They're shedding the social-network image and trying to become a "professional society". Smart move, and helps their image with advertisers.
Extreme personalization is not good for advertising. When everyone customizes their online environment and interacts with a tight nit group of friends, the polite conversation goes down and everyone is back to sharing lolcat images and inane chatter about their day. Then, any advertising that appears in one's "personal" space will either need to conform to one's tastes, or risk looking like a billboard in someone's living room.
A cozy friendly environment would be LinkedIN's undoing, so they need to force a cold, uniform corporate image throughout.
FWIW, if I am appraising[1] a site for CPM, along with traffic data, overall CTR and demographic data, I would also look at the image of the site. A high-end magazine-y website with staff graphic designers, quality content, and general "posh" atmosphere will get higher CPM than an spartan, community-den of a website that's entirely UGC driven. Advertisers prefer sites with strict editorial control with minimal UGC, both for brand-safety and also for improved perception of advertising (not only are ads taken for granted in print publishing, but they also constitute a good portion of the content; when people buy magazines to see ads and keep up with trends, the advertisers can count on being seen and their brands recognized, even if there is no immediate conversion, it's the brand-awareness that counts.)
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[1]Boutique niche ad-networks need to manually vet websites; if you think your CPM is computer generated, you are either wrong or using crap like adsense (or a bottom-feeder, 2nd-tier network with lousy inventory; web hosting ads on your finance blog ;-)
I don't think anyone who uses Linkedin gets it confused with the informality of say Facebook. I'm guessing I'm not alone in separating my contacts such that personal ones are on Facebook while work related ones are on Linkedin being a more public face. That said, as Fred Wilson points out, shouldn't I (and my contacts) be in the best position to judge how I portray myself to the outside world?
How is having an avatar necessarily inconsistent with a "professional society"? I have difficulty imagining how advertisers would object to Fred Wilson's avatar. I've seen photos which are less professional than his avatar - but why shouldn't this be in the control of the choice of the user who almost certainly recognizes and differentiates between an informal network like Facebook and Linkedin (and wouldn't it be even more in the interest of the user than Linkedin to choose an image that furthers their career)?
While it ultimately and obviously is their prerogative to do what they want, personally, I think it seems a bit arrogant and heavy handed.
Extreme personalization is not good for advertising. When everyone customizes their online environment and interacts with a tight nit group of friends, the polite conversation goes down and everyone is back to sharing lolcat images and inane chatter about their day. Then, any advertising that appears in one's "personal" space will either need to conform to one's tastes, or risk looking like a billboard in someone's living room.
A cozy friendly environment would be LinkedIN's undoing, so they need to force a cold, uniform corporate image throughout.
FWIW, if I am appraising[1] a site for CPM, along with traffic data, overall CTR and demographic data, I would also look at the image of the site. A high-end magazine-y website with staff graphic designers, quality content, and general "posh" atmosphere will get higher CPM than an spartan, community-den of a website that's entirely UGC driven. Advertisers prefer sites with strict editorial control with minimal UGC, both for brand-safety and also for improved perception of advertising (not only are ads taken for granted in print publishing, but they also constitute a good portion of the content; when people buy magazines to see ads and keep up with trends, the advertisers can count on being seen and their brands recognized, even if there is no immediate conversion, it's the brand-awareness that counts.)
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[1]Boutique niche ad-networks need to manually vet websites; if you think your CPM is computer generated, you are either wrong or using crap like adsense (or a bottom-feeder, 2nd-tier network with lousy inventory; web hosting ads on your finance blog ;-)