Linkedin has for some time now articles from known sources and famous people, but recently (last few months) has opened that to everyone on the network, to post longer articles as in a blog-thing-feature. Obviously that the herd started to use it to show off their skills and to “enhance network” visibility and whatnot. Minions, I say.
So a couple of months ago I got the option to promote my content as an influencer (me, right?!?) and write some interesting stuff. Which got me thinking again about a blog and since people keep asking me to return to a more writing format than rather just 140 chars, I was tempted to give it a shot.
Then I somehow stumble up the fine print and realized that I would be working for Linkedin if I did that.
Additionally, you grant LinkedIn a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual, unlimited, assignable, sublicenseable, fully paid up and royalty-free right to us to copy, prepare derivative works of, improve, distribute, publish, remove, retain, add, process, analyze, use and commercialize, in any way now known or in the future discovered, any information you provide, directly or indirectly to LinkedIn, including, but not limited to, any user generated content, ideas, concepts, techniques and/or data to the services, you submit to LinkedIn, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or to any third parties.
This paragraph by itself is quite amazing. Everything I would write there would be Linkedin property to do whatever they wanted to, right up into the infinity and beyond. It’s just like going to a bar with some friends and there’s a sign saying, “everything you say here is ours to do whatever we decide to”. Now, I know that Twitter and Facebook have a similar policy, but you’re not going to use them to blog stuff, are you ?
I still like Linkedin a lot, it’s perfect as a professional network, but that’s it. Content is everyone intellectual property and should be treated like that. So mine goes to my own blog, to do whatever I want to and decide. I use Linkedin only to share content and not as a content platform.