Is LinkedIn going too far?
This isn’t the first rant that I’ve read against LinkedIn and certainly wont be the last. They either wont let go of you or spam you. Now this is serious stuff when your professional reputation is at stake. Making it too easy to get referrals and introductions doesn’t help anyone in the long run (just ruins some peoples reputation, not to mention the service).
They need to step up the game and give more control to the professionals that have valuable connections. Is LinkedIn being too aggressive in order to consolidate their position as the leading professional social network?
Most social networks place a value on sheer numbers (most friends = most popular). Clearly, this is not the right model for professional social networks. Spamming your own users is not cool either.
Then I had people start forwarding me requests for introductions and also getting introductions from other people. When I would ask my friends about the person they all said Ohh I dunno him I just forwarded the request… GREAT. Now these are not just random idiots that forwarded me the requests they are well respected industry friends.
eek! I signed up with them recently. I haven’t had a chance to look around yet, having read this, I might not bother.
Well, I think they leave most people alone. It’s just that when you have uber connections or very well known in the industry every one else wants to get a piece of you.
Nice blog you got there! I like the design a lot too.
Question now that you bring it up….
Doesn’t MBL potentially have more of a problem here? Yes, I know – they’re doing something different from LinkedIn – but – you have some 2400 contacts at MBL. Are these people you’re really connected to in some way or did you just add them and they added you back or vice versa? Just curious what your impressions are of what we’re supposed to be doing with all these contacts at MBL.
Touche. To be honest, I really don’t know either. I’ve got a lot of contacts but I don’t write any of them saying “Great site! Visit my blog too! Love ya xoxo” or embed links in my messages. In fact, I need to get back to quite a few of them.
I’ve said it somewhere else but MLB is like MySpace for bloggers. I think MLB is going to have to do something to bring the situation under control. There’s all kinds of stuff going on at MLB that will eventually be restricted. Contacts are only a one way relationship on MLB. I think maybe they should make it so you send a request and only mutual friends are shown.
Also, the number of contacts has no impact on community. Just an observation.
LI on the other hand is for professionals so it needs to be that much more cautious with bombarding their users. Nobody would be complaining about the above at MySpace I don’t think.
Phew! I was beginning to think I was really missing something and I’m glad I’m not alone. I think the MBL widget is really nifty in giving site owners a better window into who’s actually stopping by. Since our site isn’t a blog (though we have one) but one of our goals is to be a valuable service to bloggers, I’ve mainly been experimenting with MBL as a way to raise visibility and have also found it to be nifty for discovering blogs I like but would never have come across without it. I use LinkedIn but am not rabid about it so haven’t had your same experience. And I’m not positive, but I think they have a “pay for” feature that lets you add a contact but protect the rest of your contact list from viewing by that person.
I’m planning on writing something up about social networks but I’ve already done most of my heavy blogging for today. I like MLB for showing me users who have their own publishing platform. It’s so much fun to see their “faces” on my blog.