Comments on: ‘People You May Know’ on LinkedIn - how does it work?

By: totobogy

totobogy — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 06:06:51 +0000

I still don’t have an answer but I believe Linked-In uses a number of heuristics for this prediction, including, perhaps, some that you guys have mentioned.
Facebook also has similar feature now (in fact they have had it for sometime now - I was too lazy to update my post :)) but theirs doesn’t seem to be as accurate with lot more false positives showing up. Linked-In is way more accurate.
One plausible explanation could be that a profile on Linked-In typically contains much more relevant and useful information (Like schools attended, places of work etc) than a corresponding profile on Facebook.

By: jorbuntu

jorbuntu — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:51:03 +0000

Okay, this is weird. For me the same, after mailing with a person using gmail in “People you may know”, the person’s name appeared. I have two theories:
1) Gmail
So this could mean the information comes from gmail? I hope this is not the case..I think theory (2) makes more sense.

2) Stereo curiousity
Or…. I remember googling this person before emailing, because I was about to buy something from this person. In google results LinkedIn popped up and I looked up the profile in LinkedIn. What if, that other person did the same, that could be a possibility as well, let’s call this “stereo curiousity”. Maybe LinkedIn matches stereo curiousity and suggests this person in “People you may know”.

Both scenario’s are easy to verify.

Any other thoughts?

By: frustated

frustated — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:10:55 +0000

I am also puzzled by how that feature works….I am guessing that the people whose names linkedin is showing in the “people you may know” section, have perhaps accessed my profile????

By: Iyer

Iyer — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 02:01:56 +0000

I have the same problem - just few weeks back i found a new contact and have so far sent him just one email via gmail (ubuntu).

Today suddenly this name appears in the linkedin “People You May Know” list.

Note that my linked email is connected via yahoo email not gmail. so uploading of the address book by other guy theory is also ruled out.

This is a very scary…

if you find the answer please post it.