LinkedIn?s group manager?s stage online protest
Group manager?s on B2B social network LinkedIn protest about policy changes
Manager?s of business to business (B2B) social network
LinkedIn?s Groups have rallied together to forge an online protest about changes to its terms of service. Specifically that they are no longer able to view and download group member?s email addresses.
The petition was placed on
Petition Online and has received 339 signatures at the time of writing. A request for group managers to sign the digital petition landed in many inboxes today from Mike Crosson, group manager of the Social Media Marketing group on LinkedIn, with the following message:
?LinkedIn recently made some policy changes that adversely affects the ability for group managers to communica
te with the group. Specifically, they have disabled the group email list download function. This means I can no longer send the Social Media Marketing email newsletter, nor can I communicate directly with you expect through this once-a-week announcement.? Cross continues, ?These new policies have totally hamstrung us group mangers.?
The petition states that the functionality was removed without prior notice on 20 March 2009. The petitioners complain that LinkedIn has failed to respond to hundreds of comments and requests on various groups, including the "LinkedIn Groups Product Forum" a group created by Linkedin to enter conversation with group managers.
The popular business social networking?s
Groups Terms of Service appear to remain unchanged as yet: ?You warrant to LinkedIn Corporation that you have the right to provide LinkedIn with a list of the names of your Group Members. Additionally, you warrant to LinkedIn that, should you choose to provide LinkedIn with the email addresses of your Members, you have the right to do so.?
Some of the complaints accompanying the
petition include:
- ?This is the wrong directions to go in...give us more control, not less.?
- ?On a community site, one would think that community input would be a greater priority. In order to ensure that both group owners and group members remain loyal to LinkedIn, I strongly encourage you to reinstate this important functionality.?
- ?This new policy is hampering my abilities to grow my group at a grassroots level.?
- ?I don't understand why you would want to limit the value of LinkedIn groups.?
- ?With this policy change LinkedIn has effectively stunted the efficient use and value of our group.?
There are currently more than
265,700 groups on LinkedIn.