A select group of 160,000 companies were chosen to be included on LinkedIn’s company profiles.  I stumbled upon a former employer of mine (privately held company) and what I found absolutely astounded me. Here’s the list:

a. Career path for XYZ employees after they left XYZ company (a listing of competitors)
b. What other companies these XYZ employess were most connected/associated with (another list of competitors)
c. Key statistics included but were not limited to: company size, top schools, median age, and percentage of male to female
d. A listing of recent employee promotions, new hires, popular profiles (aka star employees) and more.

And at the bottom of the page in light light gray barely visible letters it said:
This LinkedIn Company Profile was created by LinkedIn and is about XYZ Company. This page is not endorsed by or affiliated with XYZ company.

LinkedIn has claimed they are going to start allowing companies to edit these pages, but that was in March – 4 months ago.  In the meantime, this is prime pickings for recruiters and competitive poaching. [SIDE NOTE: Also, how will this editing profile work? In a company of 50, there can be one ring leader, but what about a company of 1,000 or more employees? If all employees are able to edit, how will disgruntled employees be handled? What will prevent users from creating fake profiles to dog other competitors?]

I realize that all this information is provided by the user, but LinkedIn snagged it all and aggregated it without allowing companies to protect themselves.  Do companies need to start adding a sentence to their  employment policy that employees are not allowed to have a profile on LinkedIn?

I feel a bit betrayed by LinkedIn.

Here’s why – we all know that 1:1 marketing has become a major influencer in why many companies are shifting their dollars online.  But remember back in the day, and still to some extent, market research was an aggregation of mass research? Where you knew specific things about a collective group of people but nothing personal. Today, with all the available social networking sites and other Internet marketing tactics we have personal information on our audience. Down to bra size.  We have personal information that we can use to target individuals to get them to buy our product or service.  This is scary. And no, I’m not just realizing this now.  I am a huge proponent of this type of marketing – in fact, I love it and I love being marketed to like this.

But when it comes to data being aggregated involuntarily by a third party that effects a larger body simply because other individuals have posted their personal information, that is where I feel this controversy begins.  And where does it all end?

Back in the day, the great thing about the Internet was that it had a high level of anonymity.  Now, your personal information is up for grabs.

Does anyone else think these new company profiles on LinkedIn are controversial?