The New LinkedIn: Better Business or Big Brother?

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock somewhere in the middle of nowhere, you have heard of LinkedIn.

It’s one of the largest and most popular professional social networks on the planet. Recently, LinkedIn relaunched their website with a completely fresh and friendly perspective. It looks and feels so much more organic and “now” or contemporary. Upgrades to searching, commenting, connecting, and much more have solidified it’s place as the “black and white” tuxedo of the Social Media world.

With progress comes unexpected “surprises” that most people are not aware of or even know how to ask to become aware. One of which could be considered disturbing to some who value their personal privacy and to others who could most likely care less. Are you asking yourself, “What is the “surprise” you speak of, Andrew?”

Well, here it is.

I recently noticed that LinkedIn now tracks your every click. We all know that every action of a click means something, to someone, somewhere. Here’s the catch…when you surf their site and you click to read someone’s profile or do anything…the URL will change. So far doesn’t sound too odd or off…right? I mean, technically speaking, every page you visit on any site is a unique URL that is within another URL. Well, watch what happens when you check out another person’s profile just after viewing something on a previous profile page you were on. The URL now includes that action as part of the URL and so on and so forth. So eventually LinkedIn will be able to backtrack everything you do on their site. Concerned yet? Many are.

I completely understand why LinkedIn would want to have it this way. A great reason would be to keep track of Spammers that have recently infiltrated LinkedIn like termites to wood. LinkedIn would be able to see how many profiles someone has looked at and how often they are sending email out to people outside their own network. Spamming is becoming such a problem on LinkedIn because anyone can open an account and claim to be someone from a company that either exists or doesn’t exist. It’s really getting bad and if you are on LinkedIn as often as I am…you’ll know what I am talking about. It’s terrible.

Another good reason they are doing this, in my opinion, is to help out with relevance and ratios. Just because a profile has the right keywords now, doesn’t mean it’ll be relevant and you will show up on the first page of LinkedIn anymore. (again this is only my theory.) It does make sense if you think about it. An algorithm based on keyword search, click through ratios, and possibly even amount of time spent on that page. Many new aspects of ephemeral data are becoming more and more relevant to LinkedIn.

So it’s up to you the viewer to decide whether this new LinkedIn layout and functionality makes for better business or for a Big Brother complex. I suppose it all depends on what side of the aisle you are on: are you on LinkedIn to indeed link in with other professionals or are you a Spammer on the verge of getting caught? heh.

One thing is for sure, LinkedIn is an amazing Social Media tool, that when used properly can be incredibly profitable.

[Side note:] I have suggestions for LinkedIn and how they can make their site even more incredible.

1. Live Chat software in realtime to connect with that person whose profile you are viewing.

2. Private Conference chat rooms where people need a code to get in.

3. ClickToTalk technology, where someone can click a connect button and that person would be called on their cell phone or work phone.

The benefits to these ideas include: Instantly discuss ideas, presentations, make deals, ask questions, customer service, etc.