Today LinkedIn announced its new Open Groups feature, allowing discussions and professional conversations to be shared throughout the entire web. So now every discussion can be viewed by anyone, appear in search engine results, and even shared within social channels.
When a group you were previously a member of becomes an Open Group, it notifies you at your next visit with a message like this:
The owner of the group has the ability to make the group open, to allow them to control who joins in on the conversation and what kind of content is discussed. If a group becomes open, all members become notified of the change (see notification above). However, any previous topics of discussion will remain between only those who were members prior to the group becoming open.
This new feature allows anyone to follow specific topics and discussions of interest to them in any open group. So once a group is made open by the owner, it becomes content that can be shared and viewed between members and non-members, as well as the entire online community.
Most Open Groups allow anyone to instantly join. In some cases however, LinkedIn offers moderation tools to group managers for control over the content and level of contribution by users. With LinkedIn launching Open Groups, they increase user engagement while continuing to enhance the SEO factor on their topics and discussions.
