linkedin – Terence Eden’s Blog

LinkedIn supports Schema‎.org metadata

@edent — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 11:34:09 +0000

I'm a big fan of machine-readable metadata. It's useful for programs which need to extract information from messy and complicated websites. It's always surprising where it turns up.

For example, take this post of mine on LinkedIn. If you view the source, you'll see this scrap of linked data:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "http://schema.org",
  "@type": "SocialMediaPosting",
  "@id": "https://www.linkedin.com/posts/terenceeden_did-you-know-that-every-post-you-make-on-activity-7075043149462556672-fxiw",
  "author": {
    "name": "Terence Eden",
    "image": {
      "url": "https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E03AQEX11qBnAo43A/profile-displayphoto-shrink_400_400/0/1517677542848?e=1692230400&v=beta&t=-AHOoj__Ehm_p24dQ6McPbqNj9gQ2UsjvzOCIU16IGs",
      "@type": "ImageObject"
    },
    "url": "https://uk.linkedin.com/in/terenceeden",
    "@type": "Person"
  },
  "datePublished": "2023-06-15T09:35:34.752Z",
  "articleBody": "Did you know that every post you make on LinkedIn has SchemaOrg metadata embedded in it?\n(This post mostly to test which fields are supported.)",
  "isAccessibleForFree": false,
  "hasPart": {
    "@type": "WebPageElement",
    "isAccessibleForFree": false,
    "cssSelector": ".details"
  }
}
</script>

If you share a link in your post, the markup is slightly different:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "http://schema.org",
  "@type": "SocialMediaPosting",
  "@id": "https://www.linkedin.com/posts/terenceeden_why-im-using-mx-as-a-title-activity-7074702026084884480-jO0C",
  "author": {
    "name": "Terence Eden",
    "image": {
      "url": "https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E03AQEX11qBnAo43A/profile-displayphoto-shrink_400_400/0/1517677542848?e=1692230400&v=beta&t=-AHOoj__Ehm_p24dQ6McPbqNj9gQ2UsjvzOCIU16IGs",
      "@type": "ImageObject"
    },
    "url": "https://uk.linkedin.com/in/terenceeden",
    "@type": "Person"
  },
  "datePublished": "2023-06-14T11:00:04.600Z",
  "image": {
    "url": "https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/sync/D5627AQHWF4nuGqlfzQ/articleshare-shrink_800/0/1686397225711?e=1687428000&v=beta&t=SsQ_1b8M3xAGXnhUvID0976rpItlTLdC2Gz9RG3sXwI",
    "@type": "ImageObject"
  },
  "sharedContent": {
    "@type": "WebPage",
    "headline": "Why I'm using \"Mx\" as a title",
    "url": "https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/06/why-im-using-mx-as-a-title/"
  },
  "articleBody": "What title do you use when filling in forms? Mr? Mrs? Ms? Or something newer and more incluside?\n\nWhy do companies want to know my title? What are they going to do with my data?\n\nHere's why I'm using \"Mx\" as my title.\nhttps://lnkd.in/eCNH5sqp",
  "isAccessibleForFree": false,
  "hasPart": {
    "@type": "WebPageElement",
    "isAccessibleForFree": false,
    "cssSelector": ".details"
  }
}
</script>

Interestingly, this doesn't seem to be exposed in the API. It's available to any user-agent which requests a public LinkedIn post. I don't recommend you train any LLMs on the data though - it would be unbearably smug.

It would be incredibly useful if other social media platforms like Mastodon used this.

The existential terror of LinkedIn

@edent — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 12:34:24 +0000

Several years ago, I applied for my dream job. Not quite ice-cream tester on the International Space Station, but pretty close. I was astounded to get a first interview, and crushed to flame out at the second round. That's the way it goes sometimes. Better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all.

In the past, that would have been the end of it. I'd have moved on with my life and gradually forgotten about it. But fucking LinkedIn…

A few months after the interview, one of my former colleagues posted an update saying how delighted and excited they were to be starting a new role as - you guessed it - my dream job.

Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies. It is doubly worse when they succeed at something you've failed at.

For the last few years, I've had to put up with their smug grinning face dropping in to my feed - explaining how brilliantly the job is going, and what a difference they're making to the world. To be absolutely clear - I hold no personal grudge against them. They really are well suited to the rôle. Would I have been better? I obviously wasn't as impressive at interview but, ultimately, it doesn't matter.

I know the job isn't perfect - they've ranted enough on Facebook to convince me I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it.

I can't imagine what it is like to be, say, an actor - and see your dream job go to some talentless hack. Or to be in the running for CEO - only to lose out to someone who crushes it quarter after quarter. Is it better to see your friends succeed where you failed? Or better to indulge in schadenfreude when they fail?

For most of us, the jobs we fail to get slowly fade from our memory. That's the way it should be. But there's no escaping the viral poison that is the LinkedIn mindfuck.

I know the obvious thing is to stop visiting LinkedIn. But then, how would my my friends know how well I was doing at the jobs they wanted?

Abusing LinkedIn for better customer service

@edent — Fri, 01 Feb 2019 12:40:06 +0000

Back when social networks were new, Twitter was a great place to raise a complaint with a company. You could be sure that the Twitter account was run by someone who got social and, more often than not, would show tweets to the CEO.

Sadly, Twitter corporate accounts now all follow the same script "Gosh! That doesn't sound good! Let us put this right. Please DM us your customer number, surname, mother's maiden name, and blood type and we'll get right on to ignoring you."

Bah!

LinkedIn doesn't suffer from this. It's too full of THOUGHT LEADERS and CHANGE AGENTS who absolutely believe their own hype.

When I have a complaint about a company, and regular customer services just can't fix it, I cheat. I send a connection request to the CEO, or head of customer service, or anyone senior who looks like they might actually hold some sway.

After a month of my energy company sending me incorrect bills, and several hours on hold, I cracked and connected to someone senior there.

A few messages later, it was all sorted.

Similarly, when an employer's payroll company started messing me around, I went straight to the top. In this case, an executive had posted several times about their "award winning" team. So I left comments on their post asking if my poor experience with their company was typical of their service. Within a moment, I had a response.

And, eventually, they fixed my issues. No amount of speaking to regular customer services had helped to resolve the problems. Some grumpy comments on LinkedIn did.

To be clear - this is kinda a shitty thing to do. It's annoying to the recipients and will almost certainly piss off someone. It may damage your reputation as an AGILE PERFORMANCE EXECUTIVE if your network of talented individuals see you complaining. It's also part of the tragedy of the commons - if everyone does this, the usefulness decreases.

But... it works! And, perhaps, people at the top occasionally need to hear directly how badly their company is letting down customers.