LinkedIn Open Groups makes it easier to find and share professional conversations

Our members have long been requesting a forum for open professional conversations that they can share with the wider web.

So I am very pleased to announce the launch of Open Groups on LinkedIn.

In the new Open Groups, all discussions can be viewed by anyone on the web, found on any search engines, and can be shared on other social networking platforms like Twitter, in addition to LinkedIn.

Whether or not to make a group open is entirely up to the group’s owner.  If he or she switches to an Open Group, we’ll immediately let all members know about the change and future discussions will be viewable online.  Past discussions will only be accessible to group members, through a members-only archive.

Any LinkedIn member can now discover and follow specific discussions of interest in any open group, even without being a member of the group. Here are just a few of the many conversations already happening in Open Groups across LinkedIn

  1. TED group: Wiki-leaks: How has it changed the world we live in?
  2. In the Search Engine Land group: How do I optimize my site for the keywords “health” and “wellness”?
  3. In the Social Media Marketing group: How can one get more followers on Twitter?
  4. In the Harvard Business Review forum: What is the difference between a strategy and a business model?
  5. In the Java Architect group: What are some good J2EE design patterns?

In many cases, you can join right in. But the powerful, flexible moderation tools that we recently rolled out for maintaining quality conversations in groups will allow managers of open groups to specify who can contribute and how.

We appreciate your feedback, so let us know what you think. Questions? Please visit  or follow us @linkedingroups to learn more.

Feel free to check out the LinkedIn Open Groups directory now