UPDATE: Download the LinkedIn PHP Class that powered JobFu.
Recently, my little side project JobFu (turning a LinkedIn Public Profile in to a nice looking Living Resume) was slammed on LinkedIn by M. Joyce the Creator of IDEA Masters Online Real Time Magazine (thats a mouthful).
She clearly states that she is partly outraged, not surprised and basically really really hates the idea of my product.
While I always enjoy making people emotionally respond (both good and bad), I really never intended Jobfu to be anything other than a way for me to have a Resume that was always updated from a single place. After a few friends asked for the same thing, I used my JobFu.org domain and created the ability to claim a resume from their LinkedIn Public Profile.
However, after reading the replies from other LinkedIn users – it is fair to say that they would rather not have JobFu promoting their Public Profiles (even through they are publicly available and cloned all over the web, http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:iJMiWqfOaTYJ:www.linkedin.com/in/tribecanineinc+tribecanineinc&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=safari)
Please do not hijack my profile without my permission first. I don’t think it’s a bad product, I just think it is rude to do so without asking permission.
Thanks Brandon. There were a lot of us who were against this. If we had the option to opt in or out it would have made a huge difference. I know that my profile is on google, et al…that is one of the reasons why I’m there. It was just the way it was done.
You’ve got a lot of ideas, I hope you find great success with them.
No, I never said I “hated” your product.
I said that I was outraged that my LI profile info would be scraped into a format that didn’t allow me an opt-out. I did not submit my profile information to you – nor was I given an option to remove my information from your site without providing my LI password. Something most people just don’t feel comfortable doing when your site clearly stated that it was not affiliated with LI – which also implied a copyright infringement.
Our information is publicly viewed on LI – but it is copyrighted and is intended for the use of LI and their partners. That’s pretty simple to understand.
I admire creativity and support Net Neutrality very stongly and have done so throughout the LI Q&A forum for several months and in my own work. I have a long business background which includes traditional major publishing, contract negotiations and international finance – it’s great to have a wonderful idea that you want to share with the world — what’s not great is using other people’s information – without their consent – to pilot your project.
A project such as yours could have easily been piloted using only your own and your friends profiles as a test. You could have easily notified LI that you were a developer who was seeking permission to pilot a project that they might be interested in helping you develop. Did you do that? You should have.
LI is considered a professional community of professional people.
Most of us would not wish to have our profiles “sexitized” as your site said it would do.
Some of us might have been interested in using your product if it had been developed prior to being promoted. Your ‘test product’ was promoted organically of course and perhaps the attention you are receiving will help you land a position in the future where you will have the opportunity to partner with larger companies who can help you develop your ideas in the future, at a level that is above-board and ethical.
As for the idea that everyone wants free advertising regardless of how it is presented — think again. Many of us invest a great deal of money, time and talent into developing products that are branded – for a reason.
Whether “you” or “I” like each other’s brands or products isn’t the issue here. I’m sure we would agree that we are probably not within each other’s target market, right?
Where we as companies or individuals, advertise or promote ourselves, must match the essence of the brand that we have created. I personally have turned down ‘free banner ads’ on other sites simply because the other site did not match my brand. I also turn down advertisers who do not match well with my brand.
The point is – quality needs to come before quantity… even and especially on the web.
You can have all the SEO in the world, but if your quality and conversion suck – then what’s the point – ya know what I mean?
Quality is a subjective element and always will be.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Creativity should always be admired so long as it doesn’t harm another’s intellectual property rights — I’m sure you would agree with that — when you have developed something unique from your own head, as you were attempting to do, you certainly wouldn’t want somebody infringing on your creative property either, now would you?
Good luck to you Brandon!
I’m sure you’re working on some new ideas that will be very successful in the future!
MJM
I understand the negative reactions but thinking that stuff like this doesn’t happen is just so incredibly naïve. You as a user have the choice to put personal info in the cloud or not and if you do this behind closed doors.
If you put stuff out there where everybody has access to, than live with the fact that everybody WILL get access to it and can do with it whatever they like. I’m not a big fan of it, but that’s just how it goes and you can’t really do anything about it. If you don’t want stuff like this to happen with your data, than simply don’t put it on the web on a place where everybody has access to it.
Anyway, I think it’s a great project.
Hi Brandon,
The issue is not one of whether we like or dislike your site, nor whether it is a good idea or not. The issue is that not only did you hijack our profiles without permission you also hijacked Linkedin’s site to add resumes to your job posting site.
You have breached copyright laws – both against the Linkedin membership and also linkedin. You have certainly breached privacy laws by posting our profiles to a site without our express permission, nor any consideration for the impact it may have on the individual.
Are you aware that many companies prohibit their employees from having an online resume while employed? Did you even stop to consider what may happen to someone who is allowed a linkedin “profile”, but not an online “living resume”?
I think you failed to realize that just because information is available on the web for people to READ, does not equate itself with that information being available for your personal use as filler for your jobfu site or any of your other projects.
If at any time you felt so many people could and would want to utilize your site then you should have shown the common decency of informing people of the site and ASKING them to post their own data and give them the ability to make changes as they see fit. You should also give them the opt in and opt out links – the first being opt in since no one should have to opt out of anything they didn’t agree to in the first place. Your site doesn’t even have an about us or contact us link.
If you had truly had others best interest at heart you would have posted information about this on linkedin. You don’t even speak of this in your profile so why the secrecy? I can only assume you want to drive traffic to the job posting site without the owners of the living resumes realizing you hijacked them.
I am all for creativity Brandon and enjoy seeing people make a buck on the web. But they need to do it honestly not by stealing other people’s property.
Revenue was never an objective for this project. JobFu simply reformated LinkedIn’s Public profile page (if someone asked for it) – There is no database what-so-ever. I won’t apologize for the technology – because it’s pretty cool, but I do agree with many of these comments. Accordingly, I have removed the site all together and I will let the open source community decide whats next for it.
For those of you using the XML service call – you will need to run the code on your own servers as soon as I get the code cleaned/packaged up.
Keep up the good work Brandon.
These folks need to learn that if its on the web PUBLICLY, it WILL be and CAN BE used for any and all purposes.
Using an opt-in will only serve to make your life better. Hell, I would add an opt-in feature, sell advertising on a micro site and make a little cash.
dr
Just a quick weigh in from Brandon’s business partner for the last 2.5 years and colleague prior to that. The JobFu.org domain, was previously used as an S.E.O. application to drive job seeker traffic. It was a total side project garnishing very little time or attention. The honest truth is that The Living Resume (later given the domain, JobFu.org) was intended and used for the most part (at least as far as we knew), simply to help job seekers quickly and efficiently create and send a resume (as a link) with real time data as long as they maintained their profile on LI.
Personally, I hate to see it go. I think it is an excellent tool for a job-seeker or anyone looking for efficiency within certain, tedious aspects of the job search process. Brandon’s applications are all about making life easier for the user. This harmless side application was built for personal use anyways. The goal was to share it, but it was never promoted other than as a tip to a friend looking for a new gig. Ideally I would recommend that the search function be pulled off the site and it continue to be used for the benefit of the consumer. (Surely Linked-In wasn’t trying to prevent formatting options when they opened their API…) However, after all the commotion that has been created, I agree with Brandon, time to close and release. Certainly don’t need any distractions right now, especially when there was never a thought of a revenue model.
Let the creativity be channeled elsewhere! Stay ahead of the pack Brandon.
Dan & Dennis:
Guys… the fact is you can “do” whatever you wish with net info — you know that… but it is precisely these types of situations that will bring down that which many people are tyring to preserve: a free internet. Had you developed and invested hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in a creative project of your own — wouldn’t you wish to preserve your own copyright? If you’re answer is “no” — then I would love to understand why.
Freedom always comes with a level of personal responsibility. Without that we have anarchy. Is that what you are proposing?
The web will become regulated if people can’t handle the level of freedom it provides.
Just like every other form of media has… I hope you can see that.
Understanding the tech isn’t enough – you must also learn the legal and business side of the coin.
You must also learn to forge partnerships with others who could help you develop advanced applications – not fight against them or call them naive.
Some of us have been coding since 1984.
MJM
MJM “wouldn’t you wish to preserve your own copyright”
Brandon: The internet was created to share information, content that is put online can and will be used weather you like it or not. So if I was concerned about Copyright or protecting my precious key strokes, I would not put it online.
MJM: Freedom always comes with a level of personal responsibility. Without that we have anarchy. Is that what you are proposing?
Brandon: Yes, that is exactly what I am proposing! My evil goal is to get the entire world running around naked – jacked up on meth killing each other, while looting and vandalizing. – My first step towards that goal was reformating a LinkedIn Profile page! (insert evil laugh here).
MJM I really understand your position on this specific topic of turning your LInkedIn Public Profile in to a Resume (without an opt in) was not beneficial for you and a handful of other LinkedIn Users – and I have responded accordingly by removing all of you from JobFu.
@M Joyce McMenamin
I do agree with everything you say, don’t get me wrong. But i’m just saying it’s something which we can’t really do anything about, and therefore it should be taken into account when you place content online.
I’m not trying to make a statement against your critique. It’s just about how naïve people are when it comes to placing content online.
Now I need to think of a New Fu….
There’s always TweetFu….
I still dream about my original PrintFu – but for Postcards (I have architect-ed a distributed postcard printing platform about 4 times over in my head and on paper). One day I might venture back in to the family business – my old man still pushes a lot of paper on bunch of Iron.
Brandon wrote: “The internet was created to share information, content that is put online can and will be used weather you like it or not. So if I was concerned about Copyright or protecting my precious key strokes, I would not put it online.”
That’s not a particularly sophisticted perspective, Brandon, and will likely get you into trouble one of these days. One can share information publicly without sacrificing the copyrights on that material: that, in fact, the whole purpose of copyrights. Metaphorically, you’re arguing that since lockpicks aren’t illegal, breaking and entering isn’t illegal either. Technology (such as you made, as cool as it is) is perfectly legal, not everything you might do with it perfectly legal.
Or metaphored out another way: because there are locks, there are lockpicks; because there are lockpicks, there are burglers; because there are burglers, there are laws (and lawyers and police).
Best of luck in your future endeavors.
Hey Brian, actually my point was more directed to the basic principals of the internet and how data propagates and is shared – and rarely do people respect copyrighted material online – and that I would not put anything online that I didn’t expect to get stolen. Unfortunately, reality is often not sophisticated.
Thanks for your input! Brandon
Well, first, it’s principles
And second, and more importantly, I think you need to point out to the neigh sayers, as opposed to the nay sayers, is that LI provided the API that you used in order to do with whatever you chose, and furthermore, LI owns the info we post there. Has no one read the TOS? Unless there’s something in there that I don’t know about, and by definition, that’s quite likely, Brian’s objections are irrelevant, and non analogous, to wit: There are several legal uses for lockpicks. I’ll leave it to the reader to figure out what those are….