Announcing LinkedIn’s Searchable Groups Directory
We are thrilled to announce the launch of LinkedIn’s Groups Directory on Friday, July 11! With over 90,000 groups on LinkedIn, it was about time to make the complete list easily accessible by our members. The goal with this feature is to make it easier for people to find groups to join, and we think the directory goes a long way toward achieving that goal.
What is LinkedIn Groups?
Many professionals advance their careers and business goals by counting on industry and professional groups, alumni organizations, industry conferences and corporate alumni groups to help them make vital new business contacts. LinkedIn Groups offers extra features to group-based organizations to help their members stay in touch with one another and discover powerful new business contacts within their groups and beyond. (Read more in the FAQs.)
Product Details
- The Groups Directory is accessible from the left navigation as well as the search drop down in the upper right part of the page.
- Search results return groups that match based on either the group name or a keyword in the group description.
- Search results are sorted by group size with the larger groups appearing at the top.
- Groups may be filtered by category, including alumni, corporate, conference, networking, non-profit, professional, or other.
- If you choose not to list your group in the Groups Directory, we have a setting for group managers on the Edit Group Info page.
- To prevent abuse of the system, users may have up to 10 pending group requests at a time.
We are excited about the future of LinkedIn Groups and hope you will help shape that future by providing feedback to the LinkedIn Groups team: groups@linkedin.com or leave a comment at the end of this post.
trackback
http://blog.linkedin.com/2008/07/08/announcing-the-3/trackback/
Manoj Samuel July 8th, 2008
Great,
I always used to hit the road block with this feature not being there. Will look forward to 11th.
Thanks
Manoj
Jmartens July 8th, 2008
This is a much needed upgrade, thanks for rolling it out.
But…is that it? I’ve been hearing that LinkedIn was rolling out major changes to Groups at the end of July. Is this what you call a ‘major change?’
There is so much potential for LinkedIn Groups but currently the concept is crippled.
My alma mater would love to use LinkedIn as our primary means of organizing alumni. However, has hard as we try we can’t find an incentive to use LinkedIn.
Thanks for the group directory and keep bring us the features!
Sonika Mishra July 8th, 2008
Hi,
Great efforts by linkedin . Group directory will help us to find all groups at one place.
Thanks to you and keep updating us.
Regards,
GlobalHunt India
http://www.globalhunt.in
Annmarie Hanlon July 9th, 2008
That’s great! Could we also have the recommendation feature working again too ;-)
Jason Bailes July 9th, 2008
Thank you LinkedIn!
I have been hoping for this feature for a while. I had created the LinkedIn Groups Search with Google Custom Search and it has seen a lot of usage. The custom search is still available from a link on my profile page. A big thanks to all who used my custom search and gave me feedback!
Now we don’t have to wait for group pages on LinkedIn to be indexed in Google before we can find them. Count on me being one of the first to test the Groups Directory search.
Harish Keshwani July 9th, 2008
The LinkedIn Groups are rendered useless by the “super networkers” with zillion connections. Why would I need a top networker in a group that is strictly formed to discuss computer programming language? These networkers are listed at the top of the Group, thus searching of a genuine and useful member of the group is really a cumbersome process and defeats the purpose of being a part of the group.
These are the features that LinkedIn groups really need:
Filter/sort…
* by keywords (if we cannot get rid of super networkers from the groups)
* by number of connections (in an ascending order)
Communicate…
* thoughts, opinions and announcements via discussion forums
Share…
* important calendar dates, RSVP responses and comments
* bookmarks and news from popular blog or RSS feeds
* files and other media
Network…
* by interacting with fellow group members through discussions
Ildar July 9th, 2008
Greate news and fantactic tool.
thanks,
Ildar
Brad Feld July 9th, 2008
Self forming groups is a powerful construct. Large scale social graphs such as those in LinkedIn can provide interesting new ways to find information the previously have been impossible. Here is a post I found talking about other ways to leverage LinkedIn Groups from a friend (and investment) of mine..
http://www.lijit.com/blog/2008/07/09/what-linkedin-searchable-groups-could-be%E2%80%A6/
Jud Valeski July 9th, 2008
the ability to drill down into groups, associations, and people in linkedin is great, but I would like to go even deeper into the rest of the meta-information that comprises them. lijit mocked up their service integrated w/ linkedin [groups] which illustrates this level of drill down (http://www.lijit.com/blog/2008/07/09/what-linkedin-searchable-groups-could-be%E2%80%A6/). I want to see how users/groups represent themselves on the network at large, not just how they chose to pretty themselves up for profiles.
Jason Alba July 9th, 2008
Will there also be a change in the number of members a group can have, by default? My understanding is it caps at 1,000 until we ask for more, per group…
Jason Alba
Author – I’m on LinkedIn — Now What??? (ImOnLinkedInNowWhat.com)
Chris July 9th, 2008
I too look forward to more options with the Groups feature. I’m most interested in discussion forums and easier ways for me as the group manager to send e-mails/communications to members.
Gary Montgomery July 10th, 2008
VERY VERY GOOD start for groups. As a group owner I depend on searches of this type to build membership. Thank you and I hope to see more.
Gary Montgomery
The Rolling Rack Fashion & Apparel Group on LinkedIN
site:http://www.therollingrack.net
blog:http://therollingrack.typepad.com
Dharmesh Shah July 10th, 2008
This feature has been long-awaited. Thanks!
Next request for the LinkedIn groups team:
Would be great to have some sort of posting/messaging feature so that visitors to the group page can see some additional information.
Dharmesh Shah
Group manager
Pro Marketers On LinkedIn
http://linkedin.promarketers.com
David Berkowitz July 11th, 2008
This is great and all, but really, you’re touting something that should have been there all along.
Steve Tylock July 11th, 2008
Very nice – of course now we have to clean up groups;-)
Read more on my blog at
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com/archives/group-search-available-on-linkedin/
steve
–
Steven Tylock
Author of The LinkedIn Personal Trainer
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com/book.htm
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetylock
Jim July 12th, 2008
Now the groups are searchable, we can see that there is a huge amount of overlap. Are there any plans to consolidate groups?
For example, I really don’t want to belong to six different groups to relate to my alma mater, and another six to relate to the collegiate fraternity.
How about a way to link groups, or combine groups if ownership of two groups can be convinced it is the “right” thing to do?
Greg White July 13th, 2008
The potential for groups on Linkedin is tremendous, but it currently stops just short of being the productive business tool it could be.
Here are the things I’d add:
* Emailing and Notification Tool
* Survey Tool
* Event Managment Tool
Here are some companies to look at with solution components that I currently use regularly:
Vertical Response http://www.verticalresponse.com
Survey Monkey http://www.surveymonkey.com
http://www.evite.com
I think if some basic capabilities like the above were added, that the groups function would become a very powerful business tool.
Thanks for bringing this tool online – and good luck building out it’s future.
Greg
Mohit July 18th, 2008
Hi,
This is a great feature. After using this feature, I see a need to consolidate some groups as there are a lot of duplicates out there. For example there are many redundant alumini groups from the same University and can be merged into one. Can we flag a group as duplicate of another? Or can I give up a group I own and ask it be merged with another as both are for the same purpose?
-mohit
Vincenzo July 21st, 2008
An essential feature indeed.
But I would really like to have the possibility to add keywords to my groups, and to search groups by keyword. Only allowing free text searching of title and description is rather primitive. Come on, LinkedIn, surely you can do better that this!
V.
Dan Keldsen August 4th, 2008
Great, so now we can search for other groups to join, except that we’re also capped to joining 50 groups out of “over 90,000 groups on LinkedIn.” Given the redundancy of so many of the groups, exactly how is one to decide which are the chosen few to belong to?
Not all that difficult to belong to over 50 groups – just joining groups for every conference or seminar that I’ve spoken at or attended would put me over 50 just in the last 5 years.
My guess is that you (LinkedIn) are gearing up for much more interesting social networking interactions and want to scale back before you unleash the flood so you have a chance of adequately covering the scalability that will require.
That’s fine, and it’s understandable, but without being able to search groups (this took 5 years give or take?), you’ve created this mess, yet haven’t provided a way to undo it.
With groups being little more than branding and a way to drive some minimal traffic to the offsite URL for the group, of course there are going to be thousands of duplicate groups.
I hope you have some incredible features you’re going to attach to Groups in the real near future. So far, Groups functionality has been incredibly slim and near useless – at least the enabling of groups finally went from over 60 days to under a day.
I’m all for simplicity, but come on! Time to kick it up from personal networking to group conversations, and really own this space.
Cheers,
Dan
Tom August 7th, 2008
The problem with the limit as I see it is that its being put into place after the fact with an arbitrary limit (Facebook has a limit of 200, but they have always had that). What happens in the future, if next week someone decides the ideal limit should be 20 or 2?
Secondly, it goes against the whole consumer generated media thing where we the users are creating, voting and deciding with our behavior.
So there are two reasons against the limit. I have my reasons for being in more groups. Basically for SEO and for a wider search capability etc. Just don’t see a valid reason for having fewer groups at this point. If a good reason was made clear I might be for it?
[I’m a heavy user, early user and have always been a paying user. Never an abuser]
http://www.tomhcanderson.com/2008/08/07/new-likedin-group-limit-of-50/#comment-14681
Matt Krysinski August 13th, 2008
LinkedIn is a wonderful idea and a fabulous system in many ways however, there is certainly much more that could be done in my opinion as a user.
Especially concerning is the recent decision to limit to 50 the number “groups” one can be a member of. This is a very clear step in the wrong direction in my humble opinion. This makes it more difficult to use LinkedIn, not easier. Why not let the user decide how many groups to join? Users would possibly even pay for the opportunity to be a member of an unlimited number of groups.
I have wholeheartedly enjoyed my experience on LinkedIn however, this recent decision to limit the number of groups one is allowed to join is very disappointing.
I (like many others I am sure) hope that this decision is reversed.
Kindest Regards,
Matt
Sander Verhulst August 18th, 2008
So a few days ago a new release came out of the group-mgmt pages.
Granted, it looks more slick, but as a mgr I am no longer able to sort members based on the dates they joined.
Also I discovered there is a limit on people that can be pre-approved (50) which led to me inviting my colleagues without pre-approvel.
Finally, during the upgrade of the group section I lost a number of members (25% to be exact; 8 out of 32) which is undesired especially since they just joined. I had to explain it wasn’t me that kicked them out…
Apart from that I believe groups are a great feature, but please give it a bit more thought and care…
Steve Brewer August 21st, 2008
Please develop a way for group managers to communicate with their members.
Hannu Kokko August 30th, 2008
Limit of 50 sounds a bit small. A bit higher would accomodate those of us who have varied interests business and private. Growing number of conference groups and several special interest groups gathered around single subject (agile, scrum) and now rapidly increasing tools groups are very inviting :-). For example <100 would be reasonable…
–h
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John Richter January 2nd, 2009
I appreciate there are some privacy issues, but LinkedIn groups are not all that ‘private’, at I can’t think that too many folks would post anything there that they wouldn’t post anywhere else. Is there any thought to providing RSS capability on/for groups
Do folks really get by with Daily or Weekly reports via e-mail (sheesh) as way to keep tabs? No filtering. I don’t really care that Archimedes Gestapolis has just joined some group I belong to showing up in my inbox.
Be good to be able to monitor with other stuff I track in Google Reader and filter via Google Alerts.
Any thoughts / reactions? Is anything under development? Or am I missing something that relates to how others efficiently handle this stuff?
John Richter January 2nd, 2009
I should also add that I am a group moderator of a modest-size (100 person) group myself. New to things, but very difficult to promote group outside of LinkedIn community.
Is the strategy of LinkedIn to try the ‘walled garden’ plan that worked so well for AOL over Google?
Mario Sundar January 5th, 2009
@John,
I’m not sure if you’re aware that you can access your Network Updates via RSS, which can then be pulled into your Reader.
http://blog.linkedin.com/2008/03/28/network-updates/
Hope that helps.
Mario from LinkedIn
Joe January 12th, 2009
What I don’t understand is why LinkedIn tries to limit not only how many groups you can be a part of, but the size of the groups too. There is no rime or reason to it either. Some groups have literally thousands of members while others that LinkedIn doesn’t like are limited to 1000 members. It seems to me that it shouldn’t be up to LinkedIn to limit any membership to a particular group. The idea of a social networking site is to network. Limiting members of a group is contrary to that very notion.
Julia February 16th, 2009
Two points to make on Groups:
1.) I’d like to see more robust fact-based profile of a group before I join it. Currently, I read the editorial blurb and ‘jump in’ hoping it might be decent – and it is hit or miss.
What I’d like to be able to see is the group’s level of participation and activity
e.g. number of discussions started per week, average number of comments to a posted discussion, growth rate of participation (preferably visualised)
2.) There really doesn’t seem to be much difference at all between Groups and Answers. Both host questions and average a short number of responses. How can these features become more distinct, offering more unique value?
J
Albert Thomas March 9th, 2009
I just found out that a group I started now has 1000 members and no one else can join. Here I was thinking that LinkedIN was helping bring together so many of us who went to school in India but are now spread around the world and LinkedIn says no more than 1000 people can be members of this group.
I wonder what rational reason there could be for this. After all, the members choose to join the group so it is not like the managers are adding people to spam. :-(
dirkfrey March 23rd, 2009
This is our attempt to control the growth of a group so that the owner does not become overwhelmed with maintaining and accepting requests to join. We have recently expanded the size limitation on groups. If this is still an issue please let me know.