I received an email from LinkedIn, presumably in response to an earlier blog post about them, pointing me to a blog entry on their site, in which Ryan Roslansky writes:
Over the last few days, some of you may have read stories or blog posts about some new forms of advertising, called “social ads”[1], that we are testing on our site. Since the launch, we’ve also been gathering feedback from our users and we hear you loud and clear.
The trust of our members is central to what we do, and we always aim for clarity, consistency, and member control in all matters related to privacy and data. With that in mind, we’d like to clarify a few things:
- In early June, we announced changes to our privacy policy — including the new ad format’s opt-out policy — ahead of the first small test of these social ads. I also reiterated the same during the launch of social ads, explaining how members could opt-out of sharing their recommendations with their network. For those members who may have not read this on our blog, we included a banner ad that contained a link to the new documents, including a summary of the changes and links from which our members could easily access their account settings.
- We never share personal information with third party advertisers. That was true prior to the launch of the social ads test, and remains true today. The only information that used in social ads is information that is already publicly available and viewable by anyone in your network.
Read more on LinkedIn. It looks like they are removing the user photos from the ads, which should appease some of those who were upset with the new ads.