How Microsoft can fix LinkedIn in 2017

Now that Microsoft’s $26 billion purchase of LinkedIn is final, here are some suggestions for things that Microsoft chief executive officer Satya Nadella could do to improve the huge — but sometimes annoying — business network.

Based on a very informal poll of about two dozen colleagues and friends, nearly everyone agrees that that LinkedIn’s database is an incredible trove of information about current or prospective employees or employers. It’s useful for finding and keeping in touch with long-lost colleagues, or finding potential new jobs or filling job openings. LinkedIn claims 467 million registered users, with two new people joining every second, although it does not disclose how many pay.

Only one of the respondents says she’s quit the business-focused social network, deleting her account. Other than that, here are some suggestions.

Fix the interface

There were lots of complaints about the user interface, which is clumsy and seems in a constant state of flux.

“They keep changing it,” says Catherine Marenghi, a Boston area public relations executive and author. It is very hard to find things — like support, she adds.

To be fair, LinkedIn is already on this. In September, the company outlined plans for a desktop redesign, due early next year.

Go easy on the spam

The biggest complaint seems to be LinkedIn’s propensity to “spam” users, requesting more contacts — a feature that thankfully can now be turned off — and reminding them to send birthday wishes or holiday greetings to long-lost colleagues.

Jeff Shuey, a former executive at Eastman Kodak and K2 Software, likes finding and keeping in touch with former colleagues with LinkedIn. What he doesn’t like? “Birthday wishes. This is not Facebook, people!”

Kill endorsements

The myriad of requests to “endorse” contacts is a source of chagrin. No one said they pay any attention to these endorsements.

“The endorsements are absolute crap,” says Yuval Shavit, a Boston-area software engineer via email. “I’ve been endorsed for technologies that I have no experience in. For instance, languages that I have literally never written a single line in. LinkedIn does a bad job curating the info about its users.”

Said another wag: “I love getting endorsements on skills I don’t have from people I don’t know.”

You can kill endorsements, although it’s not intuitive how to do so.

Beef up the mobile app

A vice president of a global healthcare organization based on the East Coast finds LinkedIn’s mobile app less than inspiring.

“The most annoying bug is when you get a notification in mobile email and click the link to take whatever action, the mobile app opens and takes you to your home page. It should behave like the desktop browser app and let you complete whatever the action is,” he said. (This executive requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak about the company’s IT use.)

Now the good news

The social network also got some rave reviews, mostly from people who pay for advanced versions for recruitment or marketing

Dee Dee Walsh, vice president of marketing for Mobilize.net, a Bellevue, Wash. company that helps migrate older software to the web, uses LinkedIn all the time both to recruit new employees and for marketing.

“When I place an ad, it’s really effective especially for non-technical jobs. I get a lot of really great candidates because I can target by title, by keyword, by group,” she noted. It’s less effective than Stackoverflow for technical or engineering candidates, but she thinks Microsoft ownership could help there.

Google’s advertising products let companies buy keywords, but doesn’t allow targeting to this degree, Walsh continues. She also looked at Rainking and DiscoverOrg databases of prospective IT buyers within companies, but they don’t let her fine tune her searches the way LinkedIn does, she says.

For marketing, sales, and recruiting, the ability to really pinpoint searches is critical. “I don’t want to be a pest to people, although I know I am. LinkedIn helps me be a pest to the right people,” Walsh tells Fortune.

Marketers can embed LinkedIn code on their websites which then provides them with the LinkedIn profile of any visitor, a very common usage of the product. The reports on website visitors that LinkedIn provides are very useful, several marketing executives said.