LinkedIn pulls a Facebook-like swifty on ‘social advertising’

crikey.com.au

43 points·bootload··6 comments

Call me jaded, but this doesn't seem so bad to me.

If I like something, I am putting that out in the public. I expect it to be on my feed. Why wouldn't it be used more efficiently to tell others what I like? My view is that both Facebook and LinkedIn are services where everything defaults to public. What is strange is I don't feel this way about Amazon - I view my reviews to be public, but my personal ratings should not be. Same with Netflix. It is a very subtle distinction, and apparently not everyone thinks this way.

I think abusing private personal information is a much worse crime.

On the other hand, Linkedin doing this is more likely to get them sued or encourage people to seek an alternative due to business demographics. It's pretty easy to do a scaremongering campaign "Facebook reveals your personality and messages. Linkedin reveals your personality for now." etc.

This will make people on linkedin be less trusting and put in minimum or bad data. The ads will invariably be less useful, like Facebook is suffering from.

Good point. The more people are scared, the less they'll give useful information, and the less they'll benefit from the service, so the less they'll give useful information...

Public versus private is a tough one, because many times I do click through to things largely based on who recommends them.

I disagree for two reasons - the first is that just because I'm following a company, it doesn't mean that I like it. The second is that it's common courtesy to ask for permission before using a person's face to sell something.

This isn't a big deal for me. If they would've asked, I would've let them. Now, not so much.

well, as someone said before, if you are using a free service, you are the product that is being marketed...

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