Paul (Elevator) here. I'm posting this Show HN in response to (and support of) "Finally, I closed my LinkedIn" [1] posted here on HN yesterday.
To echo PC Maffey's sentiment, LinkedIn has always been an annoyance (but necessary evil) for me as a software person. It's never gotten me a job, even indirectly through the many (many) recruiter connection requests that flow through each month.
I was annoyed that my profile was being monetised by LinkedIn and the recruiters who pay to use it. As a software eng who would be looking for a (say) 100k salary, recruiters would pop 10-25% on top, meaning smaller shops who _can_ pay 100k, now possibly can't afford the (say) 115k price tag, so there's a chance I wouldn't be put forward for the role as my salary request would now be out of their price range. I lose out, and the company loses out.
Why don't companies pay to obtain our details, and connect directly? The connection would be more "real" as there's a price tag attached to it. Connection requests would be from people who were willing to part with a fee in order to get in touch, and it's not a social network: it wouldn't be just about growing audiences with mindless "how to business" updates.
I teamed up with some colleagues to build Elevator over the past year. We workshopped a couple of early prototypes where people monetised their CV, but there was relevance issues when companies searched; they got unrelated results from historical role info.
So, we reverted to a "hard skills and experience" search model where companies can search for what they need (and only what they need). we found that it helped remove early-stage bias in that gender, orientation, and race are removed from the connection process.
We're at around the 500 user mark now in MVP mode, and only operating in Australia right now, but feel free to give it a rattle and tell us what you think.
Thanks - Paul G.
