Yup. LinkedIn pwned me with an uber-facemelt.
Now, before I get started, I want to say that I’m a fan of LinkedIn. And I have been for many years, as my registration date attests, even though there are a number of things that I would certainly improve and put on that product roadmap of theirs… nevertheless, I like you. So please O please gods of LinkedIn, don’t close down my account (especially since I can’t seem to do it myself anyways…)
=)
Anywho, I was served hard by LinkedIn’s legal services regarding a website that I had launched literally 1 week ago and some change: theLIgamer.com.
The website, in a very quick nutshell, served a very simple purpose: To connect likeminded gaming enthusiasts who had a profile on LinkedIn.
It all started because of a harmless Q/A to the rest of the LI community seeing if there was any interested peoples to start a group. The response was overwhelming, and within 24 hours I had enough support backing me to motivate me to spend an entire night building a site to cater to the LI gamers needs. It had multiple blog authoring, forums, a job board, and more. My development wasn’t blind either; I got in contact with a few video game industry experts, like the executive director of IDGA, and spoke with a few Editorial gaming experts including the Editor in Chief of GameRiot.com, to name a few.
What’s so funny is that all these email and phone conversations I had were all enabled by LinkedIn (I pay a premium $200/year for the ability to directly contact others thru “inmail”). There’s a strange irony to all of this, but, I’ll leave that up to the readers.
So, the short of it is that I did my research, got some great advice from some industry leaders, spent far too much time developing it out, and then launched it.
Within the first couple days I had more members sign up than I knew what to do with, a couple of great guest posts, and the traffic spike was great. Lots of personal emails and pings affirming me what I had already known, that we “needed something like this” and “LI doesn’t provide this type of interactivity, thanks!” and “wow, how do I get involved and help make this site world class” and on and on and on. The future looked bright for LinkedIn video gamers every where!
That was until today.
I thought it was great April Fool’s joke, because it certainly put a pit in my stomach for a sec. But, no. It wasn’t a joke. It was real. Take a look at the full claim here:
Make of it what you will. Some of it is rather amusing, but, the bottom line was that I had to respond. Some quick discussions with legal counsel and a pretty thorough gut-check moved me to comply 101%. The site’s only been up for barely more than a week. I didn’t make a dime off of the site (I instead lost money for hosting costs, registration, etc) and advertising was free for members.
So, I hit the big delete button and packed it up.
It’s unfortunate, really, since I had already drafted up a great logo-design contest with the winner receiving *gasp* a $200 dollar gift certificate for a premium membership package to LinkedIn! The site gathered too much attention too fast… and I suppose the LinkedIn legal department didn’t have enough to do.
So, theLIgamer.com is officially retired. Dead, actually. I’ve got a wife and a very cute daughter who I’d love to one day go to college… so, I need to save as much money as possible and not spend my hard earned green on crazy claims like these.
Thanks for all the support for those who gave a shoutout and remember… LinkedIn is all about being professional… none of this unprofessional business of providing services which enhance their member’s user-experience and build deeper brand loyalty without costing them a dime, ya hear?!?
…
Oh, and before I forget… don’t use their logo, they hate that.
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Tue, Apr 1, 2008
Random, Technology