It’s incredible how hostile LinkedIn is for reading / writing content.
- Posts containing links to external websites (like my blog) get significantly less reach. That’s why you see links in comments, not the post!
- You can’t copy content from posts on their mobile app. You can’t even easily select the entire article on the web app! Selecting a part, and then shift-clicking elsewhere (which works almost everywhere) doesn’t work.
- Also, the copied text isn’t clean. It’s filled with hidden text (e.g. “Skip to search”), duplicated text (e.g. author name repeated), and other junk.
- It’s hard to export content. For example, the export feature does not include the original links in your articles, nor the links to images you posted!
- It’s hard to scrape content. LinkedIn actively tries to prevent scraping, and their TOS prohibits it.
- No formatting. You have to embed unicode characters.
- Search is terrible. You can’t search for posts by keyword, date, or author easily.
- No public posting - so you need to log in to read anything.
The only reason I’m on LinkedIn is because of the network. My current approach is:
- Write on my blog: https://www.s-anand.net/
- Copy paste on LinkedIn, formatted
- Link to the original, and to hell with the reach
Over time, … let’s see.