5 annoying Linkedin Usability Bugs! Does Linkedin care to fix?

This post was originally posted in Linkedin Publishing platform.

In this post I am going to write about some LinkedIn bugs that are annoying me for a long time or don't stand good from the usability standpoint. So here we go with the list.

Numbering doesn't work

Irritation Quotient: 5/10

Justification: As an upcoming blogger / writer it really pisses me off when I see that the contents that I typed in are not exactly in the same format as I typed. Why? Because presentation is the first thing that people notice. A blog post is only read if it appears beautiful / presentable (at least for upcoming bloggers/writers). OK. So what's the actual issue. Whenever I write few points and number them in the answers (Let's say 1,2,3,...) to group discussions, those numbers get displayed as 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1... Oh my goodness! I am certainly better than this at numbering.

Status Update takes a long time (for the first time when i sign)

Irritation Quotient: 3/10

Justification: Whenever I do a status update, it takes a while before it shows up on the timeline. What's worse, there is no indication that I have updated something even after typing and pressing the Share button. But when I press Share the second time, it gives a message "The same message can't be posted twice"

Email update takes a long time

Irritation Quotient: 7/10

Justification: Many of the updates take a long time to reach my email. Those can be either updates to the group messages or updates to someone's profile info. Why it irritates me is that, an update mentioning someone has posted a new reply on the thread appears very late (sometimes days) in mail. I often get confused that whether it was a recent update or an older one. Linkedin, why are you confusing your users?

Update always navigates us to the beginning of the group discussion

Irritation Quotient: 10/10

Justification: This one is really really irritating. The scenario goes like this. There is a good conversation going on in a Linkedin group and I have participated in it with my own reply. So naturally linkedin shows the update whenever someone has replied in that thread. This is perfect. But when I click on the update, I get to see only the beginning of the discussion and I need to do a lot of scrolls to view the actual answers that got posted. Imagine a thread which has got more than 100 answers. I need to scroll many many times till I reach for the answer that I am actually looking for. Gosh. Really frustrating.

Lacking consistency

Irritation Quotient: 2/10

Justification: This is a minor one. There seem to be lack of consistency among identical features.
To quote one example, the friend request feature works differently in different places.

1. When I view a profile and give a friend request through "Connect" button, it asks me all sort of questions like is he/she a school friend, college friend, colleague, etc. etc.

2. But once we add someone as a friend, Linkedin gives some recommendations for us (a list of profiles). If we give "Connect" in that screen to anyone, it sends the invite without asking any question whatsoever.

3. Again if we open any one those recommended profiles in the same page or a new page and then give "Connect" again, it shows the screen in step 1 (So we can't argue that Linkedin recommended friends don't get that screen)

These are from my frequently used LInkedin features. Probably there are more in other features as well which I am yet to explore.

Question to Linkedin

Are these going unnoticed or ignored because you are a monopoly in the Business Networking space?

Question to the readers

Which features of Linkedin you find very annoying or irritating? Please post them in the comments section.

About the Author

Rajaraman Raghuraman is a passionate software craftsman with 8+ years of experience in the IT industry.  He is also the owner of AgileDevTest Blog and author of an Ebook "Programmer's Motivation for Beginners".  Connect with him on Google+