At first it was only individuals that shared a group with me. I was able to work around that by going to the group they shared with me and searching by first name (since I have the talent level where I can search within groups), however that, as you can imagine, was quite tedious. Then, it expanded to 3rd connections as Thomas mentioned. When I would open the profile, as he said, I would still only have the last initial. If I wanted to send an InMail or message, I still had only the last initial. This would be fine, except, as you know, you want to be able to track your calls/contacts, etc. As far as I can surmise, it seems like they’re beta testing this on poor, unsuspecting users. I should have gotten a screen shot, but did not. Essentially when I would have a list of search results anything past a 1st or 2nd degree result in the list, in the profile, etc, would come up with just the last initial. If I had a real problem with it, I just typically did a google boolean string to find out. I had the problem for about 2-3 weeks. Unfortunately they were the 2-3 weeks where LinkedIn was the ideal sourcing location for the positions I had.

On a site I went to to get a customer service number (and of course my call never was returned), I noticed someone in the comments had a similar problem. The comment was not detailed enough for me to determine, but it seems as though it is something they are beta testing. I’m not sure if it was do to my complaint (guessing not, but who knows), or the end of this beta testing, but mine is back to normal, albeit 2 weeks later.