Something I wonder about is the way I get hit up by recruiters driven from LinkedIn in bunches. Most recently, I got a call from a big name and had several profile views from other people at the company.
Immediately following this, I was contacted more in a week than I had been in past 6 months.
It made me wonder if LinkedIn rotates through "featured" profiles, whether recruiters have some indication of who other companies are looking at or what?
I won't speculate on LinkedIn's practices, although it seems possible they could drive retention by 'rotating' inactive users into a more featured spot (or maybe you're correct and they have a feedback loop based around who's 'hot').
On the other hand, it could just be that when larger companies have openings, they're typically hiring for more than one developer. Thus, they might contract multiple recruiting agencies who then converge on the same profiles based off the information they're all getting from the hiring company, leading to a flurry of contacts in short bursts. Aside from looking through LinkedIn's query logs or talking to someone who works there, I'm not sure how you could verify either hypothesis, though.
Immediately following this, I was contacted more in a week than I had been in past 6 months.
It made me wonder if LinkedIn rotates through "featured" profiles, whether recruiters have some indication of who other companies are looking at or what?