Many of our blog readers are probably not aware that we have a LinkedIn customer support team in Omaha, Nebraska. You may have read an earlier post on LinkedIn privacy from April Kelly, who is the Director of the Omaha Center.
Today, I’m blogging for a cause. Corporate teams from throughout Omaha are participating in a sand sculpting competition. And the best part is that the event aims to raise awareness and funding for the programs of Nebraska Children’s Home, which includes statewide adoption services and education, pregnancy services, foster care, and child care.
The 5th Annual “Sand in the City” will take place at Miller’s Landing (on the Omaha Riverfront) between June 6th and 8th. This will then be followed by two days of Family Fun open to the public on June 9 (10 am to 8pm) and June 10 (11am to 5pm). The event concludes with an awards ceremony and the Sand Blast Party held on the River City Star that evening at 7pm.
Wondering what our sand sculpture’s going to look like? It’s called “No more monkey business, get LinkedIn”. Check out pictures of our sculpture model as well as a picture of the LinkedIn Omaha team, busy at work.
A few days ago, I blogged about the launch of the LinkedIn’s Company Insider Widget. With a few lines of code, this JavaScript widget allows you to provide contextual relevance on companies to any reader of your site. In addition to sites like BusinessWeek and CIO Magazine, starting today, you will also see it installed on CrunchBase.
The Company Insider widget is a natural fit to a site like Crunchbase, a free directory of technology companies, people, and
investors that belongs to the TechCrunch family of sites. So, as you click through any of the 4460 companies listed on Crunchbase you should be able to see pertinent information such as the number of people in that company who are connected to you on LinkedIn.
In the meantime, though, we’ve added a few new features to the product, including integration with LinkedIn
via their API. You can now click a button and see if you are linked to
any of the employees at any particular startup. The image to the left
shows Google, but you may be surprised to find a connection to someone
at even the smaller new companies we cover.
Here’s an example:
If you’d like to install the Company Insider Widget for your blog or site, all it takes is a few lines of HTML code. Feel free to leave your feedback.
On Monday, May 12, at 2.28 p.m. Beijing time (6:28 GMT), a major earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale jolted southwestern China’s Sichuan Province. It shook the skyscrapers in downtown Shanghai, hundreds of miles away; the shocks were felt as far away as Thailand and Vietnam.
The earthquake has rendered over 5 million homeless and a confirmed death toll of over 40,000, a number that is expected to rise dramatically as rescue teams continue to reach the most affected areas (Source: Associated Press). In cities near the earthquake’s epicenter, thousands are buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings. We encourage you to support emergency relief efforts by
donating to either of these organizations.
Last week, many of my colleagues and I, spoke at the Java One conference in San Francisco. Given the enormous response and interest we received, we are publishing the presentations here as well as photographs taken at the two-day event. Before we get started, here are the two sessions we spoke at during this year’s Java One 2008.
It was great to have a full-house at both the sessions. Here are a few pics (both sets of slides after the jump). Stay tuned to the blog for upcoming events we’ll be speaking at.
This is a secure and easy way to provide contextual information about companies on your blog or news site to bring your readers closer to the companies you write about, on your job board to connect your users with people they may know at a company, or in any other way you see fit.
Simply copy and paste the Javascript, mark up your content by passing a company name to the widget, and your users now have pertinent access to their LinkedIn professional network.
It’s free to use and available now. Join the likes of BusinessWeek and CIO Magazine — add the Company Insider widget to your site today! Everything you need to get started can be found here.
For the second straight week in a row, LinkedIn Answers’ question of the week focuses on housing and real estate and both relate to the 2nd most emailed article of that day from the New York Times (NYT). This week’s question shines the spotlight on continued national interest in personal real estate as evidenced by this NYT article titled “Collateral Foreclosure damage for Condo owners“.
The question from Joel Landou, Supply Quality Engineer at Boeing, even surprised him in terms of the quality and number of answers that he offered to consolidate the answers into a nice spreadsheet for those interested. Even better, Doug Boedecker, another LinkedIn user spent an entire hour on Saturday explaining to Joel his analysis for investing in real estate. Joel says:
Thanks to Doug Boedecker!!! Doug spent about an hour on Saturday explaining his detailed analysis methodology for investing in real estate in select neighborhoods in the Mid West and Southern states. I believe he has some very profitable ideas and I highly recommend him to everyone of my contacts that are interested in investing in real estate in the future.
Besides Doug’s answer, here was the best answer selected by Joel from Ray Garrett Jr., Realtor/Investor in ZipRealty. I’m going to publish the answer in its entirety for the benefit of the readers, long as it may be. Consider yourself warned.
Why:
Without a doubt, the most important question to ask is “why am I investing.” Investing strategies may sometimes be diametrically opposed based on the desired outcome of the strategy. For instance, if an investor seeks to build a portfolio of monthly income producing properties, he may consider buying homes in impoverished areas where a greater number of people rent. If he wants to flip homes, this would not be the best strategy.
Where:
Again, location is a very important part of strategy. When one buys a personal residence, he may select a property in an older, established neighborhood. While this may be an excellent decision for a personal residence, investors tend to gravitate toward neighborhoods on the upswing of their lifecycles. Also, rental returns are often higher in areas the investor would not personally choose to live.
Typically investors should focus on one or two neighborhoods if possible. This way, the investor will be aware of the intimate details of the area, and he will know exactly what homes sell for, and, more importantly, what he should pay.
How:
Very few residential property investors would be successful if traditional bank financing were the only method by which an investor could acquire properties. Bank financing is certainly an important part, but unconventional methods such as lease purchasing, wrap around mortgages, sandwich leasing, and purchase options are all important strategies when acquiring investment properties. An investor should spend considerable time determining by which means he will acquire desirable properties, and what resources and capital he has available prior to locating properties.
Who:
Very few investors will spend their entire career flying solo. At some point, most investors partner on deals. Investors should always make a list of people who would invest with them if an offer was presented that both parties feel could be mutually lucrative. Nothing is more frustrating than finding that “home-run” property, and not having the resources to acquire it.
Also, many people are involved in your investment property. They all need to make money. If they make money they will be happy to help you make money. The most important of these people is your contractor. Many novice investors try to cut almost all the profit from the contractor to maximize their own profit on a single investment property. This strategy will eventually spell doom. Everyone needs to make money. I’m not saying that an investor should pay whatever the contractor asks, but be fair and share the wealth. The investor has most all the risk, so he should get the lion’s share, but he needs good contractors who also need to make a living.
What:
Some investors buy a wide variety of homes, but most investors pick a style, price range, or home type to specialize in. If someone specializes in period craftsman homes, he will become very familiar with his typical buyer, and he will quickly develop a repertoire of contractors who specialize in these types of homes. I cannot emphasis strongly enough how important it is to have good relationships with several contractors.
When:
Every neighborhood goes through a life cycle. At what point of the life cycle an investor buys is high dependent on the investment strategy. Unless the investor is a seasoned, it is best to consult a professional for information on neighborhood life cycles. This information will prove invaluable to the investor.
Today, we’ll focus on recruiting, the challenges in finding the right candidate all the time and how LinkedIn makes that process painfully simple. Also, moving forward, we will provide a succinct summary of the user (see user snapshot below) before presenting the video and the LinkedIn tips.
How:LinkedIn helped Lenny earn a placement fee of $20K by placing a candidate in the Software High-tech and Professional services industry, with just an InMail (see video below). Tips on using LinkedIn after the jump.
Two LinkedIn Tips from Lenny
1. Build relationships within your recruiting space
LinkedIn offers you the tools necessary to build those relationships with individuals who are from the industry vertical that you’re a part of. The best way to strike a chord with potential candidates as well as with your peers in the industry would be through LinkedIn Answers. For e.g. there are three broad categories under Hiring and Human Resources where you can share & learn best practices in the recruiting space.
And, just as in the real-world, you have to make the effort to build those relationships and LinkedIn is a great place to start having those online watercooler conversations.
2. Seek and you shall find – the right candidate on LinkedIn
As Lenny mentions at the start of the video, accurately finding individuals with the right combination of skillsets may be more difficult than you think. The best way to find those individuals on LinkedIn is using advanced search.
• Deep partnership integrations: APIs allow select partners such as APEC, SimplyHired, and IDG’s CIO.com to access LinkedIn data and build deep, rich integrations. And we will be announcing the next handful of well-recognized partners shortly. This is not a public program at this time. We have carefully built relationships to ensure the privacy of your profile and your connections. We want to make sure that every partner treats your privacy as carefully as we do.
We review dozens of partnership requests each week and will grant access to those partners who have a clear value proposition to LinkedIn users and can demonstrate that they will ensure your privacy. We are particularly interested in supporting jobs and career sites, news providers, and conference and events sites because we believe that these are excellent places where your LinkedIn network is very valuable to you.
• Broadly available integrations: Widgets allow us to provide integration to the thousands of sites and applications that want quick and easy integrations that respect user’s privacy settings. This week we will announce how to implement LinkedIn widgets on your own site. Other widgets will follow very shortly. Stay tuned to the blog. Feel free to also see the existing widgets on BusinessWeek.com and CIO.com today.
Google Friend Connect
With this as a backdrop, where does Google Friend Connect fit in? Google announced Friend Connect tonight (see my presentation at Google Campfire yesterday – video above) and we are one of the launch partners. You can see that Google Friend Connect fits well with our model. LinkedIn’s a part of Friend Connect since we believe that your data will be treated with the same care we administer. More details are available on the Google site.
When we started our Intelligent Applications platform, we outlined several examples of what we expected people would be able to do: see who you know at a conference, see who you know at a hiring company where you want to work, and see profiles of people you encounter in applications and on the web. With Friend Connect, we look forward to seeing the great new integrations that allows you to take your LinkedIn network to any site.
Putting it all together for developers
Consider using the widgets we produce because they are quick and easy to implement and give great integration opportunities. And as Google Friend Connect comes along, take a close look and see whether that is the right technology for your integrations. Either way, your site stands to benefit with deeper functionality and the advantage of bringing LinkedIn’s professionals network to your site.
If you want to develop an integration on your application or website, go here
If you want to develop an application that runs on LinkedIn, go here
Yes, we’re getting older but the spirit of fun and craziness with which we started lives on. Last week’s Wednesday lunch session was a trip down memory lane as Jean-Luc Vaillant, Yan Pujante, Chris Saccheri, Candy Mielke, Sarah Imbach and Dan Nye walked us through some of the milestones we’ve covered in five short years!
In case you missed Chris Saccheri’s post last Monday, here’s a brief recap: LinkedIn emerged five years ago on the pre-web 2.0 scene on Cinco de Mayo. Since then we’ve added value to the growing number of professionals turning to our site for social networking, jobs, answers, and the list goes on.
Just last week, we welcomed our 22 millionth professional (and as is tradition) we took a picture of our team right after our Cinco de LinkedIn celebrations. Also, check out a slideshow of the LinkedIn team through the years!
Here are some more pictures from the celebration and a couple of videos as well. Also, check out the entire 5th birthday photo album on Flickr, which has more than 100 pictures and a couple of videos.
We’ve grown rapidly since we started five years ago, and our rapid pace of user acquisition has been outdone only by our hiring spree. Check out some of the job openings we have currently. We’d love for you to join the ride!
I’m currently down in Los Angeles at the Digital Hollywood Conference and one thing I keep hearing over and over from people that I’ve met down here is, “How do I take LinkedIn to the next level?” Luckily for me I have four terrific recent customer stories that I’ve been able to share with folks I’ve met.
Alison Doyle at About.com just recently wrote an article about how four LinkedIn users were able to use our site in different ways to find their dream jobs. I love this article because it showcases the fact that there is more than one way to find jobs on LinkedIn.
This article tells how Evan Gotlib found his job at TravelZoo by doing a random job search on LinkedIn. Liz Manning found her job at Benevia by looking through her connections on LinkedIn to find someone she might know at the company she wanted to work for. Steve Weinstein found his by getting contacted directly by a Cooper Power System’s HR personnel and Chuck Hester found his job at iContact by expanding his network organically. The article is a terrific read and definitely showcases the power of LinkedIn.
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.
The LinkedIn Blog is proudly powered by WordPress.com
