"A man only learns in two ways – one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people." 

AS PUBLISHER & Executive Editor of BIZCATALYST 360° and Owner of 29 Linkedin Groups with over 100,000 Members across 139 countries, I’ve got the first part of the above Will Rogers quote covered. Now I need your help (opinions & insights) in achieving the latter ....

Like many long-time Linkedin Members, I’ve watched it grow from the early days of a great concept in the right “space” at the right time into an unwieldy, unresponsive 800lb gorilla. And what a shame it is. Linkedin was always the network I valued the most. Linkedin was where I connected with colleagues, clients and business partners. I knew when they moved, when they were promoted and sometimes even what they were working on. Linkedin was a quiet and peaceful place and a great place to share quality content. You were able to see career changes that would otherwise be lost amid the memes, links and quotes. Unfortunately, that’s all changed and like many “quantity over quality” high-growth strategies, certainly not for the better.

SOCIAL Media Suicide or Salvation? Along with dozens of my professional colleagues, I have experienced “a series of unfortunate events” when it comes to our Linkedin Adventure, certain of which were captured below:

• Are You Linkedin Or “Locked Out?”
• Are You Linkedin Or "Locked Out"" – The Final Chapter?

While many of them thought it was “Linkedin Suicide” to be so bold to actually publish or share critiques of Linkedin on their own Pulse Platform, my sense of duty to our many loyal Group Managers and Members drove me to the point of concluding that there was much more to gain than lose. Months of reaching out to Linkedin Customer Service, including "Hail Mary” passes (messages) to Reid Hoffman were in vain. Remarkably (or perhaps coincidentally?) an amazing “ray of hope” appeared from the clouds soon after my second Article above was published. It arrived in the form of the following direct Email from Linkedin “Consumer Marketing:”

Hi Dennis:

My name is XXXXX and I work in Consumer Marketing at LinkedIn. In a recent survey, you indicated a willingness to talk with us. We continuously strive to deliver world-class member experiences so it is important for us to talk with members—like you—about our products and services.

I would like to schedule a brief phone call to hear about your experience using LinkedIn. The purpose of this call is to better understand how our members use LinkedIn Groups. If you are available, please let me know; Best phone number to reach you and Preferred time slots (1st and 2nd choices on the hour and/or half hour).

I look forward to hearing from you!

Regards,

Xxxx Xxxxxx
Program Coordinator
Consumer Marketing

I quickly responded with a selection of dates and times for a call. After two months of postponed (by Linkedin) teleconferences, we finally had a long chat. A chat followed by promises galore to “fix” what was broken with my Linkedin relationship and Groups and moreover; to create a Group Owner “forum” for quarterly “listen & learn” exchanges. All sounded rosy with such a significant breakthrough discussion. What happened next? Despite my never-ending, diligent chase since then (now almost a year) we’re still waiting for the first forum. And my Linkedin guardian angel with best intentions has mysteriously disappeared back into the clouds.

SWAMMING Upstream? Near the beginning of 2013 Linkedin decided (absent any consultation with Group Ownes) that SWAM was a great idea. They did not announce this new procedure to Group Owners or to LinkedIn membership at large. If you are blocked or blocked and deleted by any Group Manager/Owner, you are placed in Site-Wide Automatic Moderation (SWAM) in the rest of your groups. That means that each of your posts will be pended until someone in the Group’s Management team approves it. This can take days or weeks, depending on how involved the managers are, or, it may not happen at all.

This has created problems for Group Members, Managers and Owners. It may result in a loss of revenue or leads for those using Linkedin to conduct business, and difficulty maintaining connections. Participation in discussions in a timely manner becomes an impossible task. There is no way to reverse the procedure, and if you contact Linkedin “Customer Service” (apologies for the oxymoron), you will be told to contact each Group’s Owner/Managers and request that they remove you from moderation. And they can't tell you which Group triggered the moderation? For those with anywhere near the 50-Group limit, it has become a fishing expedition.

Many Group Owners still don’t know about SWAM, and people continue to have great difficulty getting themselves removed from moderation in all/most of their Groups. Being SWAM’d will even cause you to be placed in moderation in Groups you join AFTER you have been SWAM’d. On top of it all, we as Group Owners and our Manager who’ve spent years building top-notch communities are now spending an inordinate amount of time responding to “moderation” complaints (presuming we're the culprits), losing Group Members, and watching Group engagement decline swiftly. Quite frankly, we can’t defend that which is un-defendable any longer and we can't blame our Members for simply walking away.

RECOMMENDATIONS Unplugged? Remember when people actually gave long-form recommendations on Linkedin, back before relatives started endorsing you for skills they didn’t even understand? Now Linkedin prompts us to endorse people for skills they don’t even have, but it’s far easier to click “Endorse” than it is to actually edit what you are endorsing someone for! Adding to the confusion, many social media experts jumped on endorsements as a way to get someone’s attention. Endorse them for a few skills and show up in their notification stream as a way to engage them.

But LinkedIn is seeing dollar signs. Endorsements are behind the ability to target ads to people based on their skills. So the next time someone endorses you, remember this: your connections are now choosing what information Linkedin has about you, and advertisers are using that information to market to you. In today’s age of advertising data collection and privacy concerns, how do you feel about that?

RANKLED By Rankings? Remember in 2012 when LinkedIn notified users that they were in the top 10%, 5% or 1% of profiles based on how frequently their profiles were viewed? More recently, Linkedin has expanded the “who has viewed your profile” to include how you rank versus your network and your colleagues. Nothing like seeding a little competitive spirit behind a vanity metric to drive behavior!

CONNECTIONS Conundrum? In the past, connections on Linkedin represented a real connection, someone that could make an introduction or even provide a reference. LIONs (Linkedin Open Networkers, individuals who connect with anyone) and weak connections were the exception. Now Linkedin encourages you to connect with people you don’t know (or claim skills you don’t have) because “profile views matter.”

CONTENT Conundrum? Linkedin Signal and Linkedin Today were once great ways to discover interesting content. But now almost all I see in Linkedin Pulse is content published on Linkedin. Gone is the variety, the original content and the opportunity to discover new and interesting source. With an open publishing platform, it is even worse. I recently had five notifications of new posts on Linkedin. Three were cross-posted (I’d already seen the originals) and two were posts I had no interest in, from connections I value professionally but I never would subscribe to read their blog.

FACEBOOK Face-off? With large header images, the ability to tag users and even prompts to share your birthdate and marital status, there are more and more similarities between LinkedIn and Facebook. Users are responding by acting more and more like LinkedIn is Facebook, with “Eye Test” and “98% of people got this math problem wrong” updates invading the stream.

THE Final Countdown? Just when we thought it was safe to go back into our Groups, Linkedin has just launched the biggest overhaul to Groups in Linkedin history. And like every other major change (good or bad), they've launched it without any advance consultation with long-standing Group Owners – whom could tell them right upfront that certain of the changes will be an unmitigated disaster. Quietly mixed amongst all of the changes was the following “gem:”

"Conversations will now be posted instantly to a Group without the need for manager approval."

Speaking on behalf of the relatively small universe of genuine “quality” Groups remaining; we have all from the start moderated virtuallyevery discussion prior to it appearing within our Groups. We did this to ensure that an avalanche of spammy content and promotions wouldn’t greet our Members every morning. On a historical basis, a large percentage of such moderated posts have been rejected due to obvious spam/promotional nature, allowing quality content to remain in the forefront.

What does this significant change mean? Despite years of building quality communities, we anticipate an unfortunate “barrage” of irrelevant, uncontrolled and unrelenting daily spam/promotions. And rather than diligently “screen” and reject each such post, we will now be forced to do so “after the fact,” an exhaustive horse race to get to the spam before the spam settles onto our Discussion Boards. This also means that our unsuspecting, loyal Group Members (already disenchanted with the many other Linkedin changes and technical glitches) will now face the same barrage – adversely impacting their well-founded expectation of quality content – and likely their wavering desire to forge ahead within our Groups and indeed, on Linkedin altogether.

BAIT & Switch? We were all lured into the Linkedin world by promises of great content, great connections and a profession, client-driven network. The bigger the 800lb gorilla has become, the more arrogant, unresponsive and less beneficial it has become. We’re forced to spend more and more time on the platform, viewing more pages, contributing more data (including data about other people) and ultimately driving up Linkedin’s advertising revenue. At the same time though, LinkedIn is delivering less and less of what made it valuable to us in the first place. This may be working for the benefit of Linkedin and for LinkedIn marketers, but certainly not for us.

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NO DOUBT this disappointing and unfortunate saga will continue. For me, my fellow Group Owners, Group Managers and regrettably – our thousands of loyal Group Members, Linkedin has simply "lost its lustre."

What do you think? Are you still Linkedin or ready to "Link-out?"

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NOW WE NEED YOUR HELP: For the "greater good" of all Linkedin Groups and Members, I ask that you take a few minutes to read, comment on and most importantly – SHARE this Article across not only your Linkedin network & Groups, but all of your social media networks, as we need build all the visibility we can muster. Thank you for your help in getting the word out!

Read our Sequel

The Linkedin Groups Debacle: Time To Build A Bridge Over Troubled Waters?