LinkedIn is very, very against scraping of any kind. Let’s all yell “NO!” together so the point gets across. Of course, you can’t scrape all the data I listed above. LinkedIn is a literal representation of people and companies in the workforce, and they keep their info up to date. Companies have a number of employees, job postings, current employees, and a host of other important data. User profiles have names, email addresses, industries, skill competencies, etc. The answer should be clear: to get all that information. Then there are company profiles on LinkedIn, which is separate from individual users and adds an entire other element for a scraper. A mine with 500+ million (and growing) nuggets, all of which can be harvested in a variety of ways. Instead of connecting manually with people in an industry, scrapers see LinkedIn as a gold-filled mine of personal information. However, for the scraper, LinkedIn has an entirely different meaning. That’s all for the normal user of LinkedIn, which I am, and which you should be. You can rub shoulders with major players in your industry, creep on old high school acquaintances, and strategize your next business move. If you don’t have an account you should probably get one. With over 500 million users, LinkedIn is the digital Rolodex of the modern age.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |