Monday, June 3, 2013

Join me in removing LinkedIn's stupid 50 group limit

 *Ping*, another email arrives from somebody in my network, inviting me to join a seemingly interesting group on LinkedIn. I sigh... not because his message annoys me. On the contrary, I've found the discussion groups on LinkedIn very enlightening and enjoy browsing through the various discussions.

So what is the problem, you might ask... The problem is that somebody in LinkedIn's organization, in their infinite wisdom, has decides that LinkedIn users cannot handle being a member of more than 50 groups. So they put a limit on it... I cannot join any new groups until I've left some of the groups I'm currently a member of. This annoys me no end. To me, this comes across as very belittling. Why do they not let me decide how many groups I can handle? Or, for that matter, from how many groups I want to receive email digests (they turn these off automatically, if you don't actually visit the group on LinkedIn for a while).

The way I use the groups is by letting Outlook send all LinkedIn messages to a special folder. When I have some "in-between-time", I start browsing through the digest messages to see if any discussion piques my interest. If so, I click on it to read it. That way it's no big deal at all to be a member of 50+ groups.

I've already tried sending LinkedIn feedback about this. Never even got a reply. So it's time to try something new. Here's the plan:

  1. Put as your LinkedIn Status: Please LinkedIn, let me decide how many groups I want to be a member of and remove the 50 group limit.
  2. If you're on Twitter, ask @LinkedIn to remove the 50 group limit.
  3. Share this blog with your network and ask them to do the same.
Let's see if together we can make a difference!