It seems like only weeks ago (and it was) that I moved the blog to the gotlinkedin.com domain. Well it appears we will be moving once again. My original thought was that since this blog is about LinkedIn that it just made sense to include the word LinkedIn in the title. This site is designed to help people better utilize LinkedIn, so in essence it is advocating LinkedIn.
Now anyone reading this site would find it impossible to be confused and assume that it is sponsored by LinkedIn. They would be hard pressed to believe that it detracted from LinkedIn in any form. But the writing is in the air. There’s this thing called Trademark law.
In recent weeks a prominent LinkedIn blogger has thrown in the towel fed up with the adversarial stance LinkedIn has taken with some of it’s earliest proponents. Another has had to change the url’s of numerous groups that championed LinkedIn. These are some of the heavy weights that benefited LinkedIn in it’s early growth. Compared to these guys I’m a newbie.
So sometime in the next couple of weeks or months I expect that I will receive a notice to stop infringing upon LinkedIn’s trademark through the use of the url GotLinkedIn.com. This is what happens when a company goes from a communial driven entity into a corporate driven entity.
I completely disagree with the rationel and think it’s somewhat heavy handed to step on the hands of the people that nurtured you along in the early days. (I’m not including me in this) That being said, the idea of LinkedIn and what it can represent to the thousands of professionals that are members is powerful.
Asfor me I’m going to step off of their shadow and will move the blog to a new domain sometime in the next week or so. The content will remain the same, only the name will be changed to protect the innocent.
Keep connecting, recommending and answering.
PS…if you came to this site expecting to find the original LinkedIn site please go to www.linkedin.com.
