Jason Alba’s got some great advice posted over on the Jibber Jobber Blog that you’ve got to take – grab a copy of your LinkedIn profile and contact information today – and repeat at regular intervals.
Backup your data
It’s really no different with LinkedIn than any other computing platform – the time to realize you don’t have a copy of your data is not moments after it’s gone… You’ve got to take measures on a regular schedule to save your data so that if technology fails, an individual makes a mistake, or somebody sets out to harm you, your information exists in another (safe) location.
You can do that following Jason’s instructions here.
Somebody else’s whim
An extra issue with LinkedIn’s service is that you don’t control the management of that service. If “they” decide to cancel your account for some bizarre reason, they can do so – and you don’t have any recourse. Sure, you can ask to have it put back, but what if they can’t put back your profile or contacts?
Don’t forget your groups…
If you’ve developed a group, don’t forget to export your group membership for the very same reason.
Until later – enjoy LinkedIn, and keep yourself (and your data) safe.
steve
One reason to do this periodically may not be completely obvious at first. The contact information for your connections is under their control, not yours. Thus, your contacts can update their job descriptions and e-mail addresses when they want to. They can disable their profiles as well. I’ve had several contacts who have had duplicate profiles and had to get rid of one.
The same idea applies to some extent to e-mail. Many e-mail clients and webmail services will collect the e-mail addresses from non-spam incoming mail for you. I’ve only ever lost one friend’s e-mail address because I hadn’t made a backup before I got hit by a hard drive failure. That is one friend too many to lose touch with.