedIn forces users who want this info to scrape the page and extract the email addresses.
• No Filter on sent invitations. LinkedIn does not combine contacts for its members. You could have five different addresses for someone. They show up as five different contacts that are LinkedIn members. If you're not paying attention to your invitations and see the same person associated with each contact, you can send precious multiple invitations to the same person, thereby wasting them.
• No Way to easily manage Introductions. See SentIntrosFilter.
• Search restrictions. Results can be sorted by connections, but can't exclude connections. As a result, if you have enough connections, results may not display non-connections or few of them.

Group restrictions

• No Email access. Group member display for owners used to include email address.  That has been removed.  
  
• Membership restriction. For years there was no limit to the number of groups you could belong to. Then LinkedIn published its Group Directory to make it easy for people to find groups. Not surprisingly people used it to ... join groups. Some members joined hundreds of groups. Once again LinkedIn couldn't handle the very thing it encouraged its members to do. Then LinkedIn enforced a maximum of 50 groups. It wasn't grandfathered so members who joined many groups were fucked. LinkedIn forcibly removed people from groups if they didn't reduce their memberships.
• Ownership restriction. At the same time of the membership restriction, LinkedIn also cut back the number of groups you could run from unlimited to only 10. Again, it wasn't grandfathered and members were screwed. Some people had set up dozens and even over a hundred groups. LinkedIn forcibly deleted the groups and all groups members if group owners didn't do it themselves in time.
• Application restriction. There was no limit to the number of groups you could apply. Now it's 10, penalizing you, the LinkedIn member, because group owners may not be regularly approving applications.

Reinstated features

The following features were removed or reduced, and later restored.

• Invitation Acceptance. LinkedIn used to allow one click acceptance of all received invitations, whether you had 2 or 50. Then it instituted InvitationAcceptanceRestrictions that were more akin to torture. LinkedIn has since reinstated multiple invitation acceptance by page.

Customer Service

• Ensuring Service if you're a LinkedIn Business Customer