Jeff,
I can’t speak to why you had such a bad experience with LinkedIn. From what I can tell, you pointed to a blurb about how someone complained they couldn’t just delete their account. It doesn’t even look like YOU were actually trying to do it and decided to go off on a rant about it, you just simply pointed to someone elses pain. There are a TON of other sites which have the same limitation, so why come down on LinkedIn?
If you just don’t like the service, that’s fine - not everything will please everyone. But to go off on a rampage urging people to close their accounts seems a bit over the top to me, and a bit unfair to LinkedIn. After all, YOU joined voluntarily and they haven’t twisted your arm to stay right?
My personal experience has been pretty decent to be honest. I use LinkedIn’s profile page as an online resume. They give you a pretty easy link to send people and it includes as much detail as I want to provide, AND the added benefit of having all my endorsements available to anyone I send there. If I am applying for a job somewhere and it has a form entry for “online resume”, I point it to LinkedIn. Most employers will only ask for references once you have made it past the final stages and are getting ready to make an offer. What if they saw your references BEFORE you even interviewed? I have 21 outstanding endorsements provided by a mixture of former employers, direct-reports and clients. That alone gives me a leg up going into an interview because they have seen my track record and know I am capable of doing the job based on those references.
So Like anything else, I think you get out of it what you put into it. Just my $.02 man, but it seemed a little unfair to beat up on the service when a lot of people actually think it’s pretty decent…
Frank