The LinkedIn Network: LinkedIn Sells Out
I really admire the guys at LInkedIn -- they've built an amazingly far-reaching social network in a little bit under three years.
But part of that reason that LinkedIn was so successful in getting people, including me, to sign up was the promise that "We will never rent or sell your personal information to third parties..."
Well, that's not true any longer, as The LinkedIn
Network makes it pretty clear you can contact anybody in the 4.8 mm person directory as long as you pay LinkedIn to do it.
Now, to be fair, the quote above in toto is "We will never rent or sell your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes." [emphasis added]
I can't help but feel this is Orwlleian misdirection, a little bit like when the rules on Animal Farm are changed from "No animal shall sleep in a bed" to "No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets."
I know the good people at LinkedIn believe this distinction "for marketing purposes" absolves them of any blame for the pitches that come in InMail, but what could possibly be the reason for somebody paying to contact you other than that they believe they can extract value from the connection? And what would we call the process of paying for communicating a message to a third party, but marketing? Any legally clever words or constructions that twist and turn around this simple truth won't make it so.
I feel that way, and perhaps others won't.
(For full disclosure, TheLadders.com has indeed launched something called TheLadders.com Professional Network, which allows recruiters and professionals to connect to each other. But as it hasn't the ability to invite contacts, connect to friends, or connect to friends of friends, it is not what would commonly be considered a social network, and we wouldn't really think of it as competitive with LinkedIn.)
