Are you the type that looks at your competitors as threats or opportunities? Apparently Linkedin sees Facebook as such a threat that they’ve systematically banned use of the word “Facebook” on their site, at least in certain parts.
Linkedin recently introduced a feature called “LinkedIn Polls” which allows you to create a simple poll which you can then send out to your network, or for $50 you can send it out to a specific group of professionals. I have never used it before, and so for starters I figured I would create a poll that asked the seemingly harmless question “Are you on Facebook?” But lo and behold I got an error back from Linkedin saying “Question contains the word ‘facebook’, which is not allowed.”
In my mind, this is a bit too closed. I can see a reason for banning use of the word “facebook” but it seems like the downside (annoyed users, like me) outweighs any perceived benefit. Perhaps I’m missing something, but to me this seems beyond what is reasonable and it brands Linkedin as a company that is focused more on keeping their users from discovering the competition than on improving their own product.
