LinkedIn has responded to people’s complaints by announcing changes to its social marketing. Read the post here.
LinkedIn notes that it sent out a lot of warnings, put up a lot of banners, etc. I imagine it did. But obviously people didn’t see or pay attention to them. You have to hit people on social media sites over the head to get them to notice changes to a site. You also have to remind them over and over again. If you don’t, it is 100% guaranteed that a viral warning will spread causing an immense amount of trouble for the site in question. That is exactly what happened here.
Here’s the problem. LinkedIn had a surprising amount of good will for such a large social media site. People didn’t have the hesitation about using it that they had about Facebook. Mainly, I imagine, due to the professional nature of the site.
People are very sensitive about their data online. Anyone who watches social media sites know this. Or at least, should know it. That is a lesson LinkedIn is learning the hard way right now. It thought it had done enough. But it hadn’t.
What a shame.