They used to give guidance about what 'know' meant and I still adhere to the 'I will only link with you if I have properly worked with you' line. The fact that few other people do have devalued its use.

At some point, LinkedIn changed its mind and decided that you should connect to anyone you're barely acquainted with and/or have exchanged an email with. They're actively encouraging forming these "devalued" links. They even use shady practices like borderline forgery of invitations.

> LinkedIn changed its mind and decided that you should connect to anyone you're barely acquainted with

This was all in the interest of keeping the numbers going up which is obvious. And that's fine if that is your business model. But the business model here seems to be showing growth for the sake of wall street as opposed to growing the business in a meaningful manner.

Linkedin does serve a purpose it allows people to humble brag which is helpful even if they aren't looking for a job and don't need the connections because, say they own a business (and I don't mean a startup but it could be that as well). It's become an acceptable way to show where you went to school, what you have done in the past, and where you work or what you are the owner of. There really aren't that many other ways you can do that w/o appearing to be actually bragging and trying to impress someone (meaning it's not the same as having a personal website or even pointing people to a link "about me" page on your business website or a wikipedia page.

What's amazing is that they apparently don't want to filter the bogus requests as opposed to merely the requests that are from legitimate people (not bots) and simply trying to build what appears to be a network.

> But the business model here seems to be showing growth for the sake of wall street as opposed to growing the business in a meaningful manner.

Welcome to the world. Version 2.0. Codename: pointless.

This about sums it up

To be fair, there is evidence that weaker ties can be highly valuable in job search: http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/weak_ties.htm

For this reason, I'm somewhat lenient in adding LinkedIn connections, as long as I at least have some idea who the people are. Unfortunately, many connection requests are from people I've never met before.

Yes. And I think was a terrible decision.

I remember the point in time when joining Facebook required a .edu email address.

My how things have changed.

But.. how do they know who you've emailed? I don't get how LinkedIn knows this from Gmail

In gmail, everyone you've ever emailed is in automatically added your address book. LinkedIn provides an easy (maybe too easy) way to upload your address book to LinkedIn.

Your "too easy" is my "deceptive dark pattern".

At Linkedin you are the product. Don't ever think otherwise. They are mercenaries about building up the social graph because it is how they build up the data they need to sell to the job spammers. The biggest "secret" of LI is that you get a score based on the "quality" of the people you are linked to. Know lots of ivy leaguers and fancy MBAs? You get a +10 bonus. Rockstar talent with no high rated buddies to link to? -10 for you.

They have also made it over time exceptionally hard to deny a connection request. It used to be in the e-mail notification, then it wasn't and on the profile page, now it seems to only be in the event/notification drop down from your home page.

Eh? Just ignore them. No need to actively deny anything. My attitude; it's just LinkedIn. Accept everyone, you never know when someone will be useful in finding you a job, which is all I use LinkedIn for. Turn off all email notifications and just add to spam any you do get. I get emails from recruiters all the time and they're in my spam folder too. I'll take them out/search spam when I next need a new job.