Earlier this week LinkedIn launched their Social News section which they are calling LinkedIn Today. This makes a lot of sense IMO. It’s a great social networking space for professionals and LinkedIn Today offers a place for these professionals to share and aggregate industry news. This keeps users on LinkedIn and makes it more social and more informative. You can share and discuss news with your friends and colleagues on LinkedIn and since it’s tied to a real life identity it should limit the amount of spam and trolling that comes with other social news sites. Or so you would think. I just logged into LinkedIn Today on Sunday morning only to be greeted by what is clearly useless SPAM. It’s a Press Release from PR Wire about a marketing company that I’ve never heard of winning business from a local service company. This type of crap does not belong on the front page and the method used to get it there should have been considered when the initial release was launched. It’s easy to see and should be easy to block. So what happened here?
Spamming LinkedIn Today is Incredibly Easy
So here are a couple of screenshots. The first shows the garbage story that ended up on the front page. The second shows the people who voted for the story all of whom are from the marketing company the story is about.
And here is the second screenshot which clearly shows how this garbage made it to the front page. All votes are coming from the marketing company the article is about which is jacked up on so many levels.
I understand that LinkedIn Today is brand new and currently in Beta but including a filter to identify and block this type of spam should be part of the initial launch. This is simplistic and easy to identify and since this sort of spam has plagued all sharing sites for a long time LinkedIn should have known to ensure it was blocked when they launched. Maybe they assumed that with real names and real businesses tied to each user that they would avoid shameless spam like this but obviously that’s not the case. Apparently the business who worked to spam this to the front page don’t care that everyone in their industry can see that they are willing to pollute a professional networking site with crap content. LinkedIn needs to fix this and continue to update the algorithm to ensure that spam is being filtered and those of us who share news should be congnizent of the fact that industry peers are able to see what we are sharing and understand that our professional reputation could be harmed by polluting the network where we all congregate.
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