From beyond the grave

[klwilliams]

Today LinkedIn sent me a list of people that they thought I might know and might want to connect with. The list was:

1. The reason I sued a previous company
2. A previous co-worker who has not accepted my connection request in the past, and whose current profile lists him as "on a break"
3. A dead friend
4. Another previous co-worker who has not accepted my connection request in the past.

My dead friend, Kath Lawrence, only listed having one connection. I on occasion would run across accounts belonging to dead friends. LJ will mark these accounts as closed, so no new comments can be added, but the journal can still be read. I thought it was creepy having LinkedIn invite me to connect with her, so I used their help system and sent them her wikipedia page that lists her death date (and the direct link to her LI account page). It was a little bit of a shock to see her on that list.

The LinkedIn help page also told me how to block someone so that he can't see my page and I won't see his showing up like this again. That took care of the first one.

And then I unsubscribed from all future LinkedIn updates.

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

It drives me up the wall that LinkedIn will send me requests to connect with people. Two problems with that:

1) I don't have a LinkedIn account, and don't want one.
2) As near as I can tell, the people it wants me to connect with aren't asking it to send those requests. It's just auto-generating them from their contact lists or whatever. So it makes innocent people look bad for spamming me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes this. I would totally unsubscribe to LinkedIn updates except that I would have to have a LinkedIn account to do it from.

Also, variants on #1 are one of the hazards of social media recommendations. The people who know all the people I know and are not listed as my friends? Are sometimes potential friends, sure; sometimes they are actual friends I have not listed on that social media. But sometimes? They are the people in my social circles I actively dislike and have avoided for a reason.

[deborahjross.livejournal.com]

That is so spooky to see Katherine's name, still active on LinkedIn. Shows you how idiotic LinkedIn's algorithms are.\\Hugs.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I am not and won't ever be on Linked In, but I get lots of requests to connect with people I've never heard of. It doesn't endear LI to me.

On the subject of dead friends in contact lists, I do confess that I find it difficult to remove them from my address book and email addresses. I still have 2 emails in my in-tray from a friend sent just a few says before his sudden and unexpected death last December. If I delete his address I'll lose his emails and I haven't been able to bring myself to do it yet. It's like I don't want to admit that he's gone. We were real-life friends, though we hadn't seen each other since 2009 as we were separated by the Atlantic Ocean. Mostly we kept in touch electronically (and occasionally by phone). I can still almost believe that this is a long lull between emails. Maybe December would be the time to review the situation.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I've had a lot of friends die in the last ten years, and the good friends I keep links to their posts, old email, that kind of thing. Because I'm pretty sure they just went off to New York for a vacation, which is why I don't hear from them. They must be having too much fun. Friends I didn't know so well, the pain of seeing them there isn't mollified by what I get. I guess they didn't even make it to New York.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

This is what I was saying about LinkedIn: I accept that it is a genuinely useful professional network, because you are not the only person to tell me so. But the way it presents itself is not professional...

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That sounds like a sensible step. I find LinkedIn rather creepy, I have to say.