Comments on: Announcing the Company Insider Widget

By: Benjamin Kennedy

Benjamin Kennedy — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 21:14:33 +0000

Company Insider Widget Matching ( 0 results found) ERROR ISSUE

When the widget queries a company name to return how many employees are on linked in for it, the matching is not functioning properly because of text indexing.

For example, if I feed “Google, Inc.” in I get 0 results found at google, but if I feed just “Google” then it give the results for the number of employees there.

(exact matching of company name code causes bad functionality)

The matching data function, should use BEST MATCH, just like a natural query for companies on the linkedin site works, if that means returning # of companies found, instead of # of employees found, then so be it.

This would still provide much more value to the end user than returning (0 results found), for a lot of queries. I’m sure if you look at the widgets query log, you will see that it is returning 0 results, when it should be driving traffic to linkedin, and giving value to visitors. Please let me know.

Thanks,
-Ben

By: John Bishop

John Bishop — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:53:15 +0000

Hello,

First off, I’m glad to see the LinkedIn platform opening up. I think the industry trend is going toward fewer, more open social networking providers – and LinkedIn is poised to be on top.

Secondly, given this direction, I would like to see even more openness! This widget is a step in the right direction, but it would be great to have:

- Support for LinkedIn groups
- Support for pictures and job titles
- Use of this API as an RSS feed, in addition to a ’scripted’ solution

Thanks for making forward progress on opening up LinkedIn. Are there plans to continue to be progressive in opening up the platform even further?

Thanks!

-JB

By: Brian Hamlett

Brian Hamlett — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:24:44 +0000

In regards to my past comments and my continued testing of this widget. Taylor pointed out that when NOT logged into your LinkedIn account, this widget pulls from a cache (that is updated “periodically.”) I mentioned that when this widget is querying a much smaller firm, that it often shows zero individuals employed (not in the cache,) however, if you log into your LinkedIn Account, and THEN use this widget to query the same company, it shows the more accurate results (I have to assume then that it performs a “live” search.)

Well, until the caching issue is worked out so that all firms that are on LinkedIn can have their information displayed correctly (especially if this is used on a “directory-style” site with many types of businesses,) can you not require the person to login to see the results? That would even negate the purpose of caching and at the same time guarantee more accurate results, which makes the tool more valuable for use on our sites?

We have many BETA testers on our site and most of which are smaller firms but 80% have LinkedIn profiles. When their businesses are queried, it shows zero results, so there is no value to showing the LinkedIn integration. If other widgets made by LinkIn require you to login to use (like the “Share on LinkedIn Widget,” then why not this one as well? Just some thoughts.

By: Josh Gladstein

Josh Gladstein — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:57:07 +0000

Hi,
I noticed that job boards are using it and would like to see how they are doing that so I can add it to my job board. Are there any sites I can check out?

By: Brian Hamlett

Brian Hamlett — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:40:20 +0000

Ah… that answers it then. Well, I would have to make that a slight negative (knowing this is a new, COOL widgete) mark on this as a tool unless the cache is updated often. For instance, I’ve been a member of LinkedIn for months, probably even at least one year and a search for my company shows zero results. Also, I’m not sure how long the employees of ShopFlick, an example Crunchbase company that I tested, have been on LinkedIn, but they also show zero results when not logged in and around 10 when you are logged in. For large corporations I’m sure this is not an issue, but we are looking at integrating features of LinkedIn into our business professionals news site and many of them have LinkedIn accounts… meaning they also have companies they’re attached to, so we’re afraid that if a user isn’t logged in a clicks to view Company Insider widget for these companies, nothing will show. That makes the widget not really useful to our site as we’ll have many visitors not know to log into their LinkedIn accounts first prior to launching the widget. Seeing as how your company name is already displayed on your public profile, is there a way to run a search/query that can grab this info on the fly?Your thoughts?

By: Taylor Singletary

Taylor Singletary — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:22:57 +0000

@Brian – The data used in the version presented to members not currently logged in is taken from a cache that we update periodically.

By: Brian Hamlett

Brian Hamlett — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:41:35 +0000

We have been testing this new widget and the “Share on LinkedIn” widget on our new community site for business professionals, business owners, and entrepreneurs. One thing we have noticed that may be important to note. When tested on our site AND on others (such as Crunchbase) and the user is NOT logged in, often times it shows a result of zero users on LinkedIn. However, when we log into LinkedIn, then go to our site (or crunchbase) and click the same link to view results, it then shows the names of people who work for the company. So, even though the demo shows that you can see how many individuals work for that company who are on LinkedIn, it does not appear to work that way on these sites. This is a concern of ours as the users who come to our site may not realize that they need to login (or signup) to LinkedIn to view the correct results. Any ideas what is causing this?

By: Bill Murphy

Bill Murphy — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:22:06 +0000

Taylor,

Within a week of your release, we integrated Company Insider Widget into our Company Summary and Executives Report. This new feature has been rolled out to our Global subscriber base of hundreds of thousands of Sales, Marketing, Consulting and Financial Services professionals.

http://www.onesource.com

How it works for OneSource users:
Our clients look for the Linkedin button in the Key Executives section of our Company Summary or Executive Report. By clicking the button they will see their personal connection at this company. Then by clicking “See all…” open a pop up window with the full list of potential connections.
This widget allows our clients to leverage the rich data within our database and brings it to a more persoanl level-showing them the potential relationship building paths with executives in OneSource and Linkedin.
Great widget
Bill

By: Clyde Smith

Clyde Smith — Mon, 26 May 2008 20:27:23 +0000

Thanks. I’m looking forward to adding this.

By: Taylor Singletary

Taylor Singletary — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:32:15 +0000

Riley,

We are aware of some minor issues with some versions of Safari and are working to resolve them soon.

Thanks,
Taylor