Weird LinkedIn Math....doesn't add up?

Okay, this is bizarre to me. Last week, I had over 18 million in my linkedin network. Today, with more first level connections, only a week later, I have 5 million less...just over 13 million.

How on earth could that be? Even if I lost a few connections, which I don't think I did, but if I did, I still don't think it would amount to 5 million less in one week.

Has anyone else checked their numbers lately? I wonder if they reconfigured things so that our networks are getting smaller, instead of larger.

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Permalink Reply by Irina Shamaeva on February 13, 2009 at 5:07pm

Hi Pam,

You are not alone. My connections just went down from 22 mln to 17 mln. My best guess (based on other messages I have read about this) is that the reason is software bugs.

(Two big areas of potential improvement for LI are 1) QA and 2) Customer support!)

Another weird thing is going on with the LinkedIn search results, and that one may be on purpose. I have posted a question on LI here. People search - which 3rd level and group connections are included ...

-Irina

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Permalink Reply by Leigh McKiernon on February 13, 2009 at 5:15pm

I've been a victim to this too...

Within my whole network on Wednesday morning I had 17.5 million connections... between the hours of 11am and 1pm, my connections dropped to 13.95 million... later in the day, the connections had been restored to 17.5 million...

Now for the past 2 days, this drop has been permanent and I'm now around 14.0 million connections... I'm curious why that is but I'm sure it's something on LinkedIn's back-end and not due to losing contacts! I'd like to hear the full explanation for the variation in figures...

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Permalink Reply by Irina Shamaeva on February 13, 2009 at 5:45pm

Note that the software bug may be only in the number they are displaying but not in the actual people you can reach. If someone finds people who used to be in their network and are gone now, that would be a different story.