Linkedin Messaging System

Some weeks ago one of my connections at Linkedin.com was looking for a non well-known man of the automotive industry because, I guess, my contact has something interesting to offer to that man. As they are not directly connected, my contact tried to find the other man by a forward as a third degree connection (the first was me and the second was Ron Bates, maybe the biggest hub on LinkedIn) and today, I still don’t know if he had contacted to that man or not.

Are you seeing the same problem than me?

I think LinkedIn should implement a new and quite a lot more advanced messaging system. Why? Something I see as a positive thing in LinkedIn, that could be discussed later, is that now you can’t send message to anyone you want, because that way and with the current messaging system you avoid some people to suffer in his LinkedIn inbox what they has in their own mailbox: tons of spam, filtering , rules, etc. I see this impossibility to send messages to anyone as a solution, but not as a good one.

Coming back to the real story about my connection and his intend to make contact with some “far away from him on the LinkedIn network” user. Maybe that “someone” user was expecting or searching a guy that could give what my connection has to give, and due to the hard way my connection must does to get to that “someone” , they lack the chance to get connected and do the business they want to or need to.

As a conclusion, in my opinion LinkedIn needs an advanced messaging system that let users not directly connected to communicate keeping in mind two important issues:

• Let users send messages but with some restrictions so senders cannot spam (for example someone that wants to send a message offering his services to all or some people of a specific industry).
• Let users configure what kind of message they want to receive (for example, maybe someone don’t want to hear about anyone on some specific industry to communicate, or someone living on a specific country, or if the message contains specific words, or simply whatever they want).

LinkedIn would model an advanced message inbox with different folders for each level of indirection and also with certain folders for specific people, for answers, and also for people that has been tagged in some way. This way each user will have the power to decide what messages want to read, receive or prioritize and as a result, and going back to the story both my contact and the automotive industry man would do business if and only if they want to, without restrictions.