Comment by Steve Levy on February 16, 2009 at 10:23am

Good morning Simon! I suppose I could say it's not the size of the wave that matters, it's the motion of the ocean but this would be an almost gratuitous answer to your title. Or I might offer that he who dies with the most names wins but in reality this is utter nonsense.

The status of having a large network is not proportional to the effectiveness of the network unless you work it - and how many people other than Dave work their network with regular updates and offerings of important information? What would be more important would be the ability of connections to rate their connections along the lines of - in no particular scientific order - frequency and quality of communication, speed of response, etc. - and offer a connection index. Again, better to have fewer great connections than lesser slug connections.

This being said, I suspect LinkedIn is being forced by its VCs to speed up its monetization. They have many people hooked and believe that if a percentage are converted than the green river will flow.

Sadly they are mistaken for what recruiters are known for is finding the next big thing and abandoning yesterday's news. Looked what happened to MySpace - once a jewel, now a place for aging rockstars, new bands and porn queens. My how the lofty can fall...

Comment by Irina Shamaeva on February 16, 2009 at 11:22am

Many years ago, when I was a software engineer, when our marketing saw weird behavior in a software release we would tell them: "It's not a bug, it's a feature!" It was a common joke.

From what I have seen and read I have a strong suspicion that the number shown as your total network, as well as what shows up in your searches is more affected by software bugs than by some authorities' conscious decisions.

The numbers of connections have jumped up and down for many in the past 2-8 weeks. I don't see any consistent trend. Also it might be that software bugs only affect the numbers shown but if fact you might be able to reach all the same people.

The search results don't make much sense. They do include the 3rd level contacts and contacts from groups but it seems that these contacts are included in a random fashion now. The search results and the numbers for one's network are not consistent for anybody any more. There has been no LI explanation or announcement about this. This seems like bugs to me.

LI would do much better if they took care of their QA and their Customer support. Unfortunately there's no "other" LinkedIn so they can allow themselves to do buggy releases and not respond to Customer support requests and still go on.

Well, at least we could still X-ray LinkedIn. Google and Yahoo engines both do a good job at it.

Irina

Comment by Gino Conti on February 16, 2009 at 1:31pm

Jerry?

Simon - I'll avoid the discussion about why the numbers fluctuate since I'm not qualified to describe why, but the network size does matter if you operate within the guidlines of LI. The reason is that results out of your network will show up, but it will be without a name and will not show a full profile. That said, if you have Shally's hack sheet you can see everybody, but if you have a small network you won't be able to actually view all the people you find.

Comment by Simon Meth on February 16, 2009 at 9:40pm

Well said Steve! Your take on VC monetization is right on. So what is next after LI?

Comment by Simon Meth on February 16, 2009 at 9:42pm

I'm right with you Irina. There are lots of interesting "features" on LI. I love the way they spin their support answers. It just makes me think that they are not particularly forthcoming with what is really going on there...

Comment by Simon Meth on February 16, 2009 at 9:44pm

Jason, I think your stretching it a little with your comment. It would have been better without the last sentence. This blogger really doesn't want people pushing their own agenda in comments.

Comment by Simon Meth on February 16, 2009 at 9:45pm

I'm not sure that you are correct Gino. Shally or others?

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