Which is a little odd, I mean, if you put it on LinkedIn you already gave it away to corporate data banks. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice feature and all, but I honestly wouldn’t care if it stole any of the info I already decided to make freely available on the internet.

Good point :) I changed the wording on the home page now.

When I initially put the home page up, I wasn't collecting anything.

What wording did you change? I don't see any mention that you will be storing my email address?

I want to be open about collecting emails. Honestly I have no plan for them... maybe an update newsletter... on my last resume site I made, I think I sent 1 email in the 3 years I had the list of active users.

But I also don't want to just slap something on the home page saying that I collect emails - there's not really any place for it to fit in the design.

I do have it clearly on the TOS and FAQ pages though. I changed the wording on the homepage so people wouldn't think I'm not collecting anything.

I still don't understand why people would give their information/data to LinkedIn. Their tactics over the years have been extremely scummy (harvesting contacts and sending spam is the one that immediately springs to mind).

Its a solution looking for a problem.

A lot of these comments seem pretty dubious too.

I don't understand how you can't understand this. Yes, I have a lot of issues with them. But they are definitely not a solution looking for a problem.

They supposedly have 128 m accounts in the US, and there are circa 150 m total people employed here. Even assuming account inflation, I'm sure the majority of professionals have accounts. Certainly when I'm screening resumes, it's very rare for a person not to be on LinkedIn. They've been going since 2002 and are a profitable business that sold for $26 bn. This should be a sign to you that even if it's not your thing, somebody's getting value.

Paper resumes were a giant pain in the ass. LinkedIn is a pretty obvious solution to the problems with paper resumes, including that they are hard to write, a pain to update, hard to format, impossible to search, and impossible to use in aggregate. This is obviously great for people hiring, but also great for those seeking employment. During a job search, LinkedIn lets you ask questions like, "Who do I know who works at company X? Who do I know who can introduce me to somebody at company X? Who used to work at Company X so I can get the unvarnished truth about what it's like to work there?" Try that with paper resumes.

TL;DR: People use it because it makes finding jobs and/or employees easier than what went before it. Lots of people.

I'm also inexplicably giving money to LinkedIn. I signed up for their premium plan so long ago, back when it was 200 something a year. They recently shot the price straight through the roof nearly doubling it while removing some features and restricting them to even higher paying tiers.

I however, have been grandfathered in to the original price and keep all the original feature set. However, if I quit or cancel my subscription or there is a lapse in payment I lose this benefit forever.

It's scummy as fuck. Designed purposely so I never let go.

That's not the purpose of grandfathered pricing, they just want to raise prices without upsetting active users.

If you cancel you're not an active user anymore :)

You would prefer they charged you more or reduced your features?

All the info I (and, I suspect, most people) put into LI is explicitly supposed to be public, so why wouldn't I give it to them too?