LinkedIn breaks LinkedIn Groups yet again

I'd like to provide a little more context around this feature change. Instead of messages being sent to the "Group Owner Email," they are now sent to all group managers via LinkedIn. Your claim that "all such requests are funneled through the LinkedIn account of just the one person who "owns" the group" is not accurate. It is true that these messages are now funneled through LinkedIn, but they are sent to all group managers not just the group owner.

Group managers may control how they receive these messages by adjusting the "Messages between pending group applicants and group managers" setting on the Receiving Messages settings page: https://www.linkedin.com/secure/setti...

Unfortunately the "Group Owner Email" was not working beautifully for many groups, which is why we changed the way this feature works. We received lots of feedback from group managers that they were confused by the emails they used to receive for people requesting to join their groups. We wanted to include additional information, such as the group name and a link to the "Request to Join" page, to help provide some context when a pending group applicant sent a message to the group manager requesting to join a group. Another advantage of funneling these messages through LinkedIn is that we are better able to provide privacy around email addresses for messages sent via LinkedIn. The email addresses of group managers are not revealed to pending group applicants, but the communication channel is still available.

With this feature change, we actually opened a two-way communication channel on LinkedIn between pending group applicants and group managers. In addition to making it easier for pending group applicants to send a message to the group manager when requesting membership in a group, we also made it easier for group managers to send messages to people requesting to join without forcing group managers to leave LinkedIn. You can expect to see further integration of LinkedIn's communication system with Groups as communication between group managers and members is critical to the success of most groups.

Your statement that "LinkedIn prohibits an association from having its own LinkedIn account" is true. LinkedIn Groups has a bias towards transparency; we're very interested in making sure that our members know who is behind each group so users can make informed decisions when requesting to join a group. This is part of the reason why we require individual members to own groups rather than encourage the creation of fake profiles for organizations that may or may not be legitimate. There may be better ways to involve "official" associations in the LinkedIn platform so feedback is certainly welcome.

I'd be interested to understand how your association would like to use LinkedIn Groups so we can build a better product for organizations and continue supporting mainstream user-created groups. If you are interested in working more closely with LinkedIn to improve Groups, please reach out to me via LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/benguthrie) or you may contact Customer Service: http://linkedin.custhelp.com/. I'd especially encourage any group manager who is interested in collaborating with LinkedIn on feature changes to join the LinkedIn Groups Product Forum: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/51082.