What is a LinkedIn LION? – A 2009 Revision

I often see this question of “What is a LinkedIn LION?” on the LinkedIn Answers section, and I already provided an answer on this back when I first started this blog in the summer of 2008.  It was an honor that the author of the first real good book on LinkedIn, I’m On LinkedIn…Now What?, Jason Alba, quoted me in his blog when he blogged about the same issue: http://imonlinkedinnowwhat.com/2008/07/31/im-a-lion-hear-me-roar/.

I am revisiting this question of what a LION is because there have recently been some interesting movements within the LinkedIn community concerning the open networking movement.  I have discussed this elsewhere in my blog, but first the limitation of invites, then group numbers, and most recently the limitation on the number of connections one can have is clearly a sign that LinkedIn is not encouraging open networking.  Despite that, open networking groups and people that identify themsleves as “Open Networkers” continue to grow and thrive in pace with the overall growth of LinkedIn.  Furthermore, within the LinkedIn Open Networker groups there appears to be a bit of competition playing out.

First of all, as indicated on the official Wikipedia page for the LION group, the LION movement began with Christian Mayaud in early 2006.  If you subscribe to Stan Relihan’s Podcast (please see my “Links” section for more information), you can hear Christian describe the movement in his own words.  He is definitively the grandfather of the LION movement, the LION Yahoo Group, the LION Home Page (www.themetanetwork.com), and finally the official LION LinkedIn Group.

That being said, there are a number of competing Open Networking groups that have appeared on LinkedIn, and some have even surpassed the original LION group in terms of membership.  One such site which comes to mind is TopLinked, but clearly the extremely quick pace at which Networkers United! is growing puts this group in place to overcome the original LION group in terms of numbers in the next several months.  What is happening here?  And how does this affect the definition of a LION?  After all these groups do not use the terminology “LION” in their names and yet they attract many open networkers as members.

Let’s reconsider the definition of the Open Networker.  First of all, we all first see the term “LION” in someone’s profile headline and then have wondered what it meant.  My original blog post concerning this is still one of my most popular ones in terms of visitors coming to this blog.  Anyone who wants to be associated as on open networker, meaning someone who would either accept or archive your invitation without responding with the dreaded “IDK”, puts this abbreviation on their profile headline.  This, in essence, is the definition of how you become a LinkedIn LION.  Nothing more, nothing less.

However, the original LION group has recently added a Trademark symbol at the end of its name, and is now claiming to be the sole and only or leading LION group on LinkedIn, as clearly stated in its definition in the above Wikipedia page:

“The LIONs™ position as the leading Open Networking Group…is constantly being challenged. Lots of other Groups have been started claiming to represent LIONs™… The only bona fide LIONs™ are those to be found at LinkedIn, Yahoo and ‘Lair’ (TheMetaNetwork) as per the URLs below. There are also Groups for LIONs™ to identify themselves on facebook, for example, however, these Groups are not managed as diligently as the aforementioned. Amongst the reasons that others pass themselves off as LIONs™ / Open Networkers is to build email lists for various purposes including potentially SPAMMING. This is very damaging for all concerned, to the reputation of…Open Networking generally. Look out for Groups which invite all Open Networkers from any and all Groups, and for Groups making huge emphasis of numbers. Look at the background to the sponsors – why are they promoting their Group – are they in businesses built on mass mailing and pyramid style enterprise? The LIONs™ is the only Group that shares its membership lists with the members – a Group set up for the mutual benefit of the members. The LIONs™ does not charge its members for anything and makes no offers of enhanced membership or self promotion if paid. The LIONs™ advice – if it doesn’t carry…[our] logo – don’t trust it.”

I am confused by this definition myself.  After all, a LION is an OPEN networker.  One group cannot claim to encompass all of the OPEN networkers, nor, in the spirit of open networking, should they be in competition with other open networking groups.  In fact, the only Group that is trying to make this claim and is telling you, in essence, not to join other groups is the original LION group mentioned above!  Has the definition of an Open Networker turned into an exclusive one that you need to join a particular group in order to be able to put on your profile headline?

The answer, of course, is absolutely NO!  Anyone who claims to be an open networker should be free to put the term “LION” on their headline profile, and no organization other than the general management of LinkedIn can say otherwise.  It’s like saying that some company has a trademark on the term “Sales Executive” and only those who join the “Sales Executive” group on can use this term in their headline.  Pretty silly, huh?

So why the hassle over the definition?  Well, the LION movement has always been a sore spot for LinkedIn because the ability to be heavily connected with others means that you have visibility within the 36 million user database.  In essence, there is a potential to monetize these connections, and this is what LinkedIn would like to do.  Thus, the limitation on the number of LinkedIn connections was implemented recently, in essence limiting the power of even the most connected person on LinkedIn to have visibility into more than 2/3 of the entire database (as defined by number of people in your network within 3 degrees…at my current level of 12,000+ connections I have visibility into 18 million users, or 1/2 of the database).  So the sensitivity within the LION community persists on this issue, and everyone is being careful not to irk LinkedIn management so that LIONs and the open networking movement can continue on.  I can see that the original LION group is going through lengths to distance themselves from what many feel that open networkers are responsible: spam.

Well, what about the claims put forward by the original LION group of why they are the only “real” group?  Let’s take a look at these one by one:

1) Other LION groups wish to “build email lists for various purposes including potentially SPAMMING”?

I have been a member at some time or another of all of the major open networking groups, and I have yet to be spammed nor receive annoying emails from any of these groups.  I believe that LinkedIn is monitoring the communications from LinkedIn Groups, and should there be spamming, these groups would be reported and banned from LinkedIn.  Nothing to worry about here.

That being said, spamming does exist in LinkedIn.  But this spamming is done by individual LinkedIn members, not groups.  These potential spammers could be members in _any_ group.

2) “…why are they promoting their Group – are they in businesses built on mass mailing and pyramid style enterprise?”

Just because someone is promoting their group, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the Group Manager is in it for the money.  Many groups promote themselves by sending out emails introducing themselves, and this is because they want to attract more members to provide more value to all of these group members.  After all, LinkedIn is a social network, isn’t it?  And if there is a group formed built on some pyramid style enterprise, don’t you think that people who do not want to be part of that group either won’t join in the first place or remove themselves from the group at a later date?  LinkedIn, after all, is a network of professional users, and the tools are in place to easily contact LinkedIn Customer Service if such things occur.

3) The LIONs™ is the only Group that shares its membership lists with the members

Actually, there are other Groups that share their membership lists with their members.  On the other hand, by sharing membership lists, couldn’t this add to the “spamming” that is so feared by making it easy to contact everyone in the group?

4) The LIONs™ does not charge its members for anything and makes no offers of enhanced membership or self promotion if paid.

It is true that the LION group does not charge its members for anything and makes no offers of enhanced membership.  Most open networking groups that I know of do not either.  There are some groups that exist that, for an additional fee, will help you accelerate the growth of your network.  But if there is additional value that the LinkedIn user is willing to pay for, is this a problem?  It’s not mandatory, after all.

After considering all of the above points, I actually decided to see for myself if the most connected people on LinkedIn according to TopLinked.com were on the LION group or not.  After all, the people with the most connections are the original open networkers.  How many of these original open networkers are on the “official” LION group?  None.  That’s right: zero.  What are the popular open networking groups that they are on?  6 are on TopLinked.com, 4 are on Leading International Open Networkers, 3 are on Lion500.com as well as OpenNetworker.com, 2 are on InvitesWecome.com and 1 is on Networkers United.

Well, I think I can rest my case now.  A “LION” is not a particular group member but a movement of open networkers who want to build up their virtual networks for whatever objective they might have.  The purpose of this post is not to condone or state an opinion either way regarding the existence of the open networking movement, but it is clear just by the sheer number of groups that exist that there are many open networkers wanting to connect with you, and you can easily find them by their relationship to these Groups as well as the term “LION” in their profile headline (although there are some [a vast minority of] open networkers who WILL send you an “IDK” for whatever reason, so there is never any guarantee that a “LION” really is an open networker according to the definition that I have given, but we’ll save this topic for another post…).