The law of unintended consequences is alive and well in LinkedIn’s #SWAM sledgehammer approach to managing spam on the platform that I wrote about here.
Everyone hates Spam except the spammers. Most people who learn about #LinkedIn #SWAM hate that too. SWAM by the way is LinkedIn’s Site-Wide Auto-Moderation process. If you are an innocent victim of LinkedIn SWAM policy you can join the #NOWSAM campaign by tweeting #NOSWAM and commenting here and writing to the website below.
Say No to spam and no to #LinkedIn #SWAM
Most of the people I know find LinkedIn indispensable in building their professional and business brands. Unfortunately, LinkedIn’s sledgehammer approach is making LinkedIn Groups increasingly unusable for far too many good, honest citizens in the LinkedIn Community.
Indispensable yet unusable. A recipe for frustration at the very least.
Add to this Linkedin’s total silence on addressing the subject, plus the near impossibility of innocent members to remove the group gagging orders imposed on them by the #SWAM policy, plus the prevalence of absentee and disinterested Group owners, plus the massive workloads that good Group Owners and Managers face in keeping their groups clean and relevant and you can see the scale of the problem.
The only people who can ultimately fix this problem are in Mountain View, California. But they won’t do anything about it until enough of the loyal LinkedIn community raise it on their agenda.
For the record, I am a massive fan of LinkedIn since March 2004. I admire and respect what Reid Hoffman and the whole team has achieved since 2003. I know they have ambitious plans for the future.
We all know that 80% of their Q1 13 Revenue of $325Million comes from Talent and Marketing solution sales but they do need to continually make the site sticky and relevant to millions of people to achieve their financial ambitions. Groups are a big part of that engagement and groups is exactly what they are hurting right now.
Come on LinkedIn. Fix the well-intentioned but deeply flawed SWAM policy.
You can find out about one of the #NOSWAM campaigns here: http://swamsupport.org/content/swam-news
You can add your own #SWAM experiences here: http://swamsupport.org/tell-your-swam-story
Or you can simply add your comments below.
Till next time….
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Hi Lindsay, thanks for sharing. I, along with many friends, have been subject to the blunt instrument of SWAM.
It is hard to believe that LinkedIn is going to stick with the SWAM situation when they must now be fully aware of the impact of the law of unintended consequences on this ill thought through process. Either that or they just do not care about putting their customers first.
There is a growing chorus of protest out there.
Thank you for being there and sharing
Richard
We’ve run into the exact same SWAM problems. Account and group troubles because of illegitimate reporting! LinkedIn is a vital tool for meeting and connecting with people, and SWAM is damaging a lot of the goodwill and patience its most active users were willing to extend to it. Great to see a vocal community coming out in support of fixing what SWAM has broken.
We wrote about our trouble with it here: http://kayakonlinemarketing.com/blog/bid/184334/Is-LinkedIn-s-SWAM-Doing-More-Harm-Than-Good
Good article Matthew. #SWAM puts Jeff Weiner’s claim that LinkedIn puts members first, severely to the test. As a fan of LinkediIn I hope the top team sees reason and reverses this ham fisted, ill thought through process that has massive unintended consequences for loyal LinkedIn members and LinkedIn’s own site stickiness through its Group Communities
It wasn’t so long ago that Jeff Weiner proudly said LinkedIn was all about “members first”. SWAM has shown how quickly a company can go off track. In early November Jeff Weiner explained to the New York Times:
“So our culture has five dimensions: transformation, integrity, collaboration, humor, and results. And there are six values: members first; relationships matter; be open, honest and constructive; demand excellence; take intelligent risks; and act like an owner. And by far the most important one is members first. We as a company are only as valuable as the value we create for our members.”
Less than two months later his minions implemented SWAM. As I write in my new blog post, SWAM is anything but members first.
Read more in my blog at: http://www.projectweavers.com/linkedin-member-first-no-more/
Thanks,
Matthew