LinkedIn

Wiki Page about LinkedIn

1. Links to Comments about LinkedIn
2. Talk about LinkedIn
1. Feature Requests
2. General Comments
3. Comments from Reid

Using LinkedIn page

• Connections - Your connections are your trusted friends and colleagues, both those you have invited and those who invite you. Your connections invite their own connections to form your network.

• Your Network - Your Network is the group of members you can reach through your connections. Each connection you invite grows your network. You send requests along the links in your network, and others send requests to you along the same links.

• Requests - When you have a project or opportunity you need help with, search the network for a person who can help you. Detail the project or opportunity in a request for contact, and ask one of your connections to forward it on to that person.

Jennifer needs to hire a corporate communications director. Jennifer finds the ideal member in a LinkedIn search: George.

Jennifer creates a request for contact and asks Duc, her trusted connection, to forward it.

Duc forwards the request to his friend Alice, and Alice to her former employee George.

Each person along the way introduces the opportunity or project -- and the person -- to the next. George agrees to talk to Jennifer. Jennifer and George, now talking via email, discuss the communications director position.

Links to Comments about LinkedIn

• "LinkedIn Launches!" - Joi Ito (May 7, 2003)

• "(Re-)enter the power law..." - Clay Shirky (May 6, 2003)

• "linkedin: first impressions" - Liz Lawley (May 7, 2003)

• "Social sites hits and misses" - Adam Greenfield (May 7, 2003)

• "Mayfield-Shirky Cage Match" - Clay Shirky (May 8, 2003)

• "Considering LinkedIn vs. Friendster" - Jeremy Zawodny (May 8, 2003)

• "Linkedin - Social Software "review" - Jonathan Peterson (May 8, 2003)

• "Web of Trust" - Ross Mayfield (May 9, 2003)

• "A little side bet" - Liz Lawley (May 13, 2003)

• "Linked In?" - ButtUgly (May 14, 2003)

• "LinkedIn or locked out?" - Adam Greenfield (May 12,2003)

• "I thought I was already your friend?" - Marc's Voice (May 9th, 2003)

• Social Network Fragments "An academic study with a theoretical foundation similiar to LinkedIn" - see Faceted Id/entity for full theoretical background

• "On Liz's Bet" - DanahBoyd (May 14, 2003)

• Four social networking sites compared - DanHartung (May 31, 2003)

Talk about LinkedIn

• Hey Reid! What do you think about the "ASN (Augmented Social Networks)" white paper? They're calling for interop between reputation systems. Surprise, surprise! - Marc Canter

• Marc: good seeing you @ the conference. The ASN white paper is great, and I highly recommend it to people. A few thoughts on it.

• While the ASN rightly acknowledges that corporations do not intrinsically pursue selfless civic or individual goods, they do pursue those interests (civic and individual) when they align with the corporate good. Most notably, when a corporation cannot force an individual to buy a product and thereby command an extreme price (e.g. a monopoly), a corporation is aligned with the individual good, since the corporation wants to sell its product to the individual -- and can only do that if the individual believes that it is good. -- Marc: Yes - convincing those damm humans to buy things or subscribe certainly seems to be the corporations main goal. But doing good things for humans can help build a corps brand, cred and overall rep - while using the same dollars they'd normally use for glossy ads, billboards or trade show booths.

• There are only three types of self-sustaining organizations today: governments, religions, and corporations. Two other types of organizations -- armies, non-profits -- are not self-sustaining. Self-sustaining means that you don't fundamentally live on the charity of others. Non-self-sustaining organizations always simply consume productivity for their cause. (Religion, as a self-sustaining organization, clearly depends upon the religion; when it owns property, it acts as a corporation; it generally "sells" spiritual salvation, potentially also acting as a corporation. Likewise, armies are self-sustaining when they run the government -- usually a very bad state of affairs. Some argue that governments are simply consumptive; I disagree since they provide the marketplace for business, the education of the citizenry, etc.) In the case of infrastructure, I think that society must have a self-sustaining organization run it. I'm unaware of any infrastructure that has been successfully run outside a self-sustaining organization. -- Marc: So does that mean that all standards development must be done by the W3C or other existing bodies? Standards have previously evolved two ways: completely through the market-place or via the kismet combination of research, timing and the marketplace. Either way - each standard has evolved uniquely - so I don't believe it's useful debating on what sort of organization will facilitate something like the ASN. By clearly stating the ideals of the ASN, we now have a litmus to compare future efforts to, so that something like our Community Commons can happen. Perhaps not. Whatever happens, may the best ants win.

• So, in the case of persistent identity, brokered relationships, and other infrastructure, my view would be that it needs a government, a corporation, or a government regulated corporation. If you can make the business interests sufficiently align in a persistent way with civic and individual goods, then your (by far) most efficient way is a corporation. If you cannot, then you need one of the other two. (And government, by efficiency, is always the last choice -- since the organization and deployment of capital is one of the most important aspects of efficiency and self-sustaining.) -- Marc: Ah, so now I get to tell you about the Identity Commons. It's a chaordicly forming organization, based upon the principles of Dee Hocks Chaordic Commons. So we're (the IC) gonna try and put some 'wrapper' around some standards and help facilitate a coordinated effort around the ASN. Wish us luck. We'll CERTAINLY be drafting some sort of........ MetaReputationAPI....... eventually.

• Now, open source standards and interoperability. First question: does this mean that it can be be run by a non-self sustaining organization? I would argue no, since it needs the ongoing development of the right features, maintenance, marketing for deployment, customer service, etc. This is one of the reasons that (very regretfully, I might add) that I'm not one of the people that thinks open source software sounds the death knell for commercial software. -- Marc: So let's imagine that a bunch of open source projects actually got coordinated and worked together, maybe in the way the ASN describes, or more like what Mitch Kapor imagines or maybe it's organized by Linus Torvalds and Doc Searls. Whatever - the coordination happens. Now let's imagine that interoperability flows between entire on-line communities as smoothly as Joi's RSS feeds slide into your aggregator or as those credit card transactions come pouring into the PayPal bank account. This sort of nirvana is completely possible. It's almost off-the-shelf technology, it's just getting folks working together - that's the trick. But you and I know that only people who get paid - REALLY - do what you tell them to do. If they're volunteering or donating time and assets, AT BEST you'll get a loosely federated conglomeration. But maybe that's enough. The current world of software distribution and pricing is corrupt. It's going down hard. But we know how long it took the dinosaurs to die off. And in the mean time, the small furry creatures survived by getting out from under their foots - as the dinosaurs slowly stepped onto the ground.

• Second question: can reputation be run on an open standards way? In part, yes. Like a web-certificate authority. However, each authority (imho) needs to be a self-sustaining organization for all of the reasons above. -- Marc: Agreed

• Third question: what does LinkedIn think about open standards reputation? I think that this is an example where the corporate self-interest aligns well with individual interest. If there is a prevalent, or used, open-source standard for reputation, then LinkedIn will want to support it in order to make its customers happy. (Now, my personal view from above, is that the only way that sufficient capital will be deployed to build, market, and maintain a reputation system will be through a corporation or a government.) Likewise, if there is a particular application which it would make LinkedIn customers happy, the corporation is motivated to provide it. Now, the tricky question. -- Marc: Coolio. I saw you talking to Duncan Work today - (NetDeva) and hopefully you know of what Henri Poole and Affero is. There's plenty to think about. I gotta tell yah how happy I am to hear this! It's gonna make me support LinkedIn even more and tell even more people about it and invite even more into my network. I've made about five good connections so far. Just tweak the search engine so Joi and you don't come up #1 & #2 in every search result. It's embarassing!

• There are places where the answer to the third question becomes a balance of goods between the corporation and the individual. It's better for the individual if everything was provided for free. The problem is that a self-sustaining organization needs to provide some things for free (e.g. establish good relations, offer value) and other things for charge (e.g. be self-sustaining.) It's perfectly possible that LinkedIn will make its reputation data available to individuals for free and corporations for a charge, for example. Personally, I think that this is an example of an acceptable compromise for maximizing individual and corporate good, because otherwise it is likely you would have neither. -- Marc: Right on brother - we're in sync! I have this notion - which I call 'pay for usage'. Dave Winer has been talking about how software shouldn't be free. Joi chimed in as well. I don't think there's gonna be a problem coming up with models to sustain corporations. The fun part is watching these models unfold.

• My discussion doesn't cover civic good very well. Civics are seriously broken in our country, indeed most. I think that one of the serious problems confronting the slow decay of civics and social culture in our country comes from a mis-identification of capitalism. I think that we take perhaps the best technology ever invented (capitalism) and make it into a philosophy, e.g. the logos of the meaning of life. In my view, this is one of the deepest problems in our civic society today, and I'm giving a lot of thought as to how to help fix it both as an individual and systemically. I don't think that the answer is open-source technology, because I think (sadly) that only a limited number of people are simply waiting for their opportunity to participate and that technology will suddenly open the floodgates. (I think that there are some, and moveon.org is a great example of it.) I'll write more on civics if I have anything useful to say on it.

-- Marc: I actually agree with you here - on both accounts. Whether it's through a new kind of emergent democracy or MoveOn activism - this upcoming election will mark the beginning of a new era in politics. And as far as a full, complete win of open source over conventional software - clearly Microsoft ain't going away and the all mighty buck has the tendency to win out - eventually. So as I said in my speech today - it's about balancing idealism with reality. I really think (at this point) the only way to promulgate new standards is via the open standards approach, as opposed to waiting for Microsoft or some standard organizations. We never waited for anybody at MacroMind (Macromedia) and look how far it got us.



• -- Reid Hoffman

• -- Marc Canter

Feature Requests

• Create physical invitation cards that I can pass out at conferences -- JoiIto 2003-05-20

• Allow easy searching of people in my direct network -- JoiIto 2003-05-20

• Allow bookmarking of search results -- DanHartung 5/31

• Allow easy browsing of my network by city or category -- DanHartung 5/31

• Allow export of information of people in my direct network in some common format like XML -- JoiIto 2003-05-20

• Integrate into Outlook -- BarakBerkowitz

• Put a request button on all profile pages, even people directly connected to me -- BarakBerkowitz

• Put invite and request buttons "above the fold" and on the same line -- BarakBerkowitz

• "suggest match" feature -- JoiIto 2003-05-20, Yes! RossMayfield

• Open it up - support a MetaReputationAPI - share the wealth -- Marc Canter

• Marc: we should add this to our discussion, because I would be happy to do this if there's an application to support the investment. - RGH 2003-06-08 09:58:00 JST

• Allow users to specify more than one "primary industry" -- LizLawley 2003-05-21 09:11:00 JST

• Yes, sorry, this was really broken in our first release. - RGH 2003-06-08 09:58:00 JST

• Allow users to create different contact profiles for different purposes. Business opportunities could have one "public face", job prospects another. -- DanHartung 5/31

• Provide finer levels of distinction within contacts (see general comments below) -- LizLawley 2003-05-21 09:11:00 JST

• Getting this right will be hard, but we'll try. - RGH 2003-06-08 09:58:00 JST

• Better Sorting. Sorting results by the number of connections isn't as useful as sorting on the size of the network, and should be an option for the 'Connections' tab. Sorting by name should also be an option for the 'Search' and 'Network' tab. -- MichaelBernstein

• Better Searching. Sometimes I want to make contact with a specific person, or want to find out whether a specific person is already in the network (inviting a person that is already in the network is simpler). -- MichaelBernstein

• Better reporting. I'd like to be able to get summary metadata on what people have done in the system (forwarded requests, made requests, answered requests, etc.). Someone who never forwards requests is clearly less valuable a contact for me. Similarly, someone who gets many connection invites but rejects most of them is less likely to want an invite from me. -- MichaelBernstein

• Better Routing. If multiple routes to a person exist, I'd like to be able to select the one that I think is most likely to work, or at least select from among my connections the best starting point. -- MichaelBernstein

• Notify Me When feature. Let me know when someone new appears in a search result I've bookmarked -- say, Telecommunications business in Chicago. This way I don't have to fruitlessly check it daily. -- DanHartung 5/31

• Great feature list; we'll integrate this into our product plan. Hopefully you'll like the other features too, since some of them will be prioritized above these.

General Comments

Comment from LizLawley, updated 2003-05-21 08:26:48 JST

danah boyd posted some interesting comments on her blog, which I've added to the links above. The part about women being "notoriously high self-monitors" rings true for me. I'd like to be able to see, for example, what path something will take before it goes out--particularly when there's more than one possible path.

• Joi tells me that it's acceptable Wiki etiquette to intersperse comments, so in the interest of expediency for dialogue, i'll comment per issue.

• LinkedIn has both individual and corporate reasons for not wanting to reveal the path. The corporate reason is obvious, in that the path is where we add the most value and so can try to build a business model around it. However, the individual part is also very significant. Personally, I wouldn't enter my best contacts ("celebrities" as you will) unless I knew that other people couldn't browse my connection to them. I don't want to be harrassed about providing a connection. Likewise, one of the problems that we're going to face quickly is the social grace of saying both "yes" and "no" to a a connection invitation. We'll all have some people that say "linke to me" where we neither want to say "yes" or "no." In our current design, you'll be able to say both "yes" (e.g. we should up in each other's list of connections) and "no" (e.g. we do not exchange networks, and contact requests do not flow.) In order to keep that private, we keep the entire chain private. Also note, that people's outlooks are in fact private today. I think that if people could publish their outlooks, very few would. In order to potentially gain a great deal of value (a discovered trusted connection that would otherwise have failed), we tweak it just a bit to have general visibility (i.e. "all of the people that I'm connected to") not specific visibility (i.e. who is LizLawley connected to.)

• However, I totally acknowledge your point -- both for everyone, since the browser wants to see the connection list, and for women, who are generally much more attuned to the social nuances and much stronger self-monitors. So, I'm on a serious hunt how to upgrade the UI and feature list to provide this within the constraints above. It's important to me, and to the business, to appeal equally to both genders.

• I will add that we have at least one design for selected specific visibility (how people are connected to each other) on the drawing board.

- RGH 2003-06-08 09:58:00 JST

I'd also like to be able to differentiate between (at the minimum) two types of contacts--those whom I'm willing to receive referrals from, and those whom I'm willing to have make referrals on my behalf. There are far more in the first category than the second. I'm more than happy, for example, to have Meg Hourihan or Anil Dash send someone to me. But since I don't have extensive working relationships with either one, I'm not sure I'd want them to be the first line of introduction for me to someone else--for that, I'd be more comfortable with someone like Joi or Clay Shirky or someone I've worked more closely with. That ties into picking the path, as well. (And I just saw Katherine's comments, below, regarding drawing finer distinctions--with which I agree wholeheartedly.)

• We all know some of the design constraints - if it's too complicated, e.g. your average white collar person couldn't use it, then we might as well not build it.

• We also wanted, at least in the beginning, to keep all of the links bi-directional and symmetric. We are concerned about the free loading problem, e.g. people who want to use other people's networks but not offer their own. (It's the self-centered approach after all, and there are a number of them out there.) So, we thought that we would settle on a network (yes, a subset) that was all of the people that people felt that they could do both.

• So, when we figure out how to do this, we'd be more than happy to increment this.

• We do have some thoughts that we're working on. E.g. we will enable a version of your first category at some point.

- RGH 2003-06-08 09:58:00 JST

I meet a lot of people. My full contact list has well over a thousand names. (Which makes even entering it into a tool such as LinkedIn problematic, much less maintaining it once it's there.) Obviously not all of those contacts are equally valuable or trustworthy. Nor am I equally valuable to all of them. For a networking tool to be valuable to me, it needs to be able to draw much finer distinctions than simply "in" or "out." -- KatherineDerbyshire

• I'm curious: is it not valuable, even if it only applies to a subset of your network? E.g. I didn't invite in everyone I know, but rather only the people who I would introduce to other members of my professional network in the right circumstances.

- RGH 2003-06-08 09:58:00 JST

See my comments below about weak ties. I don't know who I would "introduce to other members of my professional network in the right circumstances" because the circumstances haven't arisen yet. Some people I would be delighted to recommend as experts on particular topics, but not as business partners (or vice versa). Some people who I would never think to recommend as business partners might actually be a perfect fit for the right opportunity. -- KD

Reid, you say that "pictures quickly tend to degrade the site to dating"--what's the evidence to support this? Doesn't Ryze allow pictures? Don't most conference sites include photos of the speakers? I suspect that "degrading to dating" is based on far more complex contextual factors. And for many people I know (particularly women, to return to my regular theme ;-), the lines between business relationships and friendly relationships (dating or otherwise) are simply not that hard and fast. If you want to build a networking system that really works, you may need to relax some of your hold over how people use it. That's what's hurt Friendster most, I think--a rigid mindset that it will be used only as a dating/mating service, despite the fact that many people have tried to use it for other purposes.

• Ryze does allow pictures. I have been told by (now) seven unconnected sources that Ryze is a great source for white guys meeting asian gals. This feedback was one of the primary reasons that we trimmed the pictures feature. (Rightly or wrongly.) Frankly, my worry is with my gender. See cute picture of gal, make inquiry - I just think that many single guys have that hard-wired. I'd love to have pictures. Conferences do have them, but there's no real context for general approach between the audience of the conference and the person whose picture is there. Likewise, a website. And, I agree, being too dictatorial will be bad. I'm just worried about the bottom 2% setting the tone for the entire site; it is why gated communities can be very important. We're targeting with LinkedIn: your own personal gated community. (And hopefully this will allow minorities, women, etc.)

-RGH 2003-06-08 09:58:00 JST

I would think there would be an easy social solution to the bottom 2% problem: tell the person who made the unwelcome connection. If Bob, a business associate, introduced me to Larry, who turned out to be a lounge lizard (or a public drunk, or a fraudulent business person, or whatever), I would certainly tell Bob about it. If Bob did that more than once or twice, he'd be dropped from my network, which should give Bob an incentive to make sure Larry behaves himself. That's how it works offline, so why couldn't it work online? -- KatherineDerbyshire

Finally, AdamGreenfield and I have both noted one serious (I would argue fatal) flaw in the current operation of the system--that you're not told before you initiate a contact that completion of the contact requires you to upgrade to paid membership. That's incredibly problematic, I think, since it's essentially blackmail--"give us your money or your targeted contact will think you're a flake." I understand the concept of not requiring the upgrade until there's a tangible promised benefit. But you MUST tell users that this will happen before they initiate the contact, not afterwards.

• I apologize for this somewhere, but cannot remember where. Our error was: we are in fact free right now. So, we didn't want to interrupt the process of sending the message with distractions. (We *will* do that when we are charging, for exactly this reason.) However, then we wanted to make sure that people knew in the future, we will be charging for this. And, so we put in some messaging, but clumsily, hence creating a bit of a shock. Apologies; we will get this right when billing is live. (Many months away, likely.)

- RGH 2003-06-08 09:58:00 JST

Reid, I'd like to echo Liz's comments regarding pictures. Having used both Friendster and LinkedIn, I would argue that the former emplys a few methods that, taken in concert, give me a far better sense of the person at whose profile I am currently looking. Pictures are one of these - not just a single, corporate-ID-style headshot, but three or five. And testimonials are the other.

• Agree. We do have a reference system coming. And, pictures, as above, trying to figure it out.

- RGH 2003-06-08 09:58:00 JST

I would suggest, with all due respect, that your fear of providing these modalities to your users (the slippery slope argument) is a subtle insult to your audience. You have to trust people to make decisions about what is appropriate and what is not, and of course, as a backstop you can always provide (as Friendster does) a "flag for review" link.

• Hmmm... I'll think on this. I agree that we should try to provide this, so we'll see. I will say this, we have also received lots of comments (not so vocally, as the page here ) thanking us for the lack of pictures.

- RGH 2003-06-08 09:58:00 JST

W/r/t Liz's assertion that, for women, "the lines between business relationships and friendly relationships (dating or otherwise) are simply not that hard and fast," the only way I disagree is in attributing this solely to women. For me as well, I neither necessarily want, nor am particularly able, to compartmentalize my life in such a manner. So far, LinkedIn has a little of that icky bus-dev feeling to it, the denatured feeling of an environment dedicated only to dealmaking. I think you'll find that some of the most interesting potential parties to deals are quite a bit more multidimensional (and publicly so) than that would imply. -- AdamGreenfield

• We're looking for a way to make it as multi-dimensional as possible. You can invite your friends in - but just the ones who you generally (not always) professionally endorse. You can invite trusted past colleagues. You can invite new contacts that you're particularly excited about.

• The environment does need a focus, so that people feel comfortable about inviting people. For example, even though I am large investor in Friendster, I have not invited my professional contacts there. Our primary design is a location where you can invite your professional contacts.

- RGH 2003-06-08 09:58:00 JST

Emphatically yes! If I meet someone socially who turns out to have similar business interests/needs, why wouldn't I want to draw on that person's knowledge? If I have a business relationship with someone who has similar personal interests, why wouldn't I want to get to know them socially as well? Just as most humans are multi-dimensional, so are most relationships between humans, whether the relationship is nominally a business or social one.

In fact, on further reflection, I would say that the most effective/helpful connections I make are between my business and social networks, or between subnetworks on either side. The people I work with know each other already, but they don't know the people at my aikido dojo unless I make the introduction. And vice versa. Useful networking software must consider the importance of WeakTies.

-- KatherineDerbyshire

• We agree with the weak ties hypothesis. What is a weak tie that ends up being useful? A previous business colleague from a former job. We hope to add to this, both the weak ties of the weak ties, and the weak ties of the strong ties. There are some really good community theorists (like Cynthia Typaldos of www.typaldos.com) who focus on this idea. If anything, our view is that the way to reach weak ties is through both strong and weak ties that can endorse you.

• I think that there's a lot of complexity here. Our design does not perfectly target this yes, and we hope to, so please keep this commentary (along with all of these deep, thoughtful comments) coming.

- RGH 2003-06-08 09:58:00 JST

The likelihood of connecting with someone on one dimension is significantly increased when you know them in another context. Fundamentally, this is what Stanley Milgram was getting at in "The Familiar Stranger." Multiple forms of connectivity are really valuable to motivate folks to overcome a hurdle in communication. This is why so many people spend the introductory ritual figuring out all of shared social connections that they have. Who do they know in common, what institutions do they have in common, what interests, etc. Without using these multiple channels, you aren't really taking into account the power of social networks. -- DanahBoyd

• 500% agree. We're definitely working on this, in the near term.

- RGH 2003-06-08 09:58:00 JST

The privacy protection aspects are very attractive and clearly essential, but ironically, it's somewhat de-humanizing to be clicking on the anonymous "Request Contact" to ask for a contact and hoping that it gets approved by everyone in the path of the request. In real life, that's very different. I'd be sending e-mail or phoning a contact, explaining what I need, but getting immediate qualitative feedback on the request (e.g. let me check with them first, i haven't heard from them in a while, have you considered talking to X instead). I would have the opportunity to evaluate and choose between multiple paths based on that feedback. I would most likely talk to each intermediate step in the path, and again, get qualitative feedback on the effectiveness and suitability of the path. I would have an opportunity to interactively detect and resolve potential conflicts across multiple paths that I might be involved in. Part of the effectiveness in networking comes from expanding associations with the people one encounters in the path i.e. more than just means to an end. At the moment, it seems LinkedIn forces one to go outside it to manage the paths, and that risks reducing it to just a large Rolodex? - MarkMoraes 2004-10-20 06:54:07 JST

Comments from Reid

Comment from Reid Hoffman on May 9, 2003 10:19 AM | permalink to comment

Hi all. In all of the work around the launch, I won't have as much time to cover all of the points in advance, so let me take some highlines.

What's the goal of LinkedIn? LinkedIn allows two people, who link to each other, to exchange networks for professional goals. "Exchange networks" means that you will represent this person and their network to your network (on a case by case basis); and that you will represent your network to this person and their network. It's very "web of trust." Why professional? So that the point of the interactions in this space is clear, and that everyone knows who to invite or not. (Would you introduce this person to your other trusted business contacts, at least for some good specific reason?)

Why not pictures? I agree that pictures are very humanizing. This was a tough design choice. However, pictures quickly tend to degrade the site to dating. If we can figure out a way to avoid that (and maybe an editorial process, ugh, is the way to do that, or maybe black and white, or maybe... and so it goes), then we'll add them.

Closed and open networks. This is an ultra-long and difficult discussion. I have a lot of experience with eBay and PayPal, with reputation, with identity, with fraud. A distributed "open" system of payments won't work. I'll leave room for the inevitable long argument later, but trust me -- lots and lots of smart payments people have been working on this for a while. There's a reason that the currency that works is a national one (us $ as an example), and not various invented currencies.

How does this apply to LinkedIn? LinkedIn is designed, at its core, to be intensive on the web of trust. There are many sites that promote "new" connections by allowing anyone to sign-up and try to contact each other. These sites are designed for people who want something, but not for people who have something. LinkedIn is designed for people who have something ... for example, a network of trusted connections. On LinkedIn, I can say "I invest in consumer internet companies", and I will get only reasonable things. If I say that say (here) with my eMail address, I will get deluged. And so I won't. (Liars paradoxes in language are great things.)

So, yes, it's a closed club. But it's *your* closed club. It's closed for your privacy. The general trick about then allowing other people to handle any data is how do you guarantee that the club stays closed to your circle. There are other channels for "anyone see me / contact me." LinkedIn may give that as an option in the future, if it makes sense as a service offering.

I completely agree with Marc, Pete, and others that reputation is the key. In a sense, the LinkedIn forwarding is "please give me this specific person's reputation on this specific contact request", so that I know how to handle it.

And for Katherine, I completely agree that networking is about human contact. This is a way for two people to easily represent each other to their respective networks.

Marc: I want to read your stuff more carefully before I would try to say something useful.

And, my thanks to everyone (believers and critics) for the thought and time on these issues. We're trying to do it right, although sometimes it's a little gray.

==== Comments from User (Atsushi Yoshida) 12/18/2003====

I found about LinkedIn and am excited about the possiblity of the service ! I was not sure if this was open to users as well, but hope my comment helps. I agree with the comment above that the link between you and your contact destination should be confidential for the reasons given. One additional thought is that as this network gets bigger, there could be cases that one of the links between you and the contact maybe your own boss ! So a feature request. When requesting a connection, add a feature to enter the name of the person that you want to avoid. You may have multiple ways to get to the target contact and this feature will help the user to avoid a route. For that matter, we could also add others "avoid" selections such as company name, etc. I am a member of LinkedIn so let me know if you need to contact me. Thanks /fin