Welcome to the old Linked Intuition blog and the new Social Media Sonar blog. First let’s address why the blog changed.
“Cease and Desist”! That’s the headline in the email I received from LinkedIn on July 10th. It seems that they are worried that some people might be confused about my blog and interpret it as a part of LinkedIn. There’s also this thing called Trademark.
The blogs name was Linked Intuition which in itself is not an issue. The problem is that when you combine the terms for a URL…LinkedIntuition… it includes the letters Linkedin which is where the trademark issues comes up.
When I received the email I forwarded a copy to Brad Crose, and attorney who works in the field of copy write and trademark (more out of curiosity since I had already decided to change the domain name). Brad was a great help in understanding the various angles. If you ever need help in these areas he’s a great resource.
LinkedIn owns the trademark to LinkedIn and they have every right to do what is in their power to protect their trademark. I don’t disagree with that. I don’t even disagree with their asking me to stop. Once again it’s their right to take action that they feel they need to take to protect their trademark.
I do think they miss the point though. LinkedIn is part of the Social Media landscape and a huge component of that is fostering community. The blog was a part of that community and 50,000 visitors each month participated to some extent by visiting it. From a social media perspective LinkedIn should be celebrating the fact that this large number of people are looking for more information about how to utilize LinkedIn more effectively. Rather than take an adversarial position they should be trying to figure out how to engage the people advocating their service.
The Linked Intuition blog isn’t the only blog doing this, there are several sites that do a great job as well. All provide free publicity to LinkedIn. These sites are doing LinkedIn’s job for them by teaching people how to use it more effectively. If LinkedIn was doing a great job of teaching it’s users how to use it effectively, would 50,000 people come to this blog each month to learn from me? Or the other blogs for that matter.
For my part the change comes at a good time. I’ve written about how I’ve been an insurance broker for the last 8 years and really learned LinkedIn in order to grow my business. Writing the blog and the three LinkedIn books and Workbook have been a way to share what I’ve learned with others. This activity has opened new doors.
New Opportunity
I’ve recently partnered with Sonarconnects, an advertising agency here in Atlanta, to help small businesses understand how to use social media to grow their business. This includes Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, blogs, and LinkedIn. As I start this new opportunity its a great time to expand the conversation.
I plan to continue providing the same great tips and strategies about LinkedIn that my readers have come to expect. You’ll just start to see some pieces on the other components. With the expansion I’ll also likely start bringing in guest authors from time to time.
Pardon the Mess
For a short period things may get a little confusing. To help the readers make the transition the first thing I plan to do is to forward all of the Linked Intuition links to the corresponding pages of the new blog. If you bookmarked the old site now would be a great time to update those bookmarks. If you see a Linked Intuition link out there I would appreciate a heads up or a message to the site posting the link. Some links will be lost but over time hopefully these will be less of an issue.
When I started the Linked Intuition blog it was no where on the radar…several million blogs had more traffic. As the site disappears it had moved to one of the top 165,000 sites based on Alexa.com data (the new blog debuts at number 4.9+ million). That’s a testament to the thousands of readers who took the time to read the blog , post comments, and link to it.
A Moment of Thanks
Thanks to LinkedIn for making a great service. They have 41+ million different perspectives of what LinkedIn should be and for the most part get it right.
Thanks to Nate Kieveman of Linked Strategies for immediately wanting to jump to my defense.
Thanks to Ross Dodwell owner of the group Top Recommended People for constantly pushing the blog, the books, and just being of service. Join his group if you have 10 recommendations.
Thanks to the sites that have linked back to the blog.
Thanks to those who have taken the time to retweet my posts.
And thank you for reading and participating in the conversation.
Warm Regards,
Sean Nelson
