Sending mass mailings to members of discussion groups on the LinkedIn social networking site will no longer be for free. This change comes into effect on Tuesday, 14 January 2014 and applies to recruiters paying for the Recruiter account. Recruiters will have to pay for sending direct messages (InMails) to members of groups who are not their first level contacts using their inMail credits. The information was published by the recruiting community website ERE.net.
Users of the paid Recruiter account could so far send direct messages to anyone in the groups they were members of. Most of them have used this function reasonably, but LinkedIn finally decided to charge for it in order to prevent of spreading spam in the discussion groups. According to ERE.net, LinkedIn's spokesman commented on this change as an effort to "encourage recruiters to tailor their message and maintain a positive member experience." Most recruiters will not be affected by the change as they have enough credits in their accounts. Those who do not use paid accounts will not be affected either since they cannot send mass messages at all.
Both positive and negative comments on this change have started to spread across the Internet and social networks. One group of recruiters complain that it is not their problem, but a problem of LinkedIn. Others think that a recruiter who will be affected by the change is a bad recruiter who cannot target his offers. What do you think?
-kk-