We told you about the business networking site LinkedIn last January in a post called Social Networking Gets a Power Suit.
Today there’s news of some changes to the system, ones that will hopefully ease the frustrations of members getting spammed with numerous messages from those in the network to whom they have little connection (usually recruiters).
This story on ClickZ has more on the changes, which include the launch of a paid service called “LinkedIn for Groups” which charges anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000 for the first year. The service should be valuable to conference planners, who will use it to help schedule meetings and plan follow-up communications for after the events. A premium subscription service for “power” members (that 12% of members who conduct over 80% of the site’s searches) will roll out in August, though pricing hasn’t been disclosed.
SiliconBeat takes a bold stance, breaking down LinkedIn’s audience into “promiscuous” (recruiters, connection request spammers, those trying to use the system for un-targeted marketing) and “celibate” (those with smaller, more tightly controlled networks) users and getting at the heart of the problem the company is trying to fix:
“Celibates often reject the majority of incoming requests from the promiscuous – call them quasi-spammers – seeking to be a direct connection in their network. The reason is because when you let that loose spammer into your network, LinkedIn’s database has no way of knowing whether the spammer is really a close contact or not. So LinkedIn might then use that spammer as a go-between when you’re making an important request to meet with that crucial second- or third-degree contact. Which weakens the network.”
This week’s announcements by LinkedIn are encouraging, but I’m still a little skeptical. Monster.com has some of the same problems. Just because you charge more for your service and add some privacy controls doesn’t mean you can keep the riff raff out. This is particularly true of recruiters, where the high profit margins make it an easy justification for firms to buy premium subscriptions and privacy hoops just mean a little more legwork and email trickery. Read more.
Erin,
I think it’s important to not lump all recruiters into one bucket. Some are actively using LinkedIn in the intended manner (leveraging their close connections). Others signed up with a single connection, conducted some searches and did’t find many candidates that were the right fit (since their one connection only gave them a network of a few thousand or ten thousand people to search). A third found great candidates right away and uderstood how they can increase their search space by adding connections and connected to as many people as possible (and recruiters are in touch with lots of people, and so some have really huge connection counts by the nature of their profession–all links that were accepted by the recipient).
InMail is designed as a solution particuarly for the last two groups–for the second, it allows recruiters to see immediate value in LinkedIn; for the third, it reduces their need to include weak connections on their list.
As recruiters started using LinkedIn quite heavily, a handful of users complained per month about unwanted phone calls. Not a big deal, but we wanted to head off the issue as quickly as possible. Most of our users actually feel it’s quite beneficial to get a job offer every once in a while–even if you don’t pursue the offer, it can be helpful in terms of salary and promotion negotiations at your own company, or you can do a former colleague who who is open to a better job a favor by introducing him or her to the recruiter who found you on LinkedIn.
-Konstantin
Co-founder, LinkedIn