#LockedOut of LinkedIn

"Stay up to date and grow your network"

For the past few years, I have spent a great deal of time building my LinkedIn Network, in order to connect, share and learn with colleagues, partners, vendors, customers, friends, prospects, leads, eLearning enthusiasts and other members that I find interesting.  LinkedIn advertises itself as the "World's Largest Professional Network" and encourages members to "stay up to date and grow your network".  If you navigate to "My Network" and "Connections" on LinkedIn, you will see something similar to the following:

"Stay up to date and grow your network" is an interesting statement.  To me, this means that LinkedIn encourages members to socialize, connect and grow their professional network.  Unfortunately, this is not entirely true.  What they conveniently forget to include in the LinkedIn User Agreement is that there is a Network Size Limit of 30,000 connections, which you will need to dig through the LinkedIn Help Area in order to find.  When I reached 30,000 connections, I was no longer able to accept new connection requests.  As of May 26, I am no longer able to send new connection requests, which has completely crippled my ability to "grow my network".  Yesterday, I received the following canned message from LinkedIn:

This message was sent out to every LinkedIn Member who currently has more than 30,000 connections.  Other long-time members, supporters and LinkedIn advocates with more than 100,000 connections, such as Zura Kakushadze and Steven Burda had their LinkedIn accounts shut down completely and number of connections reduced to 30,000 without warning or noticed from LinkedIn.  It's ironic to me that LinkedIn is targeting the exact people who promote, advocate and encourage others to use their network.  This is not the treatment that I would expect as a "valued LinkedIn member", who has been paying $600+ per annum for a Premium subscription and someone who encouraged my company to add LinkedIn Sales Navigator to our portfolio! 

 What is the difference between a connection and a follower?

LinkedIn offers two different means of interacting with another member, without paying for an InMail, which LinkedIn uses as a means of collecting additional revenue and allowing users to send unsolicited messages to other members.  Connecting with another member allows you to see the contact information that they have included in their user profile (e-mail address, phone number, etc.), but it also allows you to freely chat with them on LinkedIn without additional cost, endorse their skills and recommend their work.  Essentially, connecting with someone provides a two-way communication between members, whereas following someone is a one-way communication or broadcast.  By following someone, you will be notified of their updates, posts and other interactions on LinkedIn, but you will not have the interpersonal communication provided by being connected with them.  What LinkedIn fails to address in the e-mail they sent to me is what happens to the endorsements and recommendations from connections that are being converted to followers.  I suspect that they will all disappear.

Why would someone want so many connections?

For nearly 12 years, I have played a key role in international business development at Trivantis, a global leader in eLearning software solutions and developers of the Lectora content authoring software, CourseMill learning management system and ReviewLink content review application.  Over the years, I have been responsible for looking after business in every country on the planet at some point in time.  Currently, I oversee Trivantis business more than 100 countries worldwide.  Considering that Trivantis provides eLearning solutions to tens/hundreds of thousands of customers in nearly 150 countries globally, there is clearly a large group of people within our customer base that I intend to connect, share and learn with.  The 30,000 connection limit will restrict my ability to connect with the existing Trivantis customer base, not to mention others that I would like to add to our customer network.  Connecting, sharing, learning from others and "growing my network" is where I derive value from my connections.  LinkedIn is now impacting my ability to derive value from my network.

Recently, I created a new LinkedIn Group called #LockedOut to provide a forum for frustrated members to voice their concerns and identify issues that they are experiencing with the network on a daily basis, with expectation that LinkedIn and Microsoft will address these collective concerns and use feedback presented in the group to improve the system for the benefit of the entire community.  If you are experiencing similar issues, please join #LockedOut and voice your concerns.

Article Feedback from the Community and LinkedIn

(updated on July 29, 2016)

Over the past 30 days, this article has been viewed by 11,059 LinkedIn Members, liked by 406 members, commented on by 142 members and shared by 109 members.  A related LinkedIn post has received 1,375 likes and was commented on by 285 members and shared by 72 members.  Clearly, this article and other similar articles on this topic have received a substantial amount of feedback and support from the LinkedIn member community.

This article must have also caught the attention of LinkedIn, considering that I received the following message from LinkedIn Customer Support three days ago:

 I responded back to LinkedIn Customer Support as follows:

LinkedIn Customer Support responded back to me as follows:

While I certainly appreciate the fact that LinkedIn Customer Support took the time to engage me, I am still very frustrated that they purged more than 9,000 connections and an unknown number of endorsements and recommendations from my account, without my approval.  After several years of support and advocacy of LinkedIn, I would not expect this as a "valued LinkedIn member".

Also, LinkedIn lead us to believe that large networks were somehow impacting the performance of the system, therefore reducing all networks to 30K connections limit would somehow create an "optimal site experience".  Apparently this was not accurate at all (according to the last e-mail I received from LinkedIn Customer Support) and they simply wanted to standardize on a hard connection limit.  Considering that they allowed members to grow their number of connections well over 30K for several years, perhaps they should have instituted a "grandfather clause" for those who were affected, rather than purging valuable information from their accounts.

Now it's your turn to voice your opinion:  

How do you feel about LinkedIn limiting the number of connections you can have?

Do you feel that LinkedIn should have the right to forcefully shut down your account and limit your network without just cause?

Your feedback is valuable, so please leave a comment for others that read this article and feel free to like and/or share this post with anyone you feel may be interested.

Cheers!

Lance

Lance C. Healy |  Senior International Account Manager

Trivantis Corporation

Direct Phone and Fax:  863-858-8605

[email protected] | Trivantis.com

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