Just when you thought it was safe to come out!

LinkedIn keeps removing functionality!!!

I planned to wax lyrical about richly functional, free, open source applications than can be a powerful tool for business use. However, the past two weeks have illustrated the dangers of relying too much on these 'free' platforms. Should have heeded the messages in a number of the Tweets I have sent out recently.

So what is it all about?

The last couple of posts have been about the journey into 'gamification' and the thinking we have been doing in-house on setting up a company implementation of skill measurement 'badges'. This weeks note was going to say that the easiest implementation for us would be to use the LindedIn platform of 'endorsements'. Creating an in-house set of badges for a tbd set of skills. Company members of LinkedIn would then be able to vote for your company skill. Thus providing a global platform for these ratings without too much involvement from our management. A peer rated set of skills - a much more powerful measure than a list of the courses you have sat through!

Well - this has now all been thrown up in the air. LinkedIn have recently taken a unilateral decision - as far as I can see - to remove a couple of similar  features from your profile. One was the link to github (useful if you are into coding) and the other was a link to blogger (ie this site). I'm now very concerned about putting anything remotely critical to our business on the site. Who knows what they will decide to remove next!! In fact, why bother even using the endorsements at all - if nobody bothers they will more than likely be terminated! Yes, yes, yes, social pressures blah, blah, blah.

We need a re-evaluation.

Get your own site up and running as quickly as possible ..... xxxx you have been warned!