LinkedIn share count API (/countserv/count/share) always returns "0"

Question

Easily seen in the JSON result from this:

https://www.linkedin.com/countserv/count/share?url=https://www.linkedin.com

Which currently returns:

    IN.Tags.Share.handleCount(
     {
      "count":0,
      "fCnt":"0",
      "fCntPlusOne":"1",
      "url":"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com"
    });

Apparently it affects most of the LinkedIn Share buttons/counters out there on the web, including WordPress and other blogs. This has been "broken" since late last week (13 Jan 2018).

I opened a ticket with LinkedIn support. Response was to post here, as this is where the LinkedIn Developers support resides. Hoping for a response that says "Oops, we'll fix this." Or, if deliberately crippled, an announcement that says so. (Twitter made a similar move a few years ago. It was unpopular among developers, but we've moved on.)

Superfluity

In this twitter conversation linked in seem to be surprised by it which suggests its a bug rather than a feature: twitter.com/itoctopus/status/951859210614198274 – Fraga

Update: LinkedIn social care followed up with me, and now the service seems to be working again. I'll wait a day before closing this out. – Superfluity

LI guy here. We were running a test to determine the effectiveness of the share count number on the inShare button. The share count should be back for all users. – Inarticulate

@StephenLynch: Are you able to comment on whether this is permanent this time and if there will be any other way of getting share counts in the future? – Fraga

Does this answer your question? LinkedIn sharing counts lost – Ferous

Answer 1

The share count service is back in operation, working as it was before. The outage was deliberate (apparently) but temporary.

As far as I know this is an undocumented API, but it's integral to the "LinkedIn Share" buttons that are used in countless websites/blogs around the world. As such, LinkedIn has no contract/obligation to keep that service running...so consumers of the service in non-LinkedIn components should beware.

Superfluity

It's been taken back down again, permanently this time. See Adam Garner's answer below. – Haematozoon

Answer 2

Further to Chris Hemedingers response, this feature has now been entirely deprecated

Deprecating the inShare Counter

As you can see they have deprecated this saying:

The share count on its own doesn’t fully reflect the impact that a piece of content delivers, and we encourage publishers and other content creators to leverage the inShare plugin as a way to drive conversation and engage with members on LinkedIn.

They then link to the Documentation saying:

Share on LinkedIn plugin will no longer return share count.

This is massively inconvenient for my company as we have just finished construction of a suite of tools powered by this.

Trill

Answer 3

Thank you for the update! That was quite frustrating to track this down. I had to research the code, request from the API itself with multiple URLs, submitted a ticket to LinkedIn... and ultimately found myself here and read this. Just a recommendation, I think it would be better to return some kind of error code than a 0. Many people actually display the count on their sites.

Rabon