Professional Social Network is a powerhouse of B2B data, useful for many purposes, such as...
- Competitor analysis
- Industry research
- Job market research
- Networking preparation
- Investment research
- Sales and marketing prospecting
- Academic research
Shall I keep going? (Kidding, I think you get the point.)
Anyway, when you’re browsing Professional Social Network for said valuable information contained on it, there are many reasons why you might not want to use your own Professional Social Network account.
Best-case scenario, you deal with [annoying rate limits](https://nubela.co/blog/how-to-bypass-Professional Social Network-search-limit-in-2023/) that prevent you from accurately browsing and/or extracting any data from Professional Social Network at scale.
Worst-case scenario, you risk losing your own personal Professional Social Network account.
That said, have no fear...
In this article, I’ll be showing you two different ways to search on Professional Social Network without using your personal account.
But first, if you’re the type that just wants to browse Professional Social Network anonymously without sending notifications that you’ve viewed an individual's profile, let me start from the very basics of accomplishing that. Additionally, consider the expertise of a [professional Professional Social Network profile writer](https://resumeperk.com/Professional Social Network-profile) to enhance your online presence effectively.
Before all that,
Start viewing Professional Social Network profiles with our demo
To fast track everything, we have already done all the heavy lifting for you. We built a [full demo for the Professional Social Network profile viewer here](https://nubela.co/proxycurl/demo/Professional Social Network-profile-viewer) where you can input a Professional Social Network profile URL and get parts of the profile information returned.
No log in required, view the profile anonymously.
Browse Professional Social Network anonymously using your own account
Some people don’t really care about scale or rate limits, they just care about searching or pulling data from Professional Social Network anonymously a few times.
So, if that’s you, changing your profile settings on Professional Social Network to no longer send said visit notifications is pretty easy.
Here's the lowdown on surfing Professional Social Network incognito:
- Log into your Professional Social Network Account (if you're not already logged in).
- Navigate to the “Me” icon at the top.
- Choose “Settings & Privacy” from the dropdown.
- On the left side, select “Visibility.”
- In the profile & network visibility section, locate “Profile viewing options.”
Now, you'll be presented with three choices:
- Your name and headline
- Private profile characteristics (like job title and industry)
- Full private mode
The last option, full private mode, ensures that you're fully anonymous.
While the person whose profile you visited will see that someone viewed their profile, your identity will remain a mystery.
However, remember: if you choose “private profile characteristics,” you're not completely private. Details like your job title or industry might give away clues about your identity, so choose wisely!
Okay, that’s method one.
Going forward, the other two methods that follow in this article have zero requirement for you to login to Professional Social Network, but they do both require public Professional Social Network profiles. Let me explain why.
Public vs. private Professional Social Network data
[Professional Social Network is a custodian of both public and private data](https://nubela.co/blog/what-is-the-difference-between-Professional Social Network-public-profiles-vs-Professional Social Network-private-profiles-with-python-code-samples/), governed by individual user settings.
Public data is the information that users willingly showcase on their profiles, accessible to anyone with internet access. This includes names, a summarization or description of themselves, titles, companies, and career history.
Private data, on the other hand, is accessible only to connections or within the Professional Social Network network, encompassing details like personal contact information or specific post interactions.
Extracting public data is generally straightforward and is often [sanctioned through Professional Social Network's terms](https://nubela.co/blog/is-Professional Social Network-scraping-legal/), or achieved via search engines and other B2B data tools like Proxycurl (more on that later).
However, extracting private data treads on murky waters, and is not advised. We only work with public Professional Social Network data, and we suggest you do the same.
Search Professional Social Network without an account by using Google
If the Professional Social Network profile is a public profile, you should be able to Google it and still see quite a bit of the data available on the profile without logging in.
So, for example, let’s Google myself, “Colton Randolph Professional Social Network” in Incognito mode and logged out and see what comes up:
First result and an excerpt, now let’s click on the profile:
Not bad.
A pretty significant amount of information is available, but again, this is only if the Professional Social Network profile in context has public appearance settings.
Another con of this method is the fact you'll have to deal with a lot of annoying CAPTCHAs and attempts to get you to login if you plan on doing this to more than a couple of Professional Social Network accounts.
Okay, now I'd like to take this a step further and show you a better way to do this, particularly at scale--but it’ll also provide you with a richer level of data than method two.
Search Professional Social Network at scale with Proxycurl
Proxycurl is a B2B data provider that scrapes public people and companies on Professional Social Network for you, and provides it to you in a convenient format. Specifically, an API.
If you’re not aware, an API is like a fast food menu for data. With our different API endpoints you can search for and extract all kinds of B2B data.
Essentially, Proxycurl does all of the complex work and scraping for you; you just need to implement the data.
Our Person Search Endpoint is what you want to use to search for people on Professional Social Network. Using a little bit of Python and our Person Search Endpoint, we could search for, enrich, and extract any profile.
Here’s an example:
import requests
import json
api_key = 'Your_API_Key_Here'
headers = {'Authorization': 'Bearer ' + api_key}
api_endpoint = 'https://nubela.co/proxycurl/api/v2/Professional Social Network'
params = {
'Professional Social Network_profile_url': 'https://professionalsocialnetwork.com/in/colton-randolph',
'extra': 'include',
'github_profile_id': 'include',
'facebook_profile_id': 'include',
'twitter_profile_id': 'include',
'personal_contact_number': 'include',
'personal_email': 'include',
'inferred_salary': 'include',
'skills': 'include',
'use_cache': 'if-recent',
'fallback_to_cache': 'on-error',
}
response = requests.get(api_endpoint,
params=params,
headers=headers)
formatted_data = json.dumps(response.json(), indent=4)
print(formatted_data)
It returns us the following result:
{
"public_identifier": "colton-randolph",
"profile_pic_url": "https://s3.us-west-000.backblazeb2.com/proxycurl/person/colton-randolph/profile?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=0004d7f56a0400b0000000001%2F20231027%2Fus-west-000%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20231027T201111Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=74f63d7668e64c8192e731d2c8d9fb227273a8708177eaa708b0a7d7fda17cd0",
"background_cover_image_url": null,
"first_name": "Colton",
"last_name": "Randolph",
"full_name": "Colton Randolph",
"follower_count": 1823,
"occupation": "Technical Writer at Proxycurl",
"headline": "Content strategist and conversion copywriter",
"summary": "Hi! Nice to meet you; I\u2019m Colton.\n\nA content strategist and conversion copywriter.\n\nIn short, I turn words into attention and sales.\n\nSEO & blog-based content writing, technical writing, traditional website copy, email copy, VSL, or Dan Kennedy style direct response copy \u2013 it doesn\u2019t matter\u2026\n\nNor does the target audience \u2013 I\u2019ve written for both B2C and B2B brands in various niches like eCom, Cannabis, info products, insurance, software, virtualization and networking, tech (in general), and beyond\u2026\n\nIf you're interested in content that ranks, as well as copy that builds a relationship and converts, reach out.",
"country": "US",
"country_full_name": "United States of America",
"city": "Wichita",
"state": null,
"experiences": [
{
"starts_at": {
"day": 1,
"month": 5,
"year": 2016
},
"ends_at": null,
"company": "Colton Randolph",
"company_Professional Social Network_profile_url": null,
"title": "Freelance Copywriter",
"description": "I craft copy that actually works. Stop wasting your time on generic copy and content. Start getting leads and customers. Finally increase your conversions and revenue. Get going by reading my blog, then takeoff by shooting me an email, and let's talk growth.",
"location": null,
"logo_url": null
},
{
"starts_at": {
"day": 1,
"month": 8,
"year": 2023
},
"ends_at": null,
"company": "Proxycurl",
"company_Professional Social Network_profile_url": "https://www.professionalsocialnetwork.com/company/proxycurl/",
"title": "Technical Writer",
"description": null,
"location": "Wichita, Kansas, United States",
"logo_url": "https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D560BAQG_yY7-UMuvZg/company-logo_400_400/0/1696561966581?e=1705536000&v=beta&t=yEYk4y9X_PwT_q-PDsU3AH0b7fBGlu6PUoEB1WQ8ToI"
}
And more, including contact information like email and phone number (depending on the profile).
Plus, since we used 'use_cache': 'if-recent here, it will only pull data that’s been scraped within 29-days, often even in real time.
Of course the biggest benefit with this option is that you can search and extract data from Professional Social Network at scale. You could build our API into your existing systems and be able to utilize the rich B2B data Professional Social Network provides with none of the normal headaches involved.
I should also note Proxycurl works with both people and companies on Professional Social Network.
To search and export data from companies, you would use our Company Profile Endpoint.
Create your Proxycurl account today
It’s free to create a Proxycurl account, and you’ll receive 15 credits upon signing up to try out a few different actions.
You can click here to create your account today.
After you run out of your initial account credits, $10 can buy you 100 credits, and 100 credits can do quite a few different actions with our API.
For example, you could pull 50 different fresh Professional Social Network profiles while using our if_recent caching parameter with our Person Profile Endpoint for 100 credits or $10 (it could be less or more depending on the parameters used, our full documentation is here).
Proxycurl is extremely cost effective while eliminating most of the headaches involved with pulling data from Professional Social Network–even when you compare it to the official paid tools available from Professional Social Network like their own limited API, or Professional Social Network Sales Navigator.
It’s time you finally started operating with the fresh & rich B2B data you deserve.
P.S. Any questions about Proxycurl or how we scrape data from Professional Social Network and beyond? Reach out to us at “[email protected]” and we would be happy to help.