LinkedIn Needs a Blocking Feature
February 23rd, 2007 by Michael Gray in IdeasIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Before the days of the interconnected web 2.0 world things were easy you could always disappear, but now things are different.
Many moons ago I was a respectable suit and tie wearing individual. I was trustworthy enough to be promoted to “executive” status and have folks working under me. Sometimes employees do silly things, self destructive things, or bad, bad things. I had one such employee and we had to fire him.
He would turn up every so often but nothing ever came of it. Eventually he started to get more noticeable. He had gone over a year without being able to find more than the odd job here and there, but nothing steady, and nothing in his career field. He started sending strange notes in the mail and by email. He hadn’t crossed into restraining order territory, but both feet were firmly planted in scary downtown stalkerville. It had gotten to the point where the company blocked his IP. Fortunately I left the company around that time and hadn’t heard or thought much about him since.
Yesterday I logged into LinkedIn and saw two people from my old employer had joined. When I dug down I saw one of them was him. Looking around I saw he is two or three people away from me in the linkedin network, so if he’s a curious chap he’ll find me. It’s been over 5 years since the incident happened, and I’d like to think that as people get older the mature and move past the silly things they did in their youth. However sometimes people are funny, and do silly things. I wish linkedin had the ability to let me block my profile in whole or part from individuals. I can’t imagine I’m the first person who wants to remain hidden.
Sphere It
February 23rd, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Aahh, you want to flaunt your relationships within the matrix but selectively black out only certain squares throughout the grid when they intersect inconveniently? Sounds like some heavy-duty processing requirements on LinkedIn’s side.
What happens if you delete the company from your profile?
February 23rd, 2007 at 3:45 pm
>What happens if you delete the company from your profile?
It looks like I was unemployed for 13 years
Yeah be a nice feature to have but not like I’m really hard to find without using linkedin
February 23rd, 2007 at 9:36 pm
In case LinkedIn is reading, here is another similar request:
Please fix the dual-wildcard function of matching company names to anyone with a company name match plus additional start or ending words. My business was a generically-named .com and there are now plenty of companies that have similar names… so whenever I log in to LinkedIn I’m informed that they’ve found another dozen or so ex co-workers.
Since we never had more than 9 staffers I know all these folks aren’t a connection to me but I’m forced to scroll through the lists every time just in case one is in there.