After a day of mounting criticism, the social networking service said in a blog post Thursday that it had been "listening" to its users and "could have communicated" its intentions with the new ad feature more clearly. As a result, it said, it will change how the advertisements appear.

If a LinkedIn user "follows" a company or service on LinkedIn, the ad feature can display the user's name and photo in advertisements for that company. LinkedIn said its goal was to deliver more useful ads, but some LinkedIn users complained it was a privacy violation, particularly because they have to opt out of the feature rather than opt in.

In the changes announced Thursday, it appears that users will still need to opt out of the social ads feature, but LinkedIn has made it so people's names and photographs no longer appear. Instead, there is a link in the advertisements that says, for example, "Three people in your network" follow company X.

It's difficult to tell from the blog post what happens when members click on the link, but presumably it shows which people in their network follow the company. LinkedIn didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

LinkedIn started to roll out the new feature in June, but it attracted little attention until this week. On Thursday, the Dutch publication WebWereld reported that laws.