A couple days ago, we launched several new features aimed at enhancing the professional conversation in LinkedIn groups. We call one of those features “following”.
Following makes it easier for you to see contributions made by your connections and other people you value within your groups. To get you started, you’re already following all of your connections and they’re following you. But it doesn’t stop with your connections: to follow someone who is not a connection, just click “Follow Their Name” under their name on a discussion page or on the Member page in your group.
Now when you go to your My Groups page, you’ll see updates about what the specific people you’re following have contributed to the groups you share. Updates from the people you’re following (and your updates to the people who are following you) also appear on the Overview page of each group you share. All of this makes it faster and easier to interact with your own personal “group within the group.”
For more information about Following, check out our FAQ.
Some of you may have noticed a new site navigation experience on LinkedIn. We are in the process of testing a new design. During this testing phase, some users will see the new design, while others will not.
What’s New
A global navigation bar at the top of the page that provides convenient access to all LinkedIn services.
Simplified local navigation within each of the LinkedIn areas (Profile, Contacts, Groups, etc.).
More room available for page content. Less scrolling.
A cleaner, less-cluttered look.
An easier way to navigate and find information on LinkedIn
We began the redesign effort several months ago by analyzing how people use LinkedIn. We looked at what features people use the most and pored over several years of data from usability research on the site. Armed with this information we began doing design explorations of how to better organize LinkedIn features, and make them more convenient to find and use.
We factored into this effort additional features we knew were coming. We narrowed down the designs to a few candidates we felt were strong contenders. We then prototyped these designs and had users perform tasks with the prototypes in the usability lab. We went through numerous iterations until we arrived at a design we felt worked the best. One of the key features of the new design is that it allows much more space for page content – information about you and your professional network.
We are now doing limited testing of the new design. We are still iterating and would love to hear your feedback! Please consider this blog post one of the many ways to let us know what you think.
Feel free to either leave a comment at the bottom of the page or @linkedin us on twitter as well.
Code Alert!This is a part of our continuing series on Engineering at LinkedIn. If this isn’t your cup of Java, check back tomorrow for regular LinkedIn programming. In the meanwhile, check out some of our recent feature announcements, tips and tricks, or success stories.
I have the honor of presenting my talk entitled “Empowering the Social Web with Apache Shindig” at the 10th annual Apache Conference this week. I’ll talk about how Apache Shindig and OpenSocial standards power our very own LinkedIn InApps Platform and hundreds of other social containers on the web. Read on for more, but first a minor digression on LinkedIn, the Apache Software Foundation, and Open Source.
LinkedIn Runs on Apache
The Apache Software Foundation was founded in 1999 to foster development of the open source Apache HTTP Server — which powers millions of web sites worldwide. Based on this success other projects were added over time. Each project is able to take advantage of the technical, legal and organizational resources provided by Apache. Today there are hundreds of high quality projects under the Apache umbrella.
The high quality and open nature of Apache software is in heavy use at LinkedIn. Many of our servers run Apache Tomcat. We build our software with Apache Ant and Ivy. Diverse and useful libraries such as Apache HttpClient, Commons, and Lucene provide great functionality for Linkedin with less effort. This allows us to focus on what we do best — providing a great web experience to our members.
Leveraging Apache software is only the start. LinkedIn actively contributes code, design and testing to many Apache projects. These efforts insure that these projects continue to grow and evolve to meet our future challenges. In addition to our contributions to Apache Shindig you’ll find LinkedIn active in the Apache Lucene community where we’ve developed a number of extensions to this powerful search technology. LinkedIn code provides faceted search via bobo-browse, real time indexing with zoie, and extra performance with the kamikaze search extension. We’ve also released our data storage solution, Voldemort with an Apache License. (Read more about Voldemort here)
Shindig, powering InApps at LinkedIn since 2008
At ApacheCon I’ll be talking about Apache Shindig, a framework that renders InApps like LinkedIn Events, Amazon Reading List, Tripit and 8 other applications. Shindig converts these applications into web content on the home page, profile page and full page views. The Shindig REST API allows our internal and external developers to access data using the OpenSocial and the Portable Contacts standards.
During the past months our involvement with Shindig has reaped benefits for LinkedIn Members and the developers we partner with. We incorporated numerous performance enhancements that have sped up page load times for InApps. These recent updates also include support for OpenSocial 0.9 which allows for easier, faster development of applications. New features include OpenSocial Templates, a new lightweight JavaScript API and “Data Pipelining” which reduces page load time. By applying these new features the applications such as Company Buzz now load much faster.
Over this same time period LinkedIn has contributed back to the Shindig and OpenSocial community. Our diligent QA teams have helped to find and fix cross-browser compatibility issues. Code contributions have flowed steadily back to the project. And we continue to work with the community to build and release the next version of Shindig, version 1.1, and future versions targeting the upcoming OpenSocial 1.0 standard.
Doing More, Learning More
At LinkedIn I’m proud to have witnessed our numerous contributions to the open source and Apache communities. By collaborating with our peers we have achieved much more than going it alone.
If you’re interested in learning more about Shindig and OpenSocial you can still register for ApacheCon and see my talk. If a more informal setting is to your liking you can attend the free Apache Social and Widgets Meetup this Thursday, November 5th 2009, which is sponsored by LinkedIn.
Editor’s note: This blog post is authored by Andrew He, a Stanford student currently completing his Master of Sciences degree in Computer Science. Andrew is a two-time LinkedIn intern, and spent the summer of 2009 focused on the LinkedIn mobile platform.
I suppose this blog post could have been entitled: “What I did on my summer vacation.” Truth be told, I’m just thrilled to see LinkedIn for iPhone v1.5 in the iTunes app store. There’s nothing more gratifying as a developer than to see your work go live.
This past summer, I was able to dedicate myself to enhancing the LinkedIn mobile platform. In the Fall of 2008, I was lucky enough to be one of the first students to take the new CS 193P: iPhone Application Development course at Stanford. I was looking for the opportunity to put that work to good use, and LinkedIn was excited to have me join the mobile team for the summer.
LinkedIn for iPhone v1.5 adds a large number of caching and performance improvements to the original LinkedIn application. For most people, however, the most noticeable change will be the addition of a single new module: Inbox.
The Inbox offers quick and easy access to three key features: Invitations, Messages & Sent Items. The Invitations tab shows you all of your pending invitations, making it easy to quickly accept requests anywhere. The user interface includes the image of the inviter (if available), which makes it that much easier to recognize them. The badge shows you quickly how many pending invitations you have outstanding.
The application also lets you send invitations, either by entering their email address, or by going to their profile and clicking the invitation button.
The messages tab offers quick access to all of of your outstanding messages from your connections. The badge on the tab shows you how many unread messages you have. We’ve tried to make it as easy as possible to get through your messages by replying or archiving each item. You can also send a message to any of your LinkedIn connections.
Most internships at high tech startups involve new technologies and cool products. But it’s not everyday that you get to ship a real product like this with the potential to benefit millions of users.
I just want to say a quick thank you to Adam Nash, Jaikumar Ramanathan, and the entire LinkedIn mobile team. There are a lot of exciting improvements to the LinkedIn mobile platform on the way, but for now, I hope the addition of the Inbox will make the LinkedIn iPhone application an even more essential tool for mobile professionals.
If you’re interested in helping us with feedback and suggestions for future versions of the LinkedIn for iPhone application, come join us on the official LinkedIn group.
Download the latest version (v1.5) of LinkedIn’s iPhone app here
[Ed. Note: This is a guest post from Nancy-Ann DeParle, Director at the Office of Health Reform and Counselor to the President, in response to comments from the health care community on LinkedIn regarding the challenges faced by health care professionals in their state]
Thank you for joining the discussion and sharing your thoughts on the health care challenges in your state. The President understands those challenges and has made it clear that health insurance reform must bring stability and security to Americans who have insurance today, provide affordable coverage to those who don’t, and lower the cost of health care to help our families, businesses, and government.
Many of the comments you posted online are similar to those we have heard from doctors, nurses, physician assistants, and other medical professionals across the county. You see firsthand the problems with our health care system – what happens when patients cannot receive the care they need because an insurance company has decided to drop or water down coverage, or when individuals do not have check-ups or preventive screenings because insurance companies do not cover them or they are uninsured. Dr. Joel commented that “our focus needs to shift to strategies of prevention and include incentives for healthier lifestyles.”
Some of you expressed concern about rising health costs. You are right. The rising cost of health care in this country is unsustainable. We are now spending roughly one in every six dollars on health care. If we do nothing, in 30 years, one out of every three dollars in our economy will be tied up in the health care system. Melissa S wrote that “my biggest concern is the cost associated with health plans.” Health care costs are rising more than three times faster than wages, and premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance for family coverage have risen 131 percent in the last ten years and went up five percent this year alone. One of the central goals of the President’s plan is to slow the growth rate of health care spending that is crushing families, businesses, and governments. Health insurance reform will accomplish this by increasing competition in the insurance market, wringing waste and fraud out of Medicare and Medicaid, and working to change our health care priorities to emphasize quality of care rather than quantity of services. Health insurance reform will limit what you have to pay out-of-pocket for health care and will do away with annual and lifetime caps on coverage.
Others wrote about patients who cannot move or change jobs because they have a pre-existing condition or simply cannot afford coverage on the expensive private insurance market. Dr. Anje V discussed “patients who have lost their insurance due to job loss.” Under the President’s plan, Americans will have the security of knowing they have options. People who are uninsured or are forced to seek coverage on today’s expensive individual market will be able to find affordable plans in the insurance exchange, a marketplace where you can shop for what is right for you. Insurance companies will no longer be allowed to deny you coverage because you have a pre-existing condition, and they will be prohibited from cancelling your coverage when you get sick.
Several of you – including Frank W, a neuroradiology fellow – expressed concerns about the medical liability system. As part of the Administration’s ongoing effort to reform our health care system, we have listened to the concerns many have raised about the need to improve patient safety and to reform our medical liability system. President Obama recently directed Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to move forward immediately on an initiative to give states and health care systems the opportunity to apply for demonstration projects on medical liability consistent with certain goals and core commitments. You can read more about these demonstration grants here.
We appreciate the contributions of doctors, nurses, physician assistants, and other medical professionals around the country. You are on the front lines of the health care system and see every day how the problems with the current system are impacting you, your patients, and their families. Thank you for joining this discussion, and we look forward to hearing from you again.
We’d also like this to be the start of an ongoing conversation through the LinkedIn Group we’ve started for this purpose. Please continue sharing your valuable thoughts, comments and feedback here.
As of early this morning, LinkedIn has 50 million users worldwide and we’re growing that figure at roughly one new member per second. When LinkedIn launched in 2003, it took 477 days — almost a year and four months — to reach our first million members. This last million took only 12 days.
Where are these 50 million users? LinkedIn has been global since inception — about half of our total membership is international. There are now 11 million users in Europe alone. India is currently our fastest-growing country with almost 3 million users, while the Netherlands has the highest rate of adoption per capita outside the U.S., at 30%.
While 50 million is an important milestone, we’re even more excited about how our members are using the site. Around the globe, people turn to LinkedIn to create and manage their professional identities online. They reconnect with former colleagues and develop new relationships, enabling them to create and collaborate with a network of trusted individuals. Every day professionals use LinkedIn to define themselves —and their businesses — to the world.
We’re proud to have reached this latest milestone, and we very much appreciate our members’ use of LinkedIn. However, in the context of our mission – to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful – we’re just getting started.
[Ed. note: This is a guest blog post from Scott Lawley from SAP on their first community app on the LinkedIn platform: SAP Community Bio.]
Like many of you reading this blog post today, I’m an avid LinkedIn user. For me, LinkedIn is an effective tool that I use on a regular basis to network with people within my industry, and to research new leads and opportunities. Given time constraints I often don’t have the time to update my online profiles on various social networking sites and would imagine this is a pretty common scenario. Starting today, we’ve made it extremely simple to share your SAP Community Network contributions to your LinkedIn network without any hassle.
As a product manager of the SAP Community Network (SCN), I am often asked similar questions by our members about making available SCN user profile information on LinkedIn. Because our members develop a reputation over time through their contributions and community involvement, they would like to be able to take that with them to other social networking sites. And, now with the launch of SAP Community Bio, you can install an application on your LinkedIn profile that pulls data from your SCN business card.
Here are the particulars of the application. The SAP Community Bio pulls your SCN membership status which is linked back to your SCN business card, total number of points, areas of expertise, active contributor status, SAP Mentor status, and links to your most recent blogs on SCN. Here is a screenshot of my SAP Community Bio:
This application installs just like other LinkedIn applications. The installation process is simple and will require that you authenticate it on SCN in order to complete the installation. You can learn more about this application and start the installation process by visiting the SAP Community Bio page on SCN.
Once installed, this application appears on your LinkedIn profile page, the page that other LinkedIn members will see. In essence, your contribution to the SCN and your expertise now can be extended to the entire LinkedIn community. So, if for example you are a Business Intelligence (BI) consultant and write blogs on the topic, users who are looking for BI consultants on LinkedIn will see that you are an expert in the field with links to your most recent blogs on SCN. Pretty powerful stuff, eh!?
The next step in the evolution of community and user profile integration is a SCN application which pulls information from LinkedIn, thereby enriching your SCN business card with your LinkedIn profile information and connections. I would love to hear from you what you feel are the most important features to include in this next application.
Scott Lawley is a Product Manager and member of the Solution Management Office for SAP Community Network. Learn more about the app here.
As the debate on health care reform continues, The White House is interested in the most important perspective on health care: yours. Office of Health Reform Director and Counselor to the President Nancy-Ann DeParle has posted a question on LinkedIn Answers to engage in a dialogue with over 3.6 million health care professionals on LinkedIn.
DeParle says, “Recently doctors and medical professionals from across the country visited the White House to share their experiences with health care. Please watch the video to hear what they have to say and tell us what you think”.
Have your voice be heard in the health care debate: Respond to The White House’s question here. DeParle will discuss selected responses in an upcoming webcast.
I often come across interesting profiles on LinkedIn, but I’ve found it challenging to save profiles so I can easily come back to them later. Usually, I resort to bookmarking the profiles in my web browser or scribbling down names on a piece of paper.
Today we are launching Profile Organizer, a new Premium feature that lets you save profiles, organize them into folders, and add notes. Anytime you find an interesting profile, simply click “Save Profile” and the profile is bookmarked for you within LinkedIn.
When you click “Save Profile”, the profile is added to your Profile Organizer. You now see a module on the profile page from which you can save a profile into a designated folder, add contact information, and private notes that are visible only to you. It’s a great way to remember relevant details about contacts, and develop your relationships.
The Profile Organizer is a workspace accessible through the Contacts tab, where you can manage all of your saved profiles organized into specific folders.
Profile Organizer also lets you save profiles directly from the search results page. With just one click, you can save a profile and add it to a folder directly from search.
If you do many searches on LinkedIn, the single-click “save profile” action can save you time. You no longer need to review each interesting profile in detail: just save from the search results page, and you can narrow down your list in Profile Organizer later.
A few of us at LinkedIn have started using Profile Organizer and find it particularly helpful after attending networking events or conferences. In the past, I collected a stack of business cards and came back from the event unsure about what to do with them. Now, I find the contacts on LinkedIn, and jot down relevant information into Profile Organizer. The next time I go to a similar event, I simply glance through my notes to recall details about our past conversations.
If you have a minute, check out this short feature demo:
Get started using the new feature by clicking on the “Save Profile” link from any LinkedIn profile or search results. Alternatively, you can also check out your Profile Organizer page here.
Profile Organizer is a Premium Account feature, but we are offering a 30-day free trial for all of our members to try it out. Learn more here. We’d love to hear your questions and / or feedback at feedback@linkedin.com. Or follow us @linkedin.
I’m happy to report that as of today, as part of Palm webOS 1.2, the most common feature request from LinkedIn members has now been delivered: seamless syncing of your LinkedIn connections to your Palm Pre, via Palm Synergy. Now every application on the Palm Pre can benefit from the information provided by your LinkedIn network.
The process is incredibly simple:
Make sure that you have received the new webOS 1.2 over-the-air update on your Palm Pre. LinkedIn is only available with Palm webOS 1.2 or later.
Click the “Contacts” application
Select “Preferences & Accounts” from the menu
Click “Add An Account”
Select LinkedIn, and enter your LinkedIn email address and password.
That’s it. You’ll find your address book, available to all applications, is now sync’ed daily with your LinkedIn connections. The following fields will be automatically updated with every connection:
Email address
Title
Company
Photo
In addition to integration with Palm webOS, we’re also pleased to announce that we’ve uploaded the v1.0 of our LinkedIn for Palm Pre application. It features a number of performance improvements, and offers an improved user experience for search, the number one feature for mobile professionals. Now there is even less excuse to walk into a meeting without taking 30 seconds to type in their name and get the full detail about their professional experience.
We appreciate the feedback that you’ve given us on our first Palm Pre application, and we hope you enjoy these improvements. Stay tuned, we’re planning to roll out additional LinkedIn mobile enhancements in the near future.
We love to hear from you. So feel free to comment, but keep in mind the basics of blog etiquette — no spam, no profanity, no slander, etc. All comments are moderated.
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