LinkedIn recently started rolling out changes to the geographic location of thousands of Orange County, CA residents. Previously, if you were a resident of Orange County, your LinkedIn geographic region was set to “Greater Los Angeles”.
I’m sure it’s no news to sports fans, but most residents of Orange County would never consider themselves from Los Angeles – funny thing that we have a baseball team called “Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim” though!
None the less, lots of Orange County residents had complained about the distinction. The biggest problem was that when searching for contacts in LinkedIn, it showed members who could live 20 miles away. Normally, that might not be a bad thing, but networking already takes a lot of time, then add in LA Traffic, that was a 1.5 hour commute. So, for networking, which is what LinkedIn is all about, this stunk!
Well, lots of people complained, but Sven Johnston did something about it!
Sven started a LinkedIn group called We Are Orange County. Over 4 months, Sven has grown the group to over 3,500 people, and recently convinced LinkedIn to make a change.
Orange County residents will now be classified as Orange County, instead of “Greater Los Angeles”. Thanks Sven.
I had a chance to meet up with Sven. Here is a video we shot at Pete’s Coffee at the The District at Tustin Legacy.
Sven learned a lot from growing the group and networking within Orange County. He’s one heck of a Business Development guy.
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