A few months ago I wrote a post about to be careful who to trust with your data - especially as its value to you increases. This morning I learned this lesson the hard way.
Someone wrote to inform me that my LinkedIn page could not be found. Indeed it's true - LinkedIn deleted me. When I went to log in using multiple email addresses or reset my password, the system told me I didn't exist! Here's a current version of my LinkedIn page as of this writing and here's the cached version from Yahoo.
I don't actually use LinkedIn all that often for business networking but I certainly log in at least weekly to approve friend requests and pass along inquiries for others. I had 300+ contacts in there at last check. So there's no reason why they should have deleted my account.
I am sure LinkedIn will resolve this issue quickly but this should be a wakeup call that startups can lose your data. It's always a good idea to look into their redundancy plans if they make them available. Oh and if you work for LinkedIn, I'd love to hear from you. I did send an email to customer service but I haven't heard back.
UPDATE: This has been fixed and my profile is back online. Thanks LinkedIn! There's nothing like a blog for customer service! I wonder if that's a new model. It's not fair for me to judge. :->
