LinkedIn decided I don’t need sent mail anymore

I love LinkedIn. I worked in venture capital where I met a lot of people. Right after a meeting, I’d send a brief message saying “Great meeting you at the JP Morgan conference. I really enjoyed talking to you about your oncology company.” I had a record of who I met, where and what we talked about.

All of that is gone.

I also love cold-contacting people on LinkedIn now that I’m in business school. A surprising number of people are generously willing to meet for coffee. That’s great, but sometimes I get responses weeks after requesting to connect. So now, what do I do without sent mail?

Today, I received the following message in my inbox:

OK, who is Jonathan*? When did I tell him I could talk? Monday? Tuesday? I don’t remember and can’t look at my sent message to him!

I found this thread.

I’ll give it to you Chris, you love LinkedIn even more than I do — you noticed this two weeks ago. Ten days later, LinkedIn finally got back to your friend Christopher who had the same question.**

In the recent update to LinkedIn, I can only view “pending invitations.” I’m not very interested in viewing a sent message that was never accepted. That’s not a contact worth managing.

I want my sent, accepted invitations back. I know you have them! Social media data never dies.

Comment on this thread if you want LinkedIn to bring sent messages back.

*Names have been changed to protect me from looking like a complete amnesiac.

**Names not changed. This thread was truly confusing.