LinkedIn is truly taking off. Measure it by the accelerating rate of new professionals creating networks in LinkedIn, more than a million every six weeks. Measure it by the dramatic increase in site visits, well over a million unique visitors every week. The value of your LinkedIn network is growing by leaps and bounds. While we can provide you a lot of value on the LinkedIn.com web site, it’s time you derive the same value from your business network as you visit other sites across the web.
We recognize that there are literally hundreds of places and ways to use your LinkedIn network in your professional life. APIs will allow you to literally “take your professionalnetwork with you” as you go through your work day, using your network on the sites you visit to get things done.
Maybe you’re going to a conference and want to know whether anyone from your network will be attending as well. Or you’re job hunting at sites across the web and want to see at a glance whether any of your connections knows someone at a hiring company, or better yet, whether you know the hiring manager through a common connection. Maybe you’re using your corporate CRM application and want to see the LinkedIn profile for people you track so you can see what you have in common. Or you’re reading a blog like this one and want to see the LinkedIn profile for people mentioned in a post or the people commenting on a post. LinkedIn APIs will let developers build applications that integrate with LinkedIn so you can access your LinkedIn network and profiles while you use that application.
Over the next few months, you’ll start hearing about integrations with major business and consumer web players and we’ll introduce you to the APIs that you can use to do the same. Every day, you’ll find new
uses for your professional network that will enhance your productivity as more and more web sites and business applications provide integration with your LinkedIn network.
Aileen Brown and Brittany Schmitt, scaled the “Quadbuster” as part of the AIDS/Lifecycle – a cycling event and fundraiser aimed at “ending the pandemic and human suffering caused by AIDS”. Here are Aileen’s impressions:
There stands the final Peets Coffee, before we ride to the finish line in Los Angeles. 545 miles behind us and one more hill left to go. We pulled over, grabbed a cool beverage and cheered in those riders behind us passing through. Over 2300 cyclists pushed out of San Francisco seven days ago before a crowd of strangers and pulled into LA, as a united community. Over $11 million dollars were raised by the riders to benefit The San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the LA Gay and Lesbian Center.
When strangers found community: It happened somewhere between Rest Stop One and Lunch. We left King City on a cool foggy morning and the headwinds were well above 10 miles per hour. Just after Rest Stop One we faced the hill of all hills, “Quadbuster”! Everyone was preparing to face the beast and all I could do, with butterflies in my stomach, was to eat a Cliff bar and go!
And there she was, the mother of all steep climes for beginner bikers straight ahead. In preparation, I shot down to my granny gear and picked a song to sing in my head. “Don’t stop believing” by Journey. As the incline grew, my pedal strokes became much slower, my eyes were down on the road, my lungs were exploding, and the singing got loader in my head. I was climbing Quadbuster! Then in the corner of my left eye I started seeing people flying down the hill, rather then going up. For many of these down hill racers, this was their third or fourth ride that morning. The next thing I saw were their faces next to all of us, upstream hikers that were attacking the hill. Pedaling alongside of us to make sure we all make it to the top. Some were even seen with their hands on the backs of struggling climbers, pushing them to the crest just to turn around and go back down again.
It was at the top of this hill that I realized how much each one of us meant to the group as a whole. And there you have it. The secret to why thousands of people want to train for months, raise millions of dollars, and camp for a week with strangers. It is to be a part of something bigger then yourself and knowing that together you can evoke change.
Using LinkedIn for Good:
At LinkedIn too, we believe in bringing about that change, and that is best exemplified by LinkedIn for Good, a recent initiative of ours to help philanthropic organizations around the world raise funds and awareness.
I just wanted to write up a quick post here to better introduce myself. My name is Adam Nash, and I just joined the LinkedIn team a few weeks ago as Senior Director of Product. I’m excited to be a part of the team, and will be dedicating myself full-time to help design and build the best possible platform for professional networking.
I’ve actually been a long-time LinkedIn member myself. In fact, it turns out that my profile was one of the first 10,000 actually created back in 2003.
I think the reason that I was early on LinkedIn is because I’ve realized that the single most valuable asset in your professional career are the people you trust & respect, and those who trust & respect you. LinkedIn has proven this, and with over 11 million members and counting, more and more people are discovering the value in their own professional networks. Even my Mom is on the site now.
I’m incredibly excited to join the product team here under Reid Hoffman, working on both improving existing features of LinkedIn as well as designing new ones. We want LinkedIn to be an invaluable resource for you in your professional lives, and we have only just begun to realize the number of ways to harness the power of the platform.
I’ll be back to post about new features and new ideas on how to use LinkedIn. For now, please feel free to email me at with your best ideas on how we can make LinkedIn invaluable to you. You can also find my LinkedIn profile on the site.
Well, it’s time to break the news. First off, thanks to ALL our users for the overwhelming response to our request for five-word Webby acceptance speeches. We received over 400 incoming suggestions from among our 11 million users and, boy, did we had a tough time making a selection! Here’s a sampling of user submissions we received:
AlizaGiammatteo: “10 Million Movers, Shakers, & Rainmakers!!”
David Nason: “This [Webby award held high] proves it: Relationships Matter!”
Well, it was a tough choice, but a decision had to be made. And, we flew the author of the winning submission, David Multer, to the Webbys to accept one of our awards on LinkedIn’s behalf. Kay Luo, Director of Corporate Communications, accepted the other Webby.
Without further ado, I give you the two acceptance speeches:
One of the questions, I get asked when I introduce myself as community evangelist is: “What does that mean?” The short answer is that I help LinkedIn understand our users better and vice-versa. Part of my job encompasses finding users and listening to them; primarily on the blogosphere, smaller discussion forums, and most importantly at events where I get to meet them in person. The recent lunch 2.0 event that we organized was one such opportunity to meet with a diverse group of our users.
Another event I’m looking forward to is a discussion I’ll be leading on “Professional networking using LinkedIn – Best Practices”. It’s being organized by the Marketing Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Software Developers Forum (SD Forum). I urge you to check out the event if you’re in the Bay Area this coming Monday, June 11th. Given below are further details:
Did you know that in California alone there are 151,000 people living with AIDS/HIV? Nationally, 70 percent of all new infections occurs in communities of color and people under the age of 25 are increasingly affected. The costs associated, with medical care and treatment for a person with HIV, are about $20,000 per year. Access to life-saving drugs, clinical trials and state-of-the-art treatment helps those with the disease live a longer and better quality of life.
My colleague, Brittany, and I are hoping that to raise awareness both by fund raising and participation
in a week long cycling event – the AIDS/Lifecycle. Over the course of seven days, we will travel five hundred and fifty six miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles. We will become part of a traveling community representing thousands of people who cannot ride with us. Each participant signs up and commits to a specific minimum donation to contribute to the federation of foundations sponsoring the rides.
AIDS/LifeCycle helps those living with HIV/AIDS gain greater independence and get the treatment and care they need. Prevention services geared towards high-risk populations, will ensure that future generations need not experience the same level of loss that we have faced in the last two decades.
We have been training for about 6 months and our longest ride in one day has been between 80 and 90 miles with plenty of recovery time. In the next week we will be riding up to 100 miles in a day, resting in the evenings before starting the next day’s long ride with only the prior evening’s recovery time.
Every year that this event takes place, we’ve discovered that there is increased support; not only in the number of participants, but also in the amount of awareness that is generated.
Aileen Brownand Brittany Schmitt are a part of our sales team. They are currently participating in the AIDS/LifeCycle event and will be back next week with a recap of their journey. Stay tuned.
Update June 1: We won! Thanks to everyone who voted for us. To see more about the startups who attended, the presentations, and the full list of award winners, visit the NextWeblog.
Winners will be announced on June 1st at the Next Web conference in Amsterdam featuring speakers ranging from Jason Calacanis to Michael Arrington. To show your support of LinkedIn and your other favorite sites, go ahead and vote now on their site
Submit your vote for LinkedIn here
Whew! This is turning out to be a busy month for nominations and accolades. We’d like to thank all of you who have supported us through your nominations and votes, but most importantly, through your continued usage of LinkedIn. We nominate YOU in the Most Supportive Users category!
Speaking of the Webbys, we’re in the process of sifting through 401 inventive five word acceptance speeches to select the best entry. The author of the best submission will represent over 10 million LinkedIn users at the award function in New York.
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