Let’s say LinkedIn opened a bank. Would you put money into the LinkedIn bank?
I don’t think I would if they used the same technology for accounting as they use for counting members in the LinkedIn groups.
The other day I made a happy tweet telling that the Social MDM LinkedIn group just got 400 members. And now today LinkedIn told me we are only 385 members. First thought: Jesus, 15 members left in a few days. Boring subject. Missing the hype before it even got inflated.
But when I went to the statistics page we were now 400 again:
Going back to the member list and refreshing it several times showed these results:
And:
And:
Well, I guess we are around 400 members. And oh, there’s room for more. Join here.
Liliendahl on Data Quality 
I think you’re experiencing something that some of the ‘forward-thinking’ folks are calling Good Enough For Right Now. Meaning, in order to keep up with the pace of business, shortcuts are being taken that sacrifice data quality. Is there significance to the number of group members fluctuating between 385 and 400? In this case, probably not. But what if we’re talking about, say, credit score, where the cutoff for the best interest rate on a mortgage is a fixed number, not a relative figure or sliding scale? I think Good Enough For Right Now needs to be carefully defined….
Thanks for commenting Charles. You are right. 385 or 401 don’t matter so much right now in the above case. But we indeed constantly have to consider if the Good Enough for Right Now level is sufficient.