If the Shoe Fits: Emulating Facebook and LinkedIn
by Miki Saxon
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here
Do you dream of following in the footsteps of Mark Zukerberg and Reid Hoffman?
Will you follow their path blindly or seek to avoid their errors?
Do you plan to treat your customers/community with respect and be transparent in your dealings with them?
Facebook’s oft-changing and opaque privacy policy in the name of “better customer experience” has brought howls of rage and government scrutiny from around the world.
Now it seems that LinkedIn is following suite.
Apparently, LinkedIn has recently done us the “favor” of having a default setting whereby our names and photos can be used for third-party advertising.
As you might guess, LinkedIn’s action isn’t engendering a lot of love.
Google, too, is getting hammered in the name of privacy for some of its actions.
Opaque processes have long been the bane of customers, but they’re usually attributed to “bad” corporations as opposed to “good” startups.
Which begs the question: at what point does a company cross the line?
And which side of the line will you be on when your company succeeds?
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For those of you who want to opt out of LinkedIn’s “favor” I’m including a screen to show you where, as well as exactly what it says. I think it’s a bit clearer than the one shown at the link above.
Hat tip to Dennis D. McDonald via LinkedIn Bloggers for the heads-up.
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Image credit: Bun in a Can Productions
