As we announced yesterday, your LinkedIn profile is now ready for your photo upload in the Profile section. As Adam mentioned in his blog post yesterday:

Adding a profile photo is one of the most commonly requested features for the LinkedIn profile, primarily because many people (like me) tend to recognize their colleagues and classmates more reliably by face than by name.  They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and with this feature we hope to make it easier for people to form richer professional connections online.

We also wanted to shine the spotlight on the team behind this particular feature update. So, here they are, just after the release of the photo feature with their profile picture:

We’re excited to announce that starting tomorrow (Friday 28, 2007) LinkedIn members will have a new option available: the ability to add a professional photo to their profile.

Adding a profile photo is one of the most commonly requested features for the LinkedIn profile, primarily because many people (like me) tend to recognize their colleagues and classmates more reliably by face than by name.  They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and with this feature we hope to make it easier for people to form richer professional connections online.

LinkedIn Profile with Photo

However, before we could add photos to the site, we had to give considerable thought to the best way to integrate photos into a professional site. Privacy is an incredibly important issue to us, and we wanted to make sure we had the right controls in place.  As a result, all members will have the option to control whether their photo is visible to their connections, their network, or everyone.

In addition, we know that there may be some professionals who would prefer to not be exposed to profile photos from people they may not know.  As a result, members can also control their ability to see the photos of other members.  In fact, we’ve also taken special care to design the site so that while photos integrate seamlessly into the experience, there is no degradation of the experience when photos are not visible.

A good professional photo is cropped and centered, and as a result we’ve spent some time to provide a simple, rich interface for users to upload large photographs and edit them down to a professional headshot.

We know that people take their professional reputations seriously, and as a result we expect LinkedIn profile photos to be professional in nature. However, we also hope that the wisdom of the millions of LinkedIn users will help us identify photos that violate that. Similar to LinkedIn Answers, members will be able to quickly and easily flag photos that violate policy for review.

Over the next few months, we’ll be integrating profile photos into other features where they make sense. In the meantime, keep checking your profile page for the new ability to upload a professional photo. Or, feel free to keep checking my profile.  I’ll have my photo up as soon as the feature is live.
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Related articles:
* CNN | LinkedIn allows photos after resisting
* USA Today | LinkedIn let users post photos
* Wall Street Journal | Job references you can’t control
* Business Week | Smile, You’re on LinkedIn
* TechCrunch | Picture this – LinkedIn adds profile photos
* Wired | LinkedIn adds profile pictures
* CNET | With addition of profile photos, LinkedIn is faceless no more
* Yahoo! Tech | LinkedIn gets User photos, starting Friday
* Mashable | LinkedIn gets profile photos
* Zdnet | LinkedIn adds photos – good or bad idea?
* Marketing Shift | LinkedIn puts faces to names
* San Jose Business Journal | LinkedIn adds photos for member profiles
* WebPro News | LinkedIn adds user photos
* Venture Beat | LinkedIn finally adds user photos

Other posts by Adam Nash on the LinkedIn Blog:

* 5 Tips on how to search LinkedIn like a Pro
* LinkedIn at Office 2.0
* LinkedIn User – Dr. Sharon Nash, Pd.D.
* Joining the LinkedIn team – Adam Nash

I recently joined the LinkedIn team as Director of Advertising Sales, a job I gained through using LinkedIn. I’ve used LinkedIn for years as an invaluable tool to build up and manage my professional network, find and
recruit talented people, and grow my customer base. I’ve also used it to stay on top of the current voice of the marketing community by taking a daily look at the types of questions and answers being posted in the Answers section. And now I can say that I’ve used it to land an exciting new career opportunity even though I wasn’t actively seeking one out, something that would have been almost impossible years ago but is now a common occurrence thanks to LinkedIn’s ability to help you manage your professional brand.

Branding is something that we as professionals need to take very seriously on an individual level. Ten years ago, Tom Peters penned an article for Fast Company called “The Brand Called You”, which stressed that it’s absolutely imperative for all professionals to develop a unique and personal “professional brand” that communicates the value they have to offer to prospective employers, employees, clients and business partners.

That idea was true then and it’s even more true today. The major search engines and social networks have made all of us far more accessible and visible than ever before, making it so much more critical that we actively manage our own professional brands. And that’s where LinkedIn really shines, allowing you to take control of the major elements of your professional brand: the people you associate with, the questions you ask and the answers you provide, the recommendations you give and receive, and the way in which you
express your experiences and skills.

If you haven’t done so, I suggest reading over Tom’s article, then looking over your LinkedIn profile and make sure you’re doing all you can to help your professional brand stand out. To the LinkedIn users reading this, thanks for using our service. To the marketers reading this, I’m looking forward to helping you
connect your brand with the 14 million professional brands on LinkedIn.

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Tip #1: If you haven’t done so already, claim your own LinkedIn vanity URL, to solidify your own professional brand. Create your LinkedIn vanity URL here. Check out how simple it is:

Tip #2: Another great way to virally propagate your professional brand is to create your own email signature, which you can create by going here. Here’s a sample:

Some of you may have read my earlier introductory post on LinkedIn Toolbars, which can be found here. As you’re probably aware, the LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar helps you integrate your LinkedIn information with your Microsoft Outlook email client – providing you instant access to a sender’s LinkedIn profile info that you stumble upon while in Outlook. Well, we just released the next version to the LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar (v2.5) and I’d like to outline what’s different in this version.

Click here to download Outlook Toolbar 2.5

What’s New?

• New Build Network Wizard: This new addition allows you to build a LinkedIn network directly from the people you communicate with most in Outlook. In the past, the toolbar allowed you to identify who you communicate with most and create contacts from them. This got you Outlook contacts but it fell short of helping you identify who to invite to your LinkedIn network. The new Build Network Wizard follows through to allow you to identify who you communicate with most and then, if you want, invite them to your LinkedIn network. Worth saying that you must specifically invite people you want to your network. Inviting people automatically is never recommended.
• Step by Step instructions: If you’re presently using our toolbar and would like to upgrade to the new
  version. Here’s a simple 6-step guide to using the “Build Network Wizard”. Feel free to leave any questions you may have on the blog post.
• Quality, quality, quality: We’ve spent time reviewing bugs, reading blog postings, and engaging
  with people who pointed out problems. Taking into consideration all your input is important to us and we’ve even implemented a logging system that makes it easier to troubleshoot problems. We expect people to have far fewer problems and when they do, we expect to be able to identify the problem much more easily.

For the rest of you who haven’t tried out the LinkedIn Toolbar yet, I think this screenshot encapsulates the six benefits one accrues by using the toolbar in Outlook:

Feel free to check out LinkedIn Toolbar FAQs here. Read other LinkedIn blog posts by Lucian:

* The LinkedIn API Opportunity
* Using LinkedIn Toolbars to make your job easier

Subscribe to our blog for latest updates on LinkedIn

Some of you may have read my earlier introductory post on LinkedIn Toolbars, which can be found here. As you’re probably aware, the LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar helps you integrate your LinkedIn information with
your Microsoft Outlook email client – providing you instant access to a sender’s LinkedIn profile info that you stumble upon while in Outlook. Well, we just released the next version to the LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar (v2.5) and I’d like to outline what’s different in this version.

Click here to download Outlook Toolbar 2.5

What’s New?

• New Build Network Wizard: This new addition allows you to build a LinkedIn network directly from the people you communicate with most in Outlook. In the past, the toolbar allowed you to identify who you communicate with most and create contacts from them. This got you Outlook contacts but it fell short of helping you identify who to invite to your LinkedIn network. The new Build Network Wizard follows through to allow you to identify who you communicate with most and then, if you want, invite them to your LinkedIn network. Worth saying that you must specifically invite people you want to your network. Inviting people automatically is never recommended.
• Step by Step instructions: If you’re presently using our toolbar and would like to upgrade to the new version. Here’s a simple 6-step guide to using the “Build Network Wizard”. Feel free to leave any questions you may have on the blog post.
• Quality, quality, quality: We’ve spent time reviewing bugs, reading blog postings, and engaging
  with people who pointed out problems. Taking into consideration all your input is important to us and we’ve even implemented a logging system that makes it easier to troubleshoot problems. We expect people to have far fewer problems and when they do, we expect to be able to identify the problem much more easily.

For the rest of you who haven’t tried out the LinkedIn Toolbar yet, I think this screenshot encapsulates the six benefits one accrues by using the toolbar in Outlook:

Feel free to check out LinkedIn Toolbar FAQs here. Read other LinkedIn blog posts by Lucian:

* The LinkedIn API Opportunity
* Using LinkedIn Toolbars to make your job easier

Subscribe to our blog for latest updates on LinkedIn

Many of you may have seen the recent LinkedIn Answers event last week, which featured questions from a diverse group of LinkedIn users ranging from a Presidential candidate: Barack Obama, founder of Wikipedia: Jimmy Wales, Wall Street Journal columnist and Executive editor at All Things D: Kara Swisher, and two best selling authors: Robert Sutton and Penelope Trunk. The five questions brought in a total of nearly 4000 LinkedIn Answers! Stay tuned to the blog for a final tally of answers as well as the selected best answers from among the thousands of relevant answers.

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In the meanwhile, let’s continue this week with the featured LinkedIn Answers “Question of the week”. This week we have Pavak Shah, Commercial Director at Gateway Technolabs, ask what hurdles one has faced in outsourcing Software Services. Quite an interesting question in this flattened global landscape (just ask Thomas Friedman). The question is still open so if you’ve a thought or two, feel free to leave your $.02 here.

Interesting question, you may think, but far more interesting are the answers that are streaming in. Here’s a sampling of the LinkedIn Answers:

Bill Sequeira | Senior Technology Executive:

I have had experience outsourcing in India, Canada, and Russia. The best experience by a wide margin has been with Russia. The most difficult place to work with has been China because of the language barrier (desisted after a few tries).

Biggest hurdle is having a complete methodology in place, on both sides of the fence, with your own staff taking ownership of outsourced deliverables.

Methodology simplifies communication/language issues, and I would recommend embedding your own staff into the outsourced process to ensure that deliverables are at the standards and usefulness that you expect.

Vaibhav Pandey | Specialist at SAP Labs, India

To my understanding Outsourcing a complete business process is always a challenging job. However, the key things that i have found interesting in my experience are:

1.) Processes are the key to success: Ensure that the company to which you plan to outsource as all the processes in place.

2.) Communication: Communication of the goals, vision and requirements is a must. Its very important that the offshore team clearly understands the requirements and comes up with the same vision.

3.) Core Competency framework: Its very essential that the offshore/outsourced team carries the basic core competencies required to execute the project.

Mallikarjun Kasibhatta | Technology Delivery and Business Development, Accenture

Some of the key hurdles that one may face in a offshoring/outsourcing relationship for software services are:

- Inability to clearly define a successful Operating Model. It needs to be understood and agreed upon by both the vendor and buyer of offshore services. Establish calrity in roles and responsibilities in teams on both sides of the relationship.

- Governance structures and escalation procedures need to realistic and actionable. No point in having a structure and processes in place, that do not work or cannot be put into action with enough rigour. The action part can only be ensured by an enabling organization culture, set of policies that drive the behaviour of people across levels to make things happen

- Communication: put quality people and processes in place on both sides of the  chores/ relationship, so that high levels of mutual trust, reliability and transparency thrive through out the outsourcing relationship

- Expectation management: Sub component of Communication but good to detail a bit on this…set realistic and clear expectations for each other and document key discussions, decisions for future reference of both teams. Give the bad news early and dont ’sit’ on it thinking it will go away.

- Track Risks and Issues: track them actively, assign responsibility to people to come up with mitigation plans and drive closure against a date and follow up

- Transition points, hand offs and sign offs: These have to be clearly defined and acheived in time as per the processes defined and only then move to the “next steps”/phases – else they will become big hurdles for offshroing success resulting in loss of valuable time and money

Definitely a lot to think about, although some of the key issues identified were similar across many answers. If you’ve a thought to add, feel free to add to the collective wisdom here. Also, let us know which specific categories from LinkedIn Answers would you like us to feature next week on the blog.

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We are very pleased to announce the upgrade of LinkedIn Groups. Today, we’re releasing a brand new, streamlined group creation process along with a few enhancements to the group management tool. I will delve into the details below, but first let’s step back and take a look at the benefits of being a member of a LinkedIn Group.

Membership in a group affords users the following three benefits:

1. Search: You have access to the profiles of all of the other members of your group.
2. Communication: You have the ability to directly contact other members of your group for free.
3. Badge: You have the option to display your group as a digital bumper sticker.

What’s new?

I. Groups Creation

Let’s take a look at some of the new features. Creating a group on LinkedIn has become easier than ever before! There is only one form to complete, and this is what it looks like:

• Alumni
• Corporate
• Conference
• Networking
• Non-Profit
• Professional
  

II. Groups Access

LinkedIn Groups is accessible through the link in the footer of your LinkedIn homepage. If you are already a member of a group, then you can click “See all my groups” on the lower, right side of your home page. Either of these links will allow you easy access to your “My Groups” page. The My Groups page is a consolidated view of all of your groups for which you are either a manager or a member.

III. Groups Management

We have made several enhancements to the group management interface. All of the links are clearly listed in the box on the left side of the page. Some of the functions you can do as a manager are (i) view the group members, (ii) invite and accept new members, and (iii) edit the group info.

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Alright, we’ve finally reached the last question in our Q&A event on startups and small businesses. We have over 1500 professionals answer Obama’s question on how the next president can help small businesses thrive, which was then followed by author Robert Sutton’s question (author of the “No A**hole rule”) as to whether power corrupts (over 350 answers) and then Kara Swisher (columnist at Wall Street Journal and executive editor of All Things D) asked users what their dream career would be (over 1000 answers). The penultimate question was from Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia who asked what your most interesting find on Wikipedia was (almost 575 answers).

So, finally here we are at the last question from Boston Globe columnist and Penelope Trunk who wonders if there is still an old boys’ network? Oh, boy! What do you think?

Here are some responses I thought provided interesting perspectives from over 220 answers we have received thus far:

Here are a few answers that users have sent in since the question went live. There were many balanced responses from LinkedIn users. Here are a few responses thus far:

Michael Liebowitz | VP, Associate Creative Director at Grey Advertising (Worldwide)

It looks like I’m in the minority but I don’t really see it anymore, at least not around me. I feel like there are more and more women in the industry than ever before and I her about many women in executive positions. Of course, I’m a man so what do you expect? If anything,
it’s nothing like I see on “Mad Men”.

Michael Schron | Business Development Manager at Robert Schron Associates; experienced Equity Investment Analyst

There is, but not so much in the traditional way people think of it. It is no longer based as much on shared heritage (e.g. family, ethnicity) as it is on having gone to the right school or worked for the right company.

For example, on Wall Street being a local doesn’t really count for anything today, as the hiring is global, but having gone to Wharton or having worked at Goldman Sachs will get you much further than having gone to NYU or having worked at PaineWebber, because the prestige
factor is what is important now. Companies want to be able to say their
people come from the top name-brand institutions regardless of whether
they are from Boston or Bangalore.

I imagine that in this process, alot of hardworking and intelligent people are left out, but the same was true of the old-stye networks as well so in that regard nothing has changed. If you want to succeed in this environment, you have to have gone to the right schools and worked
in the right places, in some cases it doesn’t even matter what you studied or what your performance was, because it’s all about brand recognition.

Tom Laszewski | Technical Director, Oracle

Yes, there are still many ‘good old boy’ networks. But not as many as there have been. Also, with more women in the work place I have run into some ‘new girl’ networks. Sometimes people tend to just like to interact and work with people that look, act and think like themselves.
Very unfortunate and the bright side is this attitude is changing!

Darrell Long | Professor of Computer Science, University of California

Yes, of course, but now it contains girls too. You tend to work with the people you know and trust. Absolute qualifications may show up on a resumé, but you only really know whether you can work with a person through personal experience or that of a person you trust.

Have a comment, leave one on the post or better still answer Penelope via LinkedIn Answers.

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It’s another day in our week long LinkedIn Answers Q&A event, which has already featured thus far, questions from Barack Obama, Robert Sutton, Kara Swisher on tech entrepreneurship. Today, we have Jimmy Wales, Owner of Wikia and Founder of Wikipedia, ask you what is the most interesting thing you’ve learned from Wikipedia (Answer here). And, as always, we have a wealth of answers to choose from; almost 400 answers, since the question was actually asked.

I thought I knew Wikipedia; not until I read through each answer and they’re still pouring in. If you’ve a favorite Wikipedia find, answer Jimmy Wales’ question here. Here are a few interesting answers:

Kurt Jarnagin | V.P. New Technology at Iconix Biosciences

I love the random article feature of Wikipedia, I visit 2-4 each day. One recent interesting article was a very detailed article about food and diet in Europe in the Middle Ages. I was quite interesting to think about what foods were available and what foods arrived after the discovery of the Americas and foods that were adopted later.

Christopher Edwards | Senior Designer, Sage Communications

Weird factoids about my hometown in western suburban Chicago. That Bob Woodward was born in my hometown in Illinois. And through a series of links beginning at Wikipedia — that Allan Pinkterton was the first deputy of the police department.

Anders Anderson | Research engineer at Uppsala University

On November 16, 2006, the main page featured a photo of a distinguished man dressed in blue. I was amazed to learn that the colour photograph was taken in 1911, and I spent the next few days (or maybe even weeks) studying Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky’s pictures of pre-revolutionary Russia.

I had sort of assumed that the sky was blue and the grass was green also before WWII, rather than varying shades of gray as I’m used to see on old photos, but here I was looking at pretty stunning technical evidence of that fact (unlike paintings, which may simply reflect the  painter’s imagination). And that evidence had been preserved since even before WWI, when my grandmother (b. 1896) was still a teenager. She later became an amateur photographer, but all her photos from the 1920’s and 1930’s are in black and white.

It was almost like finding a time machine.

And, there are so many more answers to this question streaming in. Feel free to add your favorite Wikipedia find here.

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Starting this week, we’d like to shine the spotlight on our users, giving them a chance to recount their thoughts on how LinkedIn has impacted their professional lives. This week we have Susan RoAne,
professional speaker and author of “How to work a Room: The secrets of savvy networking”. Susan’s been quoted in many business journals ranging from Forbes & Business Week to the New York Times (subscription required). Also, check out Susan’s “Top 10 tips on Schmoozing” that she contributed on Guy Kawasaki’s blog (Here’s part 1).

Well, here is Susan RoAne’s LinkedIn Experience:

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When Konstantin Guericke, a LinkedIn co-founder, first explained how LinkedIn enhances our personal and contacts and adds another level to the connection, I was skeptical. After all, wasn’t I the savvy networking guru?  But, after a few months of reading a bit and byte here and there about LinkedIn, I knew it was time and connected with Konstantin. In fact, I mentioned LinkedIn in my last two books because of its impact.

Interestingly enough, some of the people I invited to join me, ignored my invite in those days. I find it interesting that some of them have now (several years later) sent me invites. They finally saw the light of being LinkedIn.

One of the best aspects for me, is going to my network to ask a question, knowing that these people will respond with information if they have it. What is also fun for me is to visit the Answers section and go through questions. If there is something I know or know someone who does, I take the time to address the question and this has led to my strengthening loose ties. LinkedIn allows for old school manners and as
well as connecting in the new school style. That really is the essence of networking: sharing ideas and information and having a resource network to approach when I am stumped.

The last joy of LinkedIn for me is reconnecting with old friends. Out of the blue, someone from my past business life appears in my Inbox and it is a fun “you never know” moment as if I had bumped into them at an airport. I never just accept an invitation but also send an email to truly re-establish the contact, connection and some communication.

As a speaker who addresses corporations and conventions, I feel good, smart and savvy to know that I am LinkedIn on more levels than I ever imagined.

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