On I wrote LinkedIn contacts, on the subject of Rants and Web.
I had an account on a service called LinkedIn. Seemed quite a nice thing; it codified social networks, so you could "link" to people you knew who had accounts there, or link to people you knew who didn't have an account and it would send them an invitation to set one up. Most of the web people I knew were on there, and we were all connected; a couple of times I've come across a random name I didn't know and searched for them on LinkedIn and found that they were on there, with a "six-degress-of-separation" chain which showed me how to contact them -- I know X, X knows Y, Y knows the person. That sort of thing. Seemed quite useful.
I just got another invite from someone I know to whom I wasn't directly connected; went to the website to agree to the connection; and...it's deleted all my contacts. All of them. Bastard! I spent ages setting those up! What's up with that? What's the point of a service that purports to maintain your list of acquaintances and then loses that list, huh? Now, it's possible that this is some kind of tactic designed to get me to pay for an account; if it is then it's a nasty underhand tactic. If it's just a mistake then I hope it can be rectified; I shall mail them about backups.
Meri
Hi Stuart,
At a guess (having just had a quick look at LinkedIn) that this might be because you appear to have two accounts -- one with loads of contacts and one with only a couple.
Are you sure you used the right login?
If I'm right, can I connect to you on LinkedIn? ;-)
M