Is a closed social network an oxymoron? Not really. Facebook started out as a very closed social network, available only to registered college students. As the social media site expanded to a more open membership, it was also repeatedly forced to revamp and enhance its privacy options to give users more control over what information they shared and to who.
With over 85 million members in more than 200 countries, LinkedIn is hardly a closed social network. But the site is restricted to registered users and its popular set of discussion groups are private to approved members. But now, as Datamation reports, LinkedIn is giving group moderators a new option to expose the content from their groups on the Web.
Comedian Groucho Marx once quipped that he didn’t care to “belong to any club that would have me as a member.” The latest announcement from LinkedIn opens up the professional social network site a bit so that non-LinkedIn members can view Groups on the Web.
“In the new Open Groups, all discussions can be viewed by anyone on the Web, found on any search engines, and can be shared on other social networking platforms like Twitter, in addition to LinkedIn, Ian McCarthy, principal product manager at LinkedIn, said in a blog post.