As a freelancer, and the owner of a small company, I like to maintain a presence on as many different social networks as possible. I don’t devote huge amounts of time to them all – there’s so many that I just don’t have the time! However I do make an effort to create an account, link up with any contacts of mine that also have a presence on the site, and log in at least once a month to check for messages, and see what people are up to.
LinkedIn is one of the networks that I’m a little more active on. The groups are useful, and answering questions is a great way to get your name out there. Plus, it’s a little more spam-free and work focused than most of the other networks.
Every now and then, I get told that I have a new colleage at Myth Games. Since Myth Games is a family-ran company with a full time staff of two people, and only a handful of occasional contributors (all of whom are close friends), I’m always curious to see who these supposed colleagues are. Usually, LinkedIn has simply gotten confused, and the person they’re pointing me to works for a different company that happens to have “Myth” or “Mythical” in the name.
Today, however, I saw someone claiming to be a Journalist at Myth Games. They had no connections, were a new profile, and had joined several gaming and journalism related groups.
I’m not entirely sure why anyone would do that. If you’re going to fake working somewhere, why not pick somewhere big? If they’re after some contacts, working for a comparatively small, independent site is not going to benefit them that much, and if they’re playing a practical joke, I’m not sure what they’re trying to achieve.
I’ve contacted LinkedIn to ask them to investigate the profile, hopefully they’ll close it down.
If you’re the owner of a company, have you ever encountered anyone falsely claiming to work for you on LinkedIn? If so, how did you deal with it? Did those false claims do any damage?
Lesley Harrison's Blog 