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December 10, 2007
If you die, who updates your LinkedIn profile?
Sounds morbid, doesn't it? But it's a serious question.
One of my companions out of the CloneWars, er, the early Internet days died suddenly on December 23, 2005. Two years after his passing, his LinkedIn profile is still active, still alive.
I'm not sure if there's a proper protocol for this sort of thing; be interesting to turn this over to Ms. Manners and see if her head started steaming a little. Do you note that the person has passed away? Who makes the notification or request? Do you leave it to the family or what? Does LinkedIn need a fax of a death certificate?
I don't want to push the matter, but leaving him "hanging" up in the Net as still living -- while potentially true -- at the same time smacks of the inadequacy of keeping information up to date on line.
I don't want to remove him as a "Friend" from my LinkedIn profile because I prefer to think of him as a friend (whatever THAT definition is in the era of Facebook and Jeff's 10,000 friends...). But I would like to see some sort of "note" on LinkedIn that indicates his status.
No easy answers on this one.
Posted by dmohney at December 10, 2007 11:53 PM