Curiosity had me digging deeper into the matter. And here is a summary of my findings.
Earlier, there was absolutely no limit to the number of LinkedIn groups you could join, and there was no search functionality available for LinkedIn Groups (yeah!! looks weird to new members, right?). So the only way you could find out about Groups was by literally looking at group logos on other people’s profiles. And even then, you never knew how many members were actually in each group unless you joined them and did a search within the group (and, of course, the search results were limited to 500;so you never knew the exact membership of any group with more than 500 members).
But now things are different! One can choose a group, analyze it and then decide whether to join it or not.
And yet another reform by/in LinkedIn does not allow any person to have membership in more than 50 groups. For most people who are on LinkedIn, this is not a big problem. However, there are others who find this a humongous issue. Also, to prevent abuse of the system, users may have up to 10 pending group requests at a time.
So now what? With the new open group feature, one can get into an open group, and see and join discussions without actually becoming a member of the group. And now it is up to the group owner to decide whether to open or lock the group.
