Just a few hours ago, Michael Grynbaum of the New York Times (NYT) describes “American’s confidence continuing to plunge this month, as their homes lose value at the fastest rate in two decades, according to reports released on Tuesday”. (Read the entire article here, the 2nd most widely emailed article on NYT’s website today)
Given the concerns around the housing slump, many users on LinkedIn have been asking these questions on LinkedIn Answers, which is our featured question for this week. Frank Sexton, Manager of Commerce & Development at National Hockey League and recent homeowner, wonders if he should look into refinancing given today’s housing market.
While a few answers asked for more details, and a few other agents recommended refinancing, here are a couple of answers that highlighted the pros and cons of refinancing with regards to Frank’s situation that may have helped him.
Paul Gruenther, a real estate agent at Vanguard Realty outlines a couple of options –
Cliches aside, I’ve always spoken about how a professional networking site like LinkedIn can help you find your dream job. I found mine, and so did Evan Gotlib from Travel Zoo. Evan is currently the Advertising Sales Director at Travel Zoo and stumbled upon his dream job through LinkedIn. In the below video he talks about the ease with which he found his current job while using LinkedIn.
After the jump, we’ve outlined three of Evan’s favorite features sprinkled with some quotes from his interview on what he found most useful about LinkedIn.
3 Tips from Evan
1. With great connections come great utility!
I started to see the incredible power of LinkedIn, right after 50 connections! That was the tipping point!
As many of our users have highlighted, the power of LinkedIn isn’t unleashed unless and until your LinkedIn network reflects your day to day professional network as closely as possible. We provide an easy way to import your connections from any mail client (Outlook or any of the popular webmail providers) you use. Click on image below to take you to the “Import Connections” page.
2. News I care about, from the people I care about
I can go to New York Times and see the Top 10 Most emailed articles, but on LinkedIn I can find what my people are reading. That’s something I should be reading.
The best part of LinkedIn News is that you get to read, recommend, share news articles that you find most interesting with your colleagues within your company. Likewise, you’ll find the articles that are most popular within your company. And, the best part is that they are private conversations.
3. Letting your dream job find you through LinkedIn
This was the first job I pro actively went after, and it would have obviously not happened without LinkedIn
And, finally the dream job that Evan found, couldn’t have been made possible but through LinkedIn Jobs. Check it out by clicking the image below.
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If you have a story to share about LinkedIn, let us know by either leaving a comment here or email me at msundar@linkedin.com. Want to see similar stories that our users have shared with us thus far, check out the Users category within the blog.
And, finally a roundup of our most viewed videos, which include demos/ blooper reels/ and feature introduction from our product/design/engineering teams. Going through these videos is literally a trip through memory lane. Here are the Top 10 most popular videos we hosted on YouTube.
Click on any of the images below to take you to the video directly or the title links that will take you to the relevant blog posts.
While we’re on the topic of the blog’s one year anniversary (check out our Top 10 posts from the past year here), why not go over the Top 10 photos viewed as well. Also, check out the LinkedIn photo pool we maintain in Flickr with over 555 photos (as of April 2008).
#1: Moving to new digs – Jim Meyer and Jerry Luk at the expanded office space in Mountain View
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I’d like to thank some of the major contributors to the photo pool we currently have (555 photos and counting). A huge thanks to Jerry Luk, Steve Ganz and Brooke Watts for making this an interesting resources for readers/users to check out what’s the latest happening within LinkedIn.
Yes! It’s been 1 year since we started the blog and quite the ride it has been. Starting off with a debate on whether or not we allow comments; our decision to allow comments has resulted in over 1500 comments we’ve received thus far, since we started blogging on Apr 24, 2007.
Here are some basic stats.
Two of the stats that stood out were, the reader engagement factor and the company participation in the corporate blog. Reader engagement as measured by number of comments currently is at nearly 9 comments a post. What’s more interesting is the fact that nearly 18% of our company’s workforce has currently blogged (including key members of the management team). And, that’s exactly the goal with which we started the blog; making it easier for you, the LinkedIn user, to communicate with the individuals behind these features.
As a treat to the regular readers of the blog, here’s a Top 10 list of product feature posts (based on popularity and clicks you’ve made) of the past year.
And, we also awarded the contributors of the Top 3 blog posts (see below) with the Linky Awards 2007 (yes, we made one up) to thank our colleagues who not only create the coolest features on LinkedIn, but also engage in the “conversation” with our users. In case you’re wondering what those special prizes were, we got them all from our LinkedIn store. Here are the Top 3 LinkedIn Blog posts in 2007!
Linked[In the News] is a weekly series featuring news articles culled from mainstream media and the blogosphere that covers relevant topics on professional networking and LinkedIn. Here’s our top five news articles for the week in no particular order. Enjoy your weekend!
BBC News technology reporter Maggie Shields wrote a recap piece on CMP Media’s Web 2.0 Expo which took place this week in San Francisco. In the piece, Shields noted that social networks are one of the “most persuasive forces on the net.” LinkedIn was one of the networks that Jennifer Pahlka, co-chair of the conference, called out during her interview with Shields.
CIO Magazine’s editor-in-chief, Abbie Lundberg, wrote a lengthy post about the new partnership that has taken place between CXO Media and LinkedIn. Lundberg does a great job of explaining the partnership and detailing the many conversations that took place in the editorial department before the partnership was created. This is a great read if you want to learn more about what LinkedIn is doing in conjunction with CXO Media.
Daily Herald reporter Jamie Sotonoff wrote an article this week which featured a number of LinkedIn’s Chicago users. Tracy Price-Lynch talked about how she uses LinkedIn to do research and “mine for sales opportunities.” David Rudduck, the press secretary for Governor Rod Blagojevich, was also mentioned in the article as using LinkedIn as part of his job. Geri Kleeman, also of Chicago, was quoted as saying that LinkedIn helped her find new clients by working her connections.
Liz Wolgemuth of U.S. News & World Report did a piece on Aaron Strout, the VP of Mzinga. In the article, Strout talks about how he used a variety of Web 2.0 tools like LinkedIn to find, research and hire employees for Mzinga.
Blogger Pete Paz of The Blogging Times wrote a piece about Ellen Levy who just joined the team here at LinkedIn as our VP of Corporate Strategy. The article details a few of the many exciting careers that Ellen had prior to joining us here at LinkedIn.
Rising gas prices have always been a topic of interest on news networks, but today it seemed to be all over CNN, including a news clip (featuring a cameo by LinkedIn’s Scott Roberts; after the jump). But I digress – here’s the LinkedIn Answers’ question of the week, featuring a question on the correlation between rising gas prices and telecommuting.
LinkedIn Answers’ Question of the week:
John S. Webster asks if the request for telecommuting has increased, relevant to increasing gas prices?
The majority of the answers focus on the practicality of telecommuting. Some users like Curt Braverman, believe very strongly in the enhanced productivity that telecommuting enables.
And, there were other LinkedIn users (like Dave Cox) who advocate carpools or ride shares, even those with hybrid cars.
Related links (with video and photo links):
1. Scott Roberts’ cameo on CNN:
Speaking of hybrid car owners, we’ve got our very own Scott Roberts – Sr. Director of Business Development (incorrectly identified as Scott Douglas in the below video) talks about rising gas prices in San Francisco. And, a little bit of product placement is always good! (check out Scott’s LinkedIn fleece sold at our online store)
2. LinkedIn Shuttle (from San Francisco to Mountain View):
Given the rapid pace of hiring here at LinkedIn (check out LinkedIn open jobs here), we’ve actually had a shuttle service from San Francisco to Mountain View that has slowly increased to full capacity over the past few months. Here’s a picture.
As readers of the LinkedIn blog, I’m sure many of you have left comments both in response to the posts themselves as well as to questions that you may have on LinkedIn related features. Starting this week, you can access the most current information that we gather at Customer Service through our new online customer service area.
Nearly 40 pages of them! We have an expanded and constantly updated compilation of the most frequently asked questions that you can search through. These FAQs are based on an aggregation of questions we receive at customer service and we are working on ways to also include feedback from the blogosphere into that pool of FAQs.
If the nearly 400 FAQs don’t help, feel free to submit your question to us. Your feedback, whether it be feature related or technical will then be rerouted back to the pool of FAQs for everyone’s benefit.
This week we’ve decided to triple the fun of our testimonial series with interviews from three LinkedIn users on how they use LinkedIn in the political consulting space. David All (Owner, David All Group Media Strategies), Jeffrey Taylor (SVP at Fleishman Hillard – PR/Govt. Relations), Jon Praed (Founding Partner, Internet Law Group) and Richard Kosinski (VP, Political Advertising at Yahoo!) discuss how to use LinkedIn as a political consulting utility.
On a related note, we won our very first “Pollie” Award from the American Association of Political Consultants. The AAPC gave us a 2008 Campaign Excellence Award in the category of “Best Use of New Technology” given in recognition of the LinkedIn Answers campaign with Barack Obama. Senator Obama received almost 1500 answers and thousands of people have joined his group. Senator John McCain also recently asked the LinkedIn community for feedback, garnering over 3000 responses and is growing his group on LinkedIn, as well.
But I digress, here’s the video interview with respected political consultants on how LinkedIn can help you in your business – today!
Friday is a slow news day and the rule applies to the blogosphere as well, I suppose. Either way, thought I’ll draw your attention to LinkedIn’s own Flickr photo pool that we’ve maintained for our blog. The photo pool has had numerous contributors over the months and we added a ton of new photographs in the past few weeks.
Here’s a sampling of the most recent pictures taken:
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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