I want to start out this post by saying I love LinkedIn, the social networking site that allows people to connect, thus creating the coveted connections that can help you build your career or business.
That said, there are some problems people need to be aware of.
Recently, I’ve been getting requests by people to link with me and when I go to LinkedIn I get a message saying the message was not intended for me.It happened a couple of times so I decided to check it out. Turns out, some how I created two LinkedIn accounts. Don’t ask me how the heck I did it. I think one day I tried to connect with a person and when it wouldn’t accept my password I inadvertently created another account. I’m guessing at this. I don’t know for sure.
Well, it’s created a bit of a mess for me. There are now two Eve Tahmincioglus and they’re both me!
A bunch of people have asked me to get linked and I never responded to them. Why? Because it was part of this other mystery account.
I figured it would be easy to fix the problem. I would just cancel the other account.
Well, there is no function to actually cancel a LinkedIn account that I could find. I ended up on a page that asked me to email my issue to a LinkedIn customer service person.
I sent the email yesterday and this is the response I got back:
We are in receipt of your question, this is an automated acknowledgement. A service professional will review and respond to your inquiry.
Haven’t heard anything yet.
I started asking other people if they’ve had any LinkedIn issues and here’s an interesting one that you should all be aware of.
Mark Amtower, a consultant and CEO Coach, said he’s seen a couple of instances where profiles were altered but not by the person in the profile.
And, this one Amtower shared is freaky:
Once a person I knew was listed as an employee of mine (I have no
employees - it’s just me and my wife), and I am certain he did not add it.
He is a senior person at a BIG company. It would have been embarrassing for
him to have someone from his company spot a glitch like that. When contacted,
LinkedIn had no real explanation.
Yuck, that could really cause career hell.
I think we all need to go back and check our profiles and also check all the connections we have and make sure we’re not listed as working for someone we don’t.
These technological advances are great. I love them all. But I learned a good lesson. Even though humans are not involved in much of this stuff, mistakes can still happen. Or should we call them “techno glitches”.
And for all of you out there who haven’t heard back from me as far as accepting your LinkedIn invitation, please send me another one. On second thought, why don’t you all wait a couple of weeks until LinkedIn fixes this glitch. I’ll keep you posted.
March 12th, 2008 at 10:33 am
I tried to cancel my fast company “social network” account and there is no option either. It’s very frustrating because it impacts your Google standing.
March 12th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Eve,
There are many problems with LinkedIn such as ratings for emails from recipients I pay a premium monthly to be able to communicate with. These ratings can cause the LinkedIn management to cancel my ability to send out emails until I respond to an InMail query. What if I was really out of line and annoying folks with spam about cheap drugs or male enhancement products? I would still be able to do it by replying to a generic InMail. I am a recruiter basically and also use the site to generate new business and in both cases it works well for me. I specialize so I created a group to allow those Cisco certified professionals to view each other and allow me to survey them for companies around the globe. Some recruiters hover around the periphery of my work in LinkedIn and tried to spam my contacts and I have found it annoying. In LinkedIn it is all or nothing sometimes. I can keep my contacts from viewing each other or I can stop them from viewing each other. I cannot be selective and block one or two individuals though. Then there are the LinkedIn users who don’t read the directions and end up allowing LinkedIn to access their email database where it then automatically spams everyone in the list to be added to the sender’s contacts. LinkedIn grew huge on the backs of those folks who did not have a clue. But some of us have been able to use it for a lot of good business. Soon Monster will be hurt by the social networking phenomenon since many job seekers are learning to use these more easily.
March 12th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Eve
glitches abound on the web, esp in these social netowrks. I am going to cancel my ENTIRE Facebook acct because most of the people who want to connect to me are younger than my 14 yr old daughter. And I don’t want people to write on my wall. Today I got an invitation to attend a palmistry webinar. Not sure what good that would do me in the marketing to government industry.
BUT glitches and all, I like LinkedIn and will concentrate my online metworking there.