Think You Own Your LinkedIn Profile? Better Think Again

IT's natural for users of LinkedIn, Facebook and early social networking services to assume that their profiles are their own to use and change concluded time arsenic they see check. After all, profiles like those feeling much like extensions of ourselves; rather like the cars we drive or the homes we live in, they're more often than not nobody else's business, right?

Deplorable — at least potentially. As was highlighted on Friday by a report publicized on the Distributed Marketing blog, companies are quest increased control over what their employees post online, and LinkedIn is no exception.

Intercepting Substance abuser Edits

Information technology totally started on Tuesday, when compliance software system vendor Actiance announced what it calls "LinkedIn unchangeable smug pre-approval workflow capabilities" in its Socialite platform for social media management and compliance.

That platform is designed to helper financial services firms comply with regulations so much as Business enterprise Industry Regulatory Government agency (FINRA) Restrictive Notice 10-06, which requires that all static content from companies in this industry be pre-approved prior to publishing, including content on blogs and social networks. Toward that stop, Socialite enables pre-approvals of content added to popular social networking sites, including Facebook and Twitter.

Now, thanks to the weapons platform's new LinkedIn features, "Socialite intercepts death-user edits of LinkedIn profiles and automatically re-routes the changes to a compliance ship's officer for review," Actiance's press issue explains. "The commentator is then able to describe the ad hoc elements of a LinkedIn profile that were changed and give the axe either accept or reject the edits Eastern Samoa fortunate as making comments."

In other words, when you're gearing sprouted to hunt for a new caper, your employer could not only be watching, but IT could potentially tied prevent some changes you may want to make to your LinkedIn profile.

It's not just changes that you make connected the corporate mesh that wish be noticed, either. In fact, Socialite gives companies the capacity to monitor, alert and capture changes made from pretty much anywhere, including mobile devices.

What Makes LinkedIn Different?

There's been some controversy about Actiance's announcement, successful to a greater extent interesting by the relative lack of controversy surrounding so much capabilities happening other social networks. Distributed Merchandising has a hypothesis about that.

"What makes LinkedIn different is that much of multitude usance LinkedIn as a way to break through connections that will advance their careers – or as a job search and business development site," it explained.

Few companies have had LinkedIn pages until recently, the blog points out, but now "LinkedIn has become one of the most powerful social media channels for corporate and localized marketers American Samoa cured. Many multi-channel marketing organizations have reported outstanding results from participation in LinkedIn Groups and communities, and are encouraging employee use of the product as part of corporal marketing efforts."

That increased corporate use, successively, explains the new center on monitoring employees' use.

'Your Interpersonal Media Will Be Monitored'

So what does this mean for LinkedIn users like you and ME? Saintly question.

Distributed Marketing asked myriad experts in insurance policy, legal, HR and social media to divvy up their version and suggestions for employees, and there are many tips and insights in its mail service.

"To me, the capturing, editing surgery blocking LinkedIn profile updates is truly a bold, big brother move," policy industry expert and Strategic Marketing Plus CEO Bill Tyson told the blog, for example. "From a applicatory standpoint, most abidance departments (take out in scarce cases same military and defense) would non approve of this level of trespass into an employee's common soldier life activities (i.e. job searching)."

For those who signed a non-compete or not-solicitation agreement with their employers, meanwhile, "your social media will cost carefully monitored once you leave," warned employment attorney Donna Ballman. "Some employers are demanding that former employees unlink and de-friend their LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social net contacts abutting with the society."

Proceed with Forethought

This sunrise I asked LinkedIn to comment about this controversial topic.

"At LinkedIn, one of our central principles is that we put our members first," aforesaid Hani Durzy, the company's director of corporate communication theory. "We allow our members to insure and manage the information happening their profiles. They determine WHO to touch base to and what they should partake and consume.

"Simultaneously, companies in industries where the utilisation of social media for business purposes is regulated are obligated to bond to those regulations," Durzy added.

The bottom line, it seems to me, is that there are clearly countless gray areas here that will need to be tried and tested in the courts before any hard and andantino rules emerge. In the meantime, you may want to think out carefully most how you proceed.