An earlier version of this post was originally written in 2016..

Originally a digital meeting place for professionals and a handy contact book for journalists, LinkedIn’s value proposition has shifted significantly since its 2016 acquisition by Microsoft. What began as an efficient tool for maintaining work networks has evolved into a site defined by aggressive data harvesting and heightened security concerns.

Linkedin’s declining usefulness

In its early years, LinkedIn was a high-functioning, self-updating contact book. For industries with high turnover, such as technology and telecommunications, it automated the task of tracking people’s movements. Features like Microsoft Outlook synchronisation and the business-card-to-digital-contact app CardMunch positioned it as a helpful, though still often annoying, tool.

For journalists, it was a fact-checking database. It provided up to date job title information and made it easier to find subject-matter experts. However, this usefulness eroded as users became slower at updating profiles, the information was hidden deeper in profiles and Linkedin prioritised internal “walled garden” communication over direct contact.

Friction as a business model

LinkedIn’s shift toward a “pay-to-play” model turned a once-open network into a brokered marketplace. Direct contact information—once readily available—is now largely hidden, in part to prevent scraping by spammers. In its place is an internal messaging system where response rates are notoriously low, often dismissed by recipients as noise. None of this worked at the speed of news deadlines.

With premium subscriptions starting at US$60 per month, the cost of breaking through these barriers is steep. This has led to a landscape where users are frequently bombarded with intrusive, irrelevant connection requests from industries like real estate and vehicle sales, further diluting the platform’s professional rigour.

You are the product

The core of LinkedIn’s business model relies on a massive, user-generated database. Every field a user completes increases the profile’s market value. When Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for roughly US$26.2 billion, it effectively paid US$60 per user profile.

Critics argue that Linkedin’s “social contract” is unbalanced. While the site makes a fortune selling data to recruiters and advertisers, the average user receives diminishing returns. In many regions, the platform maintains a job-market monopoly, forcing professionals to maintain “well-crafted” profiles even if the site provides no tangible daily value.

Integration or intrusion?

The Microsoft acquisition raised concerns regarding market dominance and user experience. CEO Satya Nadella’s vision of “delightful” integrations—such as Microsoft Word suggesting LinkedIn experts to contact while writing—was met with skepticism. To many, these features represent an unwelcome intrusion into the workflow rather than a productivity boost.

Security worries

Linkedin’s handling of security has also faced scrutiny. A 2012 breach, which compromised approximately 100 million emails and passwords, was not fully acknowledged by the company until 2016. For many, this delay highlighted a lack of transparency regarding user welfare.

When balanced against the risks of data exposure and the annoyance of persistent notifications, the “ROI” of a LinkedIn profile is increasingly difficult to justify. For those not actively seeking work through its specific channels, the platform often functions as little more than a security risk and a source of digital clutter.

Why I left and, reluctantly rejoined

By 2016, Linkedin had no value for a New Zealand journalist beyond fact-checking up-to-date job titles and, at the time, that could be done using Google without ever opening the Linkedin site. It made sense to cut through the noise and leave. Much of the other useful functionality, the status updates and so on could be found on Twitter, now X, where responses were many times faster. I closed my Linkedin account and for the next five or six years did not look back.

However, soon after Elon Musk acquired Twitter at the end of 2022 and tinkered with its algorithms, it became harder to curate the service in ways that help journalists stay in touch with contacts. At this point, despite being flawed and even more annoying than before, Linkedin was once again the best place to stay in touch with industry players.