updated
LinkedIn, the Mountain View Calif. business social networking site, has created a new feature that lets you see who is viewing your profile.
The feature was frequently requested by LinkedIn’s users. The company has tried to balance transparency with privacy concerns, with the result that the feature is limited in its usefulness.
For instance, I’ve had twenty people view my profile over the last month (see screen-shot below), and the list includes people from the “Porter Novelli” public relations firm and “Draper Fisher Jurvetson,” a VC firm. It shows that the person from Porter Novelli is an “account supervisor,” narrow enough to provide a smidgeon of relevance for me, but at the same time not enough to identify the individual. If there aren’t at least five people with that title at the company, LinkedIn shows me just the name of the company they’re from. And if there aren’t at least five people at the company, Linked In will just tell me that someone from the “public relations industry” has viewed my profile.
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Ultimately, the “view my profile” feature is best left to dating sites. Dating site HOTorNOT now has a feature where a woman being viewed can see the profile of the guy doing the peeping, and get in touch for a date. See image below left for example, for how HOTorNOt is pushing this feature.
The LinkedIn feature can be found on the right hand side of your home profile page. The feature is not offered, however, if no one has viewed your profile over the last month. If you don’t want anyone to be able to see that you’ve viewed their page, you can change privacy settings here.
Update: Some are asking how to find the LinkedIn feature. See screenshot below of my homepage (with names of my contacts whited out to protect privacy):
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10 Comments
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You Mon Tsang said:
This is also an upsell opportunity. My profile has had 10 views, but I get to see only the first five for free. Upgrade to a paid account to see more.
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Amy Smith said:
Matt, it’s a little hypocritical to call it “limited in its usefulness” but be using it to advertise the fact that someone from DFJ has viewed your profile. And what’s with the HotOrNot comparison? If you’re trying to add sex appeal to your site, I find it distasteful. It seems like you’re trying a little too hard to be Valleywag.
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Oliver Thylmann said:
Look, this is probably one of the most interesting features for the pro account with Xing/OpenBC. But there, you fully see who visited your profile.
It is great to see who is out there, who is reading about you, who comes by when an interview is online somewhere, … . And it is only available to premium members.
So this is a copy move, but a half-baked one, and it does make me wonder and that makes it news worthy. (not that it makes me wonder but that it’s a copy ;))
Oliver
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Matt Marshall said:
It’s newsworthy for the community that reads VentrueBeat. I’d bet 90 percent of regular readers are using LinkedIn. And if they’re not aware that their company/affiliation is showing every time they view a profile, they should be. Newsworthy? I thought so. LinkedIn said it was their most requested feature. And it shows how carefully a company is juggling privacy. Lots of companies are grappling with the issues, so the real use may not be in the feature itself, but in the way LinkedIn is going about implementing it. Re HOTorNOT refeference, it came my attention recently, and I found it interesting. It was my way of imparting more news.
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Uday said:
I like this feature. I don’t find this link in my home page. Can someone tell me, where exactly to find this link in the LinkedIn?
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DJ said:
Seems it was working yesterday, but is no longer avaialble today. Backlash?
I had 17 visits this month, 12 by recruiters. I will polish my profile as a result - I had assumed mostly colleagues were viewing it.
Definately newsworthy to this audience!
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DMACK said:
How do you get to this feature?
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hunter said:
cool in theory but somewhat less than exciting in its current incarnation.
I don’t like the arbitrary decision to hide part of the feature behind premium. They should instead go the MyBlogLog route — make full stats visible but on 24+ hr delay for regular members, real time for premium. It’s the time element that’s valuable here, not the # of people they show you.
Also let’s turn this into a RSS feed or some other way for me to get this data out of LinkedIn.
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Matt Marshall said:
It’s still there. Uday, I’ve updated with a screenshot showing where to find it from your home page.
