LinedIn has quietly clamped down on a controversial association known as the LinkedIn open networkers (LIONs), a group of LinkedIn members who liberally add contacts – known on LinkedIn as "connections" – even if they don't know each of the people personally. The group's strategy runs counter to LinkedIn's official policy, which states that LinkedIn members should only connect with people they know.
In the recent development, some LIONs have received messages saying that they have exceeded a newly imposed connection limit of 30,000.LION members say they have pending "invitations to connect" that they cannot accept as a result of the restriction. An unofficial site known as the TopLinked. tracks the connection counts of many LIONs.
The decision to place more restrictions on the LIONs comes several weeks after CIO.com profiled LinkedIn open networks and the group's history. In the article, LIONs were described, at their best, as helping disparate strangers connect on the service, ideally leading to new jobs or business opportunities. At their worst, they are described by critics as name collectors looking to leverage their connection lists to spam unwitting members.
Regular users of LinkedIn who use the free version of the service can search and access a portion of social network's 34 million members based on their connection count. There are their immediate connections, second degree contacts (friends of friends), and third degree contacts, people whom you can get introduced (and connect with) by the aid of being introduced by a mutual connection. These three categories in total will determine how much of the LinkedIn network the users can search for (without paying LinkedIn for wide access).
The decision to punish LinkedIn open networkers won't be without consequence as the group and the service have a unique relationship. In the recent feature about the group, Jason Alba, president of JibberJobber.com and author of the book I'm on LinkedIn – Now What?, noted that while their network philosophy runs counter to that of LinkedIn, the LIONs have some upsides for the service as well.