chrisbrogan.com - Latest Comments in Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

gprs tracking — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 06:20:42 -0000

Groups are a great way in which to get in front of relevant and like minded people to yourselves.

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Web Series — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 20:42:50 -0000

For me, LinkedIn is a business related social networking site and it's conecting people who work, own a business or looking for a job. It's a great option to keep all your business contacts, experience and job references in one place. It's an “enhanced” business card and an awesome social platform.

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

youtube downloader — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 07:24:41 -0000

Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that LinkedIn feels relatively static. This one dynamic would offer a sense of motion that wasn’t there before, and would provide me with data as to how FRESH someone’s efforts are.

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Carol_wenzhi — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 03:58:54 -0000

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Vladislav Chernyshov — Sat, 31 May 2008 14:47:05 -0000

Hi Chris,

Good to see new design of your blog!

Nice post! And take a look at the comments. A lot of feature requests! After reading I came up with this
http://bloodcarter.wordpres...

Just some thoughts about "Feature vendors" as I called them)))))

Take care,
Vlad

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Daniel, The Real Estate Zebra — Sat, 31 May 2008 11:43:56 -0000

Being able to group my contacts and being able to add meta data to them are the big things for me.

I agree with Chris, I don't think alphabetically. Sometimes, I have a question, and I don't immediately know which of my contacts might be best to help me with it. If I could group them, then I could easily go to the group of people that might be able to help me, and pick some. I don't have a HUGE amount of connections, but enough that sometimes I forget about people who I might have wanted to contact about something.

Being able to add the meta-data to the connections would also help the situation. As others have mentioned, being able to add that data to connections so that my memory is jogged when I look at their info would be quite helpful.

On another note, I thought that LinkedIn kinda used to let me do this. I used to have different choices for how I know this person, some of which I created. Now, I only have the choices of my positions/companies, and my groups. Am I missing something?

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Shannon Ehlers — Sat, 31 May 2008 02:42:44 -0000

LinkedIn is by far my favorite social networking tool, not because of what it is but because of what it is NOT. It is not a favorite place to post pictures of last night's drunken debauchery (no fart jokes, no beer drinking stories), it is not a good place to display your power pick-up line (go to eHarmony or something), it is not a virtual shill for third party apps ala Facebook (yet), it is not something that contributes to my spam load (thanks). The lack of sucky-ness keeps me coming back.

For improvements, I think someone earlier mentioned a disdain for headhunter phone calls. Agree. I have started demanding that they invite me if they call me, and my last call came from a guy (no names need be mentioned) who called himself an "open networker". When I accepted his invite, I discovered that he had made his contacts private. Wow, get a dictionary and look up the word "open".

I realize that if I indicate on my profile that I'm willing to discuss job opportunities, then it is really my own fault. Still, I think there's a violation of my trust since I don't post my work phone number nor do I indicate that it's OK to call me at work. Having a "trust ranking" system for people similar to seller ratings on eBay would be something useful, but I imagine it would be very easy to game the system for political or whatever reasons (but hey, this NEVER happens on eBay:-) Right?). Still, I think this would go a long way toward indicating the difference between true professional associates and the more common "open networkers" who don't really have prior knowledge of the person they are connecting with.

This really goes back to Chris's idea of layered metadata. A thumbs up/down push button rank with the option of then adding comments (or not) really sounds like a great solution here, and for lots of situations mentioned by others.

So Mario, just add the simpler ranking system and keep the sucky-ness at bay as long as possible.

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

me — Sat, 31 May 2008 02:23:29 -0000

The feature I want is to block specific users from seeing my profile and or browsing my contacts. I worked with some real jerks and I don't want them browsing my network because we have shared 1st degree contacts.

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Mario P. Lopez — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:33:51 -0000

Hello,

First of all, congratulations to Chrish Brogan for a very timely article.

Well, I'd really appreciate to know what Mario Sundar could tell me on the following: Mario... Why the Customer Service staff remains silent after a couple of requests asking them for support regarding a couple of problems on my Home and Contacts Page? What's the matter with them?

Both pages don't open correctly... the second one opens as a blank page, no names, no links to their profiles, no nothing...

From Mario to Mario... Can you help me???

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Luis Sandoval — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:49:44 -0000

Excellent article, no doubt LinkedIn is indeed sitting on a gold mine, and with just the right additions I can see more people using it to its full potential.

The cork board and the grouping contacts are two of the best ideas. I'd like to see more in depth coverage of the company's and organizations people work for. Perhaps creating a partnership/community for people to read up on. Anyone can visit the company site, but perhaps adding a commentary system on what employment there is like would be useful for someone looking for specifics needs.

How about internal IM program? A way for contacts to connect if others are on at the same time, similar to what Facebook has done.

Just my two cents, but I think you gave LinkedIn some things to think about!

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Martin Edic — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:20:10 -0000

They announced the Company Profiles too early IMHO since the only way to add a company is to send someone and email and hope something happens. I'd like to see this change.
And yes, it feels static. For example the Groups feature is really poorly designed- you join a Group and nothing happens, you don't get taken to a social network-style page or anything. I like LinkedIn but agree that they are leaving a lot of opportunity on the table.

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

marifromky — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:20:35 -0000

I'd like to see more options under the "Invite [x] to connect on LinkedIn" pane. Their current options make me nuts, and there's no way to add in "other" and insert where you know this person. Aggravating.

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

gaeyia — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:13:10 -0000

Rob,
Why so fatalistic?
What about: Got drunk together at a conference, messed around, it's magic and we're Tweeting from Vegas?

;)

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Cara — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:08:09 -0000

For me, LinkedIn is like the savings account you keep banking funds in but don't really know what to do with yet. You feel like someday it will really amount to something, and it looks good on paper, but now what?

I would suggest working with Common Craft to produce a video on how to get the most out of LinkedIn. What can I do with it that I'm not already doing? This may be especially useful after you put in some of the suggested changes from the comments to Chris's post...

Here's a link to Common Craft: http://www.commoncraft.com/

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

@Stephen Productivity in Cont — Fri, 30 May 2008 11:20:34 -0000

I do not have anything to add, at least now that I read through the comments! Heh. What a giant list of great ideas!

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Chris Rechtsteiner — Fri, 30 May 2008 11:02:04 -0000

Absolutely an open platform. That is far and away a necessity b/c then all of the other features / capabilities people want automagically get built.

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

davidleeking — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:23:45 -0000

Groupings - I'd like that in Twitter, too!

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

MichelleBB — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:12:37 -0000

I'd like to see a "recommendations from your connections" page so colleagues and friends could post what they're reading, where they've eaten (when on the road) and what sites they visit for information.

The calendar idea is a good one too. I'd like to see what upcoming events my colleagues are attending or my groups are hosting.

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Rob Cottingham — Fri, 30 May 2008 09:56:45 -0000

Hmm... I'm not so sure I'd like to have the news of a disconnection broadcast to the disconnectee. I don't want to feel like I'd have to explain why I cut the wire. But YMMV.

I'm all for meta information - including tagging, both my own profile and others. And then it would be great if I could conduct group functions on any of my contacts that had a particular tag.

And I'll echo Monica Hamburg's request for new "How do you know Chris" categories -- or just making that part optional (all of which might be taken care of with tagging, come to think of it).

Incidentally, I commented on her post suggesting the new categories should be:

- Personal friend
- Family member
- Colleague
- Business friend
- Partner (you’ve done business together)
- Members of an organization
- Blogging buddy
- Creepy high school acquaintance
- Can’t remember, too embarrassed to admit it
- Got drunk together at conference, messed around, not sure how far it went
- Got drunk together at conference, messed around, absolutely horrifically certain how far it went
- Someone who was willing to Digg my blog post
- Frequent teammate in flame wars
- Let’s face it, I don’t know them… but they’d be one hell of a trophy friend

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Henrico Dolfing — Fri, 30 May 2008 08:50:50 -0000

I placed the comments on your post on my blog. Summarized I would say that LinkedIn should focus on the way it is presenting the contacts and the social network behind it.

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Joyce Boadt — Fri, 30 May 2008 08:19:35 -0000

I think it would be great to have an Events section. Allow people to post conferences, meetings, etc. There would have to be a way to categorize them by type of event, target audience, location, etc. I think it would be a great way to advertise and share information with people who might be interested.

I'd like to be able to see the last time someone logged into the system. I know of many people who created profiles in response to an ivitation but then never used the site again. It would give you a hint as to how current the information is.

I like the ability to add comments to profiles and also dates and reminders. It'd be nice to get a reminder that it's someone's birthday, anniversary, when they have a speaking engagement coming up, etc.

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Nancy B — Fri, 30 May 2008 05:26:22 -0000

Since Kathie commented first I'll join the discussion too :-)!

Top 5 things I don't do on LinkedIn:

1. Share content on a topic.
Q&A is nice but for a better understanding the new FriendFeed rooms rock! Ask, answer, share, explore

2. Converse within a group
Stopping at the Q&A level feel disconnected as a community boundry.

3. JibberJobber Notes
Making the connection between what resume / profile version was shared with whom for what position would be awesome if there was better integration.

4. Group and Message contacts by type (of my choosing)
As a PMO manager I longed to be able to do more with my screen recruiters as a group and 'un-vetted' recruiters as a different group. LinkedIn almost has the right set of features to support that kind of interaction... kins of.

5. Multi Level Influencer engagement during beta and during calm.
At this time in my career I do not do mass hirings as I have in the past, but I still use the tool almost daily. What appears to my eye to hopefully be A/B testing is really black box and I would love to know "is this on purpose or is it broken?" I would love to know who the respected power users are and that I can trust thier answers in Q&A when things 'get twitchy.' I would love to catch the buzz from the LinkedIn 'superlinkeer people' forum and see thier pride in suggestions being realized. Mario does a great job at his sphere of influence, and those employees who participate in GetSatisfaction rock! but there is a viral opportunity missing in the community of users that would make me feel more loyal to LinkedIn as a brand... but I am digressing into a response that Adam Nash deserves directly.

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Robin Cannon — Fri, 30 May 2008 05:09:58 -0000

Some great ideas already listed, don't think I could argue with any of them.

For me:

Definitely concur with the idea of being able to more effectively monitor/update/remove the dormant contacts.

On a more general note I'd like to see LinkedIn become more...um...actively interactive. At the moment while I have connections and a network there seems less impetus towards an active and communicative network. Q&A is excellent, but wonder if groups might be being underused (...albeit it may be me underusing groups).

#1 thing is definitely a note-taking ability though. That extends to notes about individual contacts, Q&A discussions, groups, etc.

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Kathie Thomas, A Clayton's Sec — Fri, 30 May 2008 03:06:50 -0000

Notice that Elvis has just left the building!

No, seriously, when a contact disconnects, or leaves LinkedIn, it would be nice to get some sort of message that says:

Vincent is no longer connected with you.

I only get a clue when I see the number drop but usually don't have any idea who it was.

Re: Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now

Mario Sundar — Fri, 30 May 2008 02:46:49 -0000

BTW, Chris, Thanks a million for those kind words. Much appreciated.

Too bad, we couldn't meet when you were in the Bay Area recently. Are you gonna be at BlogExpo?