LinkedIn's Big Data Endorsement Game - Why You Might Want to Play

LinkedIn has received mixed reviews of its Endorsements functionality since it was introduced last year. Many don't like the influx of emails (though these can be turned off); or the fact that they can be endorsed for skills by those in their network who have no direct knowledge of their ability in that area (though these inappropriate endorsements can be hidden albeit with some effort); or that it's too easy to endorse someone which increases the problem. How many endorsements are legitimate? How can LinkedIn judge which ones are "weak" and which are "strong"?

Note that I have no connection with LinkedIn, and no knowledge of how LinkedIn actually processes our data. These are some speculative ideas about what LinkedIn might do, and why.

Weak and Strong

MarginHound's paper last year about the way in which LinkedIn might use the data acquired from members endorsements [1] got me thinking about the ways in which LinkedIn might start to treat endorsement data like Google treats page rank data in searches.

Consider what might happen when you search LinkedIn for a person with a particular skill set. Your search will return a number of people, and LinkedIn can now order these by the number of endorsements, which means that the ones at the top stand a good chance of being the most relevant, and most highly skilled.

The Problem

The "weak endorsements" problem, which has been widely reported [2][3], seems to be in danger of breaking this process.

However, help may be at hand, from endorsements themselves. First of all, you need to be familiar with LinkedIn endorsements and how they work [4]. You also need to know that you can hide endorsements [5] from your profile if you feel they are inappropriate, perhaps you've only met that person once at a networking event so they can't possibly endorse you for widget repairs.

Endorsement hiding allows LinkedIn to do two things:

1. Detect "endorsement managers" who take time to hide inappropriate endorsements.
2. Detect "compulsive endorsers" who endorse others, only for those endorsements to be hidden.

Using in Search

How can this be used during a LinkedIn search to improve the quality of search results? Well, having ranked search results in order of endorsements received, we could look at the endorsers and see how many of them are "compulsive endorsers" - and if they are, remove their endorsements from the ranking calculation.

In addition, we could also look at the endorsers and see which are "endorsement managers". We could make their endorsements "count double" (or use some other weighting) as we know they understand endorsements because they actively take time to manage the ones they receive.

Suppose Alice and Bob are "compulsive endorsers", whilst Andrew and Beverley are "endorsement managers". Claire and Charles both have "Social Media" in their skills on LinkedIn, and have received two endorsements for it as follows:

Claire from Alice and Bob
Charles from Andrew and Beverley

Since LinkedIn knows about the endorsers and their approach to endorsements, Claire's endorsements may be viewed less favourably by LinkedIn because it knows that Alice and Bob endorse pretty much anyone they can. Charles, however, may have his endorsements weighted more heavily because LinkedIn knows Andrew and Beverley manage their own endorsements, and additionally have very few of the endorsements they give out hidden by the recipients.

So, in this example, Charles will rank higher for endorsements for the "Social Media" skill than Claire.

Let's now suppose that Charles receives an endorsement from Diana. Diana herself has 150 endorsements for "Social Media" and LinkedIn analyses those and determines that 90% of them are "strong" endorsements. This allows LinkedIn to add extra weight to the new endorsement from Diana, because she has so many "strong" endorsements herself, indicating she is likely to be an expert in the field.

Remember, LinkedIn "Knows"

LinkedIn knows a lot about your network. All the time you've been on LinkedIn, it's been accumulating information about you. You have access to a lot of it, of course, but there's more that LinkedIn knows. A good example is how long you've been connected to someone on LinkedIn. You can find this out for yourself if you've kept the invitation and connection emails, but it would take a while to piece it together for your entire network.

LinkedIn on the other hand, just knows. It knows when the connection records were created. So one thing LinkedIn can do for assessing "strong" endorsements is look how long you've been connected to your endorser. Length of time isn't enough on it's own of course, you might get a "weak" endorsement from someone you've known for a long time, and a "strong" one from someone you've done some work for last week. It's just one parameter that can be used.

LinkedIn also knows who in your network is a former or current colleague, and what employers you had in common. This can also be used as a guide in determining whether an endorsement is "weak" or "strong".

Summary

As stated, I have no relationship with LinkedIn, and so don't know whether this is what is already going on, or if it's in the pipeline, however this is what I do know:

• Criticism of Endorsements has been widespread and LinkedIn will have seen it
• There are some very clever people working at LinkedIn
• LinkedIn won't reveal the secrets of Endorsements in the same way Google don't reveal the secrets of search
• Such a "socially determined" level of expertise could be used in areas other than search

 Further Reading

• [1] Linkedin Endorsements: How Might They Affect Linkedin’s Search Algorithm? (MarginHound)
• [2] When your squash partner 'endorses' your coding skills on LinkedIn... (The Register)
• [3] LinkedIn's Endorsements Have Become Meaningless (Mashable)
• [4] Introducing Endorsements: Give Kudos with Just One Click (LinkedIn)
• [5] Hiding and Unhiding a Skill Endorsement (LinkedIn)

52 Weeks 52 Photos

Last year I enjoyed spending some "December down time" rummaging through Picasa albums in search of 2011's best bits, so this year I thought I'd do it all over again.

Inevitably London and the Olympics feature strongly, as does Lincoln Cathedral, a place it's difficult to visit without taking lots of photographs. Some places, such as Bletchley Park will be visited again soon, so there's more to come from them I suspect.

Click here to view the Picasaweb album.

Christmas Computers 30 Years Ago

The December 1982 issue of Your Computer featured an attached flexidisc containing games for the ZX-81, Spectrum and Vic. Unfortunately I can't find this forerunner of the cover CD, but from the article in the magazine, using it was an involved process. At the time, the standard input method for restoring your saved programs was via cassette tape, so the procedure for the 33rpm flexidisc was to record it on tape and then load from the tape on to your computer.

Elsewhere the issue included a wide variety of games to keep your fingers busy typing over the festive period, some of which were reproduced in extremely small type. Or perhaps my eyesight was better then. In the letters page there were further complaints from those still waiting for Sinclair to deliver their Spectrum, in some cases after waiting for up to 4 months, all against a backdrop of new machines from the Japanese manufacturers.

Aldwych Tube Station Tour

Last weekend saw another of the occasional re-openings of the now-disused Aldwych tube station for a series of guided tours. Having missed out on the last round of tours, I was looking forward to this one, and was there in plenty of time.

The station was in service until 1994, and I remember it from my first job in London back in 1988, as the station was on the far edge of a lunchtime loop walk I used to do from my office near Farringdon station. However, like many others I didn't use the station because it's location as a spur from Holborn meant that it was often easier to get off the tube network at Holborn, and just walk down Kingsway.

The tour lasts for about an hour, and takes in the upper level lobby before descending down 160 or so steps to the platform levels. Although the lifts are still present, they are no longer in use due to their age, and are bolted in position - you can walk through them, however.


Down on the platforms, there is one train in on the platform which is still open, whilst the other platform is no longer open, and the exit tunnel has been bricked up - indeed this platform was closed only 10 years after the station was opened, as even then very few passengers were using the station. Aldwych is often used for filming, which is why the train is still operational, although there has been a recent trend to use the old Charing Cross Jubilee Line station for filming, as it is more modern.

The guides are very knowledgeable, and there are plenty of opportunities to hear stories, ask questions, and take photographs, before climbing back up the 160 steps. In recent years, the tours have been run at the end of November and start of December, the London Transport Museum events calendar will usually include details, as do many of the London event listings web sites, such as Ian Visits. There are some photographs from the tour here.

November 1982 - Clive Sinclair reveals plans for 1983

The November 1982 issue of Your Computer contained the usual fireworks and bonfire references, but beyond the cliches there were the usual gems.

This month featured a review of the Jupiter Ace, which was unique at that time for offering something which wasn't BASIC - it was based around the Forth programming language. This was very much a "Sinclair spin off", as it was the creation of two members of the design team on the ZX Spectrum. The review described the machine as a "brave gamble" and it proved to be relatively unsuccessful - if you have one hiding somewhere, you might find it's a collector's item these days.




There was also an interview with Clive Sinclair, where he revealed his plans for the coming year. These were centred around a briefcase computer, a desktop computer to be built for ICL, and the Microdrive, which had been mooted since April that year but with scarce details since then.

Elsewhere, the editorial wondered if home computing might be another fad, and decided that with some imagination from suppliers it might still be a fad, but one which "should be good at least until the end of the century".

Bletchley Park - Home of the Codebreakers

I visited Bletchley Park in 2003 for a BCS meeting, and last weekend I finally managed to get back there for a day trip. Obviously a lot has changed in the near-decade since my first visit. There's even more to see, too much for one day in fact, so it's just as well that your entrance fee now gives you a year-long season ticket, so you can go back as many times as you like to see all of it.

The best way to see the estate is to join one of the regular guided tours which leave from the mansion - these start with a brief talk indoors before heading out to explore. The tours take in a lot, and you should allow 2 hours if you include the optional tour extension to see Tunny and Colossus (there is a separate charge for this in addition to your admission fee).

There's also a great cafe in Hut 4 for your morning and afternoon cuppa, and a variety of lunch options as well, a great way of keeping the hunger at bay and providing some more support for Bletchley Park at the same time. Cake was extensively tested, and found to be very good.

On this trip there wasn't time for everything, so the Churchill Collection and the National Museum of Computing will have to wait for next time, along with a longer look around the Block-B Exhibition Centre.

There's a few photos here.

Your Blu-ray Player is just a PC - Treat it Like One

A few weeks ago I decided to try to fix a problem which had been bugging me for a while. The extra features on the Blu-ray version of Fringe Season 3 didn't play on my LG Blu-ray player. Having not updated the software for over a year, I reckoned that this was almost certainly the problem, and once I'd finished watching the series itself, I hooked the player up to the Internet.

Sure enough, there was a new version of the software available, so I set it off downloading. Some 40 minutes later, it completed, and started installing. At which point the device crashed and required a hard reset using the wall socket. Not really what I was hoping for, but the reboot revealed that the software hadn't updated and the thing was at least still working.

In a classic case of "I've started so I'll finish" I tried the update again, and 40 odd minutes later went through the same process of having to hard reset.

At this point, it was time to treat the player like a PC (well, it is a Linux box after all, underneath all the consumer branding) and I went off for some serious Internet searching. I found a few people were having some problems, but also that the LG web site had a version of the software which was newer than the one I had currently, but older than the one it was trying to upgrade to. Normally the web site should offer the same version, but in this case I was happy to be able to try something else.

I downloaded this (in about 90 seconds, so why the player took so long about it I don't know) and copied to a USB stick, and updated the player using that. This time, the player didn't crash, and rebooted successfully.

Alas the Fringe extras still didn't work.

However, it did mean that I could now attempt the automatic software update over the Internet, yet again, but this time from a different start point in terms of software. Keeping to the pattern, this once again took 40 minutes to download, but this time the process completed with a successful reboot.

Happily the Fringe extra features now played. So, it's always important to remember that lots of consumer devices now are basically PCs inside, so when they give you grief, treat them like PCs!