from LinkedInTalks

LinkedIn Management on Broadcasting Messages

Konstantin Guericke 1

Please remember to only email people who know you well and who are likely to want to help you. My guess is that not all of your 6,000 contacts are going to be thrilled about receiving a promotional mass mailing. If more than a few of your connections report you for violation of your LinkedIn user agreement, Duncan will be forced to act, which could include closure of your LinkedIn account.

You may want to ping Marc Freedman about his experience.

As a reminder, as LinkedIn members, we all have agreed to not use LinkedIn to connect with people who don’t know us and to later send them unsolicited promotional mass-mailings. What you are doing, is going outside of the communication mechanisms provided, which is not allowed if you acquired the contact through LinkedIn. We don’t pro-actively seek out violators, but we take complaints very seriously since we know that for each person who takes proactive action to report a violation of the user agreement, there are usually dozens who are offended, but didn’t take action.

It’s best to only use the communications mechanism provided by LinkedIn. When people connect with you on LinkedIn, they generally expect that communication goes through LinkedIn.

If you take the risk of going outside of LinkedIn, please be sure to only contact those people you didn’t first find on LinkedIn, who didn’t first found you on LinkedIn and who you are certain will feel that their connection with you is not primarily in the context of LinkedIn. Further, I recommend you pick no more than 200 or 300 people who are already customers and where you have a clear indication from past conversations that they would be pleased to help you and pass on the word. That is much safer than a mass-mailing to 6,000 people, when there are bound to be people among those 6,000 who see this as spamming and not something they were expecting as a result of connecting to you on LinkedIn.

Again, if you value having access to LinkedIn, my strong recommendation is to not go outside of the communication systems we provide and to use those communication mechanisms we do provide responsibly, especially if you have hundreds of connections or some connections where you are not sure how willing they are to take the time and risk their reputation to help you.

Here is the experience of someone who used an existing communication system irresponsibly:

http://www.lukehohmann.com/blog/?p=40

Konstantin Guericke 2

Anybody using the LinkedIn communication methods and abides by the user agreement has nothing to worry about. However, sending promotional mass-mailings outside of LinkedIn is not allowed and is not a practice I recommend because whenever people have sent mass mailings, it invariably draws complaints. Duncan has more experience with this, so he’d be the best person to contact for questions regarding the user agreement.

When people accept a connection, they are not agreeing to sign up for promotional mass-mailings, and certainly not outside of LinkedIn. If someone contacts people his connections know through LinkedIn, this is OK since that is what members have agreed to. If they find it awkward to make an intro for him because they really don’t know him or because they don’t see the value for their connection, breaking the connection is indeed the appropriate thing to do.

I see situations where it might be appropriate to send something to all connections, but we currently only allow this for a limited set of use cases, like job notifications and profile updates. As we learn more, we may open this up to other use cases, but the design would have to be done very carefully, so people don’t feel spammed. As you know, there has already been some discussion here on the list because some people feel the job notification and profile update functions don’t have the appropriate spam controls.

Here is the section of the user agreement that tells members what actions they are protected from—I’ve italicized the relevant section:

-Konstantin

Konstantin Guericke 3

Jonathan,

You’re thinking along the correct lines. The reasons it’s not allowed to send promotional mass-mailings to your connections outside of LinkedIn (or by misusing an existing LinkedIn feature) is that it’s not part of the “contract” that’s being made when getting connected on LinkedIn.

I’m sure we’d have a lot fewer members (and fewer connections among members) if people felt that joining LinkedIn or accepting a connection meant getting on each other’s email mailing lists.

If people opt-into being on your promotional mass-mailing list, then it’s OK. However, sending them such a message is already sending them something promotional in nature. So, I recommend adding a link to your email signature that says something like “would you like to join my promotional mass-mailing list?” and a way to sign up for it—that way, you are not sending our a big email blast, but people have the option of opting in whenever they receive personal one-on-one communication from you. You could also add such a link to your blog—as long as you are not pushing out the message through a mass-mailing, it should be OK. But you have to very clear, so that people know what to expect, or you are likely to get complaints because people feel misled--just as we get complaints when people expect other members to use the LinkedIn-provided communication mechanisms.

-Konstantin

Konstantin Guericke 4

If you are only connecting with people you know well, then there is indeed no problem. They will probably be happy to hear about your book, your startup, etc.—especially if the message is not promotional in nature. What you describe doesn’t sound like list building or spam.

When you have more than a few hundred connections (like myself) and you blast a canned message to all of them, it’s likely that someone will complain if you don’t carefully pick people you contact. The more connections you have, the more careful you should be. What we want is to avoid people using LinkedIn to build promotional mailing lists and people not wanting to join LinkedIn because they are afraid of landing on someone’s mass-mailing list.

LinkedIn has grown so quickly because people like the protections we offer in the user agreement and a user experience where incoming messages are generally of value to them. We enforce the user agreement not to make money (in fact, we typically annoy active uses, many of whom are subscribers), but to keep our promise to our users and to provide a high-value, low-noise user experience.

People hold LinkedIn responsible if it seems the message comes out of a context of LinkedIn (whether or not LinkedIn is mentioned in the message or the message is sent through LinkedIn). A membership agreement is only valuable if it is followed, and members have a right to expect that we will follow up on complaints about violations.

The argument of “they can just decline the invitation or they can just break the connection” is an opt-out approach, which is not what the LinkedIn brand stands for. Sending invitations to people who don’t know you or spending promotional mass mailings to connections is not OK. We don’t pro-actively police that, but if we find a pattern of abuse based on complaints from other members, we act on that, whether or not the offender is a paying customer.

-Konstantin

Duncan Work

It is so interesting to see all of these well thought-out

perspectives. The perspectives cluster around "it should be OK to use

LinkedIn to broadcast messages to my own connections." And "There are

times when it's definitely not OK." I have to admit that all these

positions are really reasonable, and all include important

distinguishing nuances.

Here's my perspective as someone at LinkedIn who has to constantly

deal with many different perspectives of users in protecting privacy.

Except for the really blatant abuses which I don't see anyone here

arguing in favor of, I try and want to honor all of these perspectives

as best as I can (as do all of us at LinkedIn).

First, I can't really offer "hard clairity".

But I do know that the fact that there are *so many perspectives* when

you get 6.7 million people using one set of tools, makes it impossible

to let everyone make up their own rules.

How I would love that. As many here have said, LinkedIn should be

self-regulating. It is somewhat, but not without a clash of

perspectives. More sophistication will come – i.e., better, smarter

filters – but we're not there yet.

Within this honestly well-reasoned discussion here in MLPF, there are

important perspectives missing, or at least seriously

under-represented. These are the millions of LinkedIn users who are

simply super busy with their lives and professions, and whose

professions *don't* depend on sophisticated marketing and

communications techniques. People who are not really "networkers",

but who nevertheless have important networks and can see the value in

being able to use them better. Yet these are also people who already

get way too many unsolicited marketing messages and solicitations in

their email inboxes and who have low tolerance or respect for any

community that increases the flow of those.

We at LinkedIn do not want to see these members turned away by the

threat of a new source of unsolicited messages that don't interest

them. We want them to become more engaged in LinkedIn, not less

engaged. We want them to figure out how to use LinkedIn's most

valuable features, like how to search for someone, not have to figure

out how to delete a connection. For that to happen, we have to make

sure that they stick around long enough to figure out why and how

LinkedIn can be so valuable.

Even though these millions have very different perspectives than many

of the people in this forum, I think many of you realize that it's in

everyone's interest – including yours – to keep them in LinkedIn and

help them become more active.

So, how do we do that, and how does that affect the rules for using

LinkedIn?

I think Konstantin has already answered that very well. To summarize:

When you use LinkedIn's messaging systems, stay as close as you can to

their intended uses. E.g., when sending profile updates, use them for

that: to let people know that you have a new job or title, not to

sell them on a new product or to solicit their help in growing your

business. And if you have thousands of connections, or even

hundreds, and you know that there are lots of those who don't really

know you, then consider not including those in your update.

If you want to solicit the help of your friends to grow your business

or to contribute to a cause you care about, then send them a message

outside of LinkedIn and that doesn't mention LinkedIn.

We *will* continue to add ways for you to communicate with your

connections, but each one will have guidelines; and we are also trying

to add more sophisticated "self-correcting" feedback and reputation

systems into these messaging systems to reduce the potential for harm

to the network.

Thanks for your help.

Duncan

Duncan Work

LinkedIn Privacy Officer