Wed Nov 26 02:08:43 UTC 2008

Policy and Agreement updates, done right by LinkedIn

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LinkedIn have updated their Privacy Policy and User Agreement. When you log in to their site, there is a banner telling you about the update, and providing a click-through to the new documents.

Given that many sites don't make much of an effort to tell you when a change has been made, this is good.

But when you're faced with a long legalese document that has purportedly been updated, how can you tell what's been changed? You don't happen to have a copy of the old documented stored somewhere, do you?

LinkedIn extend the arm of professionalism with a specific page called “summary of the changes” for each document. This presents in human-readable form a very good summary of what has actually changed … here's a snippet :-

    In Section 2, we added a paragraph under the heading _"Forums/Chat/Blogs"_, in which we remind
    you that if you post personally indentifiable information on a forum, chat or blog on LinkedIn,
    other users can read and collect that information and may send you unsolicited messages.

    In Section 3, we added a paragraph under the heading _"Closing Your Account"_, where we describe
    the effects of closing your LinkedIn account and the uses of any information retained after such
    a closure. We provide contact information for a request to remove your information entirely.

    A new Section 4, entitled _"Your Obligations"_, was added. In this Section, we describe the
    obligations of LinkedIn community members to each other and advise you of the effect of
    violations.

This is a great example of how to communicate changes to dense documents; it's chatty, friendly, and informative. If we see more of this kind of thing, we'll be more able to assess complex agreements and policies, which is good for everyone.