Who owns linkedin profile

LinkedIn is a great way to build business acumen, trust, and to stay in touch with valued, trusted colleagues for potential business relationships. As an employee you can valuable research for your place of work or business.

Responding can increase your business profile in the LinkedIn community. HR manuals and employment contracts may also be changed to included specific provisions that negate ownership questions. LinkedIn Content Marketing Service. Who owns your LinkedIn account, you or your employer. By JoAnne Funch March 28, am.

In the good old days, one of the golden rules of marketing was to have a centralised company database that was — ideally — managed and updated by only one person. Restraint of trade enforcement on LinkedIn Having all these decentralised LinkedIn databases makes enforcing the restraint of trade agreements tricky, to say the least.

Most employees feel entitled to use their hard-earned knowledge and contacts when embarking on new ventures — and with good reason. Personal and professional communication on LinkedIn Love it or loathe it, social media blurs the divide between personal and professional communication. Worse, still, are Farmville credits ceded to the company upon resignation?

Why users should care In the United States, many lawsuits have been filed by companies seeking to maintain ownership of LinkedIn profiles — the costs of which have surely outweighed the value of the contacts. For more information, contact [email protected] or visit www. You can also follow FinCommunications on Facebook. LinkedIn profile Social media and law social media industry FinCommunications.

About the author. In the context of LinkedIn this can only be achieved by the employee deleting the relevant connections from his LinkedIn profile. Employees believe that the LinkedIn connections form part of their stock of knowledge that they are entitled by law to take with them throughout their career. There is presently no sign that the English courts will agree with this argument though and employers are advised to have up to date social media and confidentiality policies which clearly identify what LinkedIn information belongs to whom.

Employees who have managed to build up extensive LinkedIn accounts would be wise to negotiate clear terms relating to their contact network before accepting new offers of employment. Share this article on:. I am not from the recruiting field, but it would make sense that your network is part of the value that you bring to the table.

That being said, because LinkedIn combines your personal and professional network, I would feel very uncomfortable uploading that to any company database. To me it seems like a violation of privacy. I think, going forward, we all need to be a little more cognizant of what is at stake when we join a new company and get the rules straight before the misunderstandings begin. Great discussion, questions. Soooo, if LI can close down groups, can a company that has a paying relationship with LI get LI to close down profiles??

LI controls the agreement we all sign so they can change it at will. Thank you so much for your input Valerie. I have never heard LinkedIn firsthand do a sales pitch, but that technique is a scary stereotypical enterprise software power sell that I do not want to associate with LinkedIn. Let me repeat that there is no bigger fan in LinkedIn than myself, but if they start siding on the side of paying enterprises, we will start to see a lot more controversial things coming down the pipeline.

I agree that since we are in their sandbox we need to play by their rules. The problem is that out of the blue they shut down LinkedIn Groups or transfer ownership of groups without previous notice nor explanation there is documented proof of these things out there, not rumors. This is what scares me. The sad part is, if you are not associated with an enterprise, even if you are a paying customer you will lose out to the paying enterprise.

In such a scenario we all lose out. The mere act of reimbursing an individual for a monthly subscription fee does not change that relationship. Thanks for your comment anonymous , and you bring up an excellent point that the personal and the professional are now forever intertwined with the appearance and popularity of LinkedIn.

Both clients and vendors alike are now my personal friends. My husband has vendor and client relationships in the same industry, which by association become my contacts. I also have past consulting clients that are present clients of my employers. How can I possibly keep those 2 accounts from overlapping? Nor can those relationships be stopped if I were to ever leave the company. Thank you for your valuable contribution here Lonny. Yes, social networking sites like LinkedIn are similar to CRMs in that they will contain customer databases for certain professions.

I sincerely thank you for your input here and look forward to communicating with you again in the future. Thanks for your comment Leslie. Well, if you are a recruiter I am not but I believe you are , I assume that building a network is part of your job, just as it would be in sales.

Kevin Clark just gave an excellent comment on this and I thank you for your contribution as well! Thank you for your excellent comment Kevin. I would agree with your perspective on this, and I like the extreme example that you show. Indeed, network-building is inherent in the profession of recruiting, so how can you demand ownership of this asset in the form of turning over a social networking account?

I also agree that this person, just to be on the safe side, should set up a separate account and start re-adding contacts. I think there are two separate issues with the employer paying for the account being the less important issue. I will bet the trouble spot is going to be were you building your network while being paid by your employer?

Here is another example of technology outpacing the legal system. I can see both sides of this story. My vote is that the employee has the right to the account and not the company.

While it is true the account was paid for by the company, the relationships between the employee and his connections can not be transferred or sold. One could make the argument that if the employee proposed to his wife on a company sponsored trip then at termination, the company would also own that relationship.

I know that example is extreme and ridiculous, but it does give one pause. I believe this one will be tied up in the courts for a while. In the meantime, the employee might want to set up a new LinkedIn account and start re-adding contacts. How do I change the owner of my LinkedIn page? Can your employer control your LinkedIn?

How do I find out who owns a LinkedIn page? How do I make my LinkedIn account completely private? Neal Schaffer Neal Schaffer is a leading authority on helping businesses through their digital transformation of sales and marketing through consulting, training, and helping enterprises large and small develop and execute on social media marketing strategy, influencer marketing, and social selling initiatives.

Fluent in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, Neal is a popular keynote speaker and has been invited to speak about digital media on four continents in a dozen countries. He is also the author of 3 books on social media, including Maximize Your Social Wiley , and in late will publish his 4th book, The Business of Influence HarperCollins , on educating the market on the why and how every business should leverage the potential of influencer marketing. Neal resides in Irvine, California but also frequently travels to Japan.