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News this morning that LinkedIn has removed the ability to export personal contact lists will surely have an impact on the number of premium account renewals.

In case you don’t know: LinkedIn is a social networking software platform designed specifically for the business community. The goal of the site is to allow registered members to establish and document networks of people they know and trust professionally.

Follow the link from the export contacts page to the so called help page (that has no reference at all your contacts), it goes on to inform you that there is a wait time of  72 hours for the data.

What’s interesting from a design and marketing viewpoint is that the notice that informs you that you can no longer export the data looks cheap and shoddy and not in keeping with LinkedIn’s branding.

LinkedIn doesn’t make rash decisions and there is a reason behind this move but whatever their reason it’s wrong. Check out LinkedIn’s ‘Our Members Come First’ blurb:

By acting with integrity and holding ourselves personally accountable for our actions, we show our users and our peers that they can depend on us to keep their information safe and their best interests at heart.”

Yes, keep it safe but please don’t prevent me from accessing it.

We’ll watch this story as it unfolds and keep you posted. More on this breaking story over on Venture Beat.

Marc O'Dwyer

After completing a Graduate program in Marketing, Marc’s impressive sales career began at Allied Irish Banks, Pitney Bowes and Panasonic where he received numerous Irish and European sales performance awards and consistently exceeded targets and expectations. In 1992, Marc’s entrepreneurial spirit led him to set up his own business, Irish International Sales (IIS). Initially, this company was a reseller for Take 5 Accounts and Payroll software. Within four years, IIS became the largest reseller of Take 5 in Ireland, acquiring four other Take 5 resellers. He also found time to set up two mobile phone shops under the Cellular World brand and a web design company offering website design services for small businesses. In 2001, he bought the majority share in a small Irish software business, Big Red Book. At that time, the company was losing money. The company became profitable within two months, and Marc then acquired a payroll company to compliment Big Red Books Accounting products. In 2003, IIS were appointed as Channel Partners with SAP for their new SME product, SAP Business One. Marc sold his Take 5 business and concentrated on developing this new market for SAP As a result, by 2007, IIS was recognised as the largest Channel Partner for SAP in EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa). In 2008, the IIS Sales Manager bought the Company from Marc in an MBO. He launched Big red cloud in June 2012, the online version of big red book, to date the company successfully converts 59% of trials into sales and the number of customers is growing rapidly. Marc continues to run both Big Red Book and Big Red Cloud which now support 75,000 businesses. He is a very keen sportsman, having played rugby for 20 years, represented Leinster at under 16 and under 20 levels, and league squash with Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club for 10 years. Marc has competed in 11 Marathons, including the London and Boston Marathons, and has completed several Triathlons and Half Ironman races. He has also completed six Ironman Races in Austria(x2), Frankfurt (Germany), Nice (France) , Mallorca (Spain) and Copenhagen (Denmark)