LinkedIn Groups: Look who’s talking now?
LinkedIn Groups has always been the central place on LinkedIn for users to form communities around professional interests. Thus far, users have used Groups to search and contact one another. But, today’s
adds the most requested feature of them all – Group Discussions.
This is the first step in a series of upgrades to the Groups functionality that you will be seeing in the months to come. In addition to discussions, given below are three more new feature enhancements to LinkedIn Groups:
- Group home page: A private space for your members on LinkedIn.
- Discussion
forums: Simple discussion spaces for you and your members. (You can turn discussions off in your management control panel if you like)
- Enhanced roster: Searchable list of group members.
- Digest emails: Daily or weekly digests of new discussion topics, which your members may choose to receive. We will be turning digests on for all current group members shortly but highly recommend your setting the frequency of emails to your own preference.
In addition to the above feature enhancements, we’ve also made it easier both for group managers and group members to optimize their groups experience.
- Group management: In addition to the above four basic feature set, we’ve also added a slew of enhancements that makes it even easier for group managers to run the group.
- User management: Most importantly, we also would like users to optimize their groups experience by getting to pick and choose how often they’d like to receive their email digest
We’re confident that these new features will spur communication, promote collaboration, and make your group more valuable to you and your members. So, what are you waiting for? Check out the new functionality and get a group discussion going by posting a welcome message.
A trip down memory lane. Related articles from the past on LinkedIn Groups:
trackback
http://blog.linkedin.com/2008/08/28/post-3-2/trackback/
Tim Wyatt August 28th, 2008
What are your thoughts and/or plans concerning ‘group-jamming?’ if I may coin a phrase i.e. the fact that many if not all groups are stuffed with the topinked crowd.
For example: I’m a member of the Python group. The first ten pages of members of this group (group membership is sorted such that people with the most connections come first) are people who have joined every group on linkedin simply to gain connections. None of them would recognize a Python module if it fell from a great height and crushed them. Gate crashiong groups like this is a whole new category of the tragedy of the commeons.
Tim Johnson August 29th, 2008
Good work Ben. This is a strong step forward for groups on linkedin and will offer the members of my group an opportunity to engage more. I look forward hearing more about your future plans for groups.
Alan O'Dea August 29th, 2008
I have been using LinkedIn now to stay in touch with my global contacts within the video game industry now for a number of years. I have always wondered however why there is not an events management and meeting scheduling system in LinkedIn.
A lot of my contacts attend the same industry events and it would be great if there was an events/conference section in LinkedIn that I could see who is attending various trade shows and conferences and arrange a meeting with my contact at that event and that would then sync to my calendar.
I was impressed by the events management system they have over at Game Industry Biz http://www.gamesindustry.biz/network/events a much smaller social network site but with a great events manager system for the games industry.
I think an event managementy system would be a great compliment to LinkedIn after all once you have all your contacts in one place what better place to arrange a event meeting than through LinkedIn.
Umberto Lisiero August 29th, 2008
great, congratulations! I’m an owner of a group and I’d like to invite linkedin members to join BMA network (without using my own network). Could I ask you to improve the system, please? ;)
Ted Meulenkamp August 29th, 2008
Hi, I just checked out the new discussion feature and it looks great. There are 2 things I would like to suggest and that is 1) the possibility to add tags to your posting and an overview of those tags for easier searching interesting topics and 2) get rid of the bold and font size of the first part of the post!
As group owner I would besides that appreciate some other features (while we are at it):
The option to draft your own message once you approve members (with HTML options) as it would help us to build the community.
I would like to see current job and company in the overview of pending requests as it would save me a lot of time as my group only allows recruiters (yes very selfish request). It would save me a lot of time on checking each request.
The final piece is the ability to download more details of the members in the CSV file. I’m missing information like job title, company, city and country. It would help owners to segment their group and get a better understanding of who they have as a member.
great job on the groups, let’s see how interactive it really gets
Ted
Laurent J.V. Dubois August 29th, 2008
Hi Ben,
Thanks for this new service!
I was very surprised to see that a member of our sales group had already posted its first message!
We have the luck(chance) to have serious and responsible members, but I do not know personally each of our 100000 members.
Maybe a moderation function would be useful …
Alan O'Dea August 29th, 2008
I have been using LinkedIn now to stay in touch with my global contacts within the video game industry now for a number of years. I have always wondered however why there is not an events management and meeting scheduling system in LinkedIn.
A lot of my contacts attend the same industry events and it would be great if there was an events/conference section in LinkedIn that I could see who is attending various trade shows and conferences and arrange a meeting with my contact at that event and that would then sync to my calendar.
I was impressed by the events management system they have over at Game Industry Biz http://www.gamesindustry.biz/network/events a much smaller social network site but with a great events manager system for the games industry.
I think an event managementy system would be a great compliment to LinkedIn after all once you have all your contacts in one place what better place to arrange a event meeting than through LinkedIn.
Adam Williams August 29th, 2008
This will increase the user base of Linkedin tenfold in years to come. What a fantastic feature. I am already getting to know people in my network a lot better and it’s only day one.
Keep up the good work Ben.
Kind regards
Adam
Gerald Inman August 29th, 2008
The new features to LinkedIn groups is a greatly welcomed addition to this business forum. I have read many posts and comments outside of LinkedIn asking for more collaborative tools. With this new addition of services to the LinkedIn groups, individuals will be able to have very specific discussions, question and answer sessions, and meaningful collaborative dialog in order to “get real work done”!
That is really where LinkedIn shines versus any other forum on the Internet. LinkedIn allows individuals, businesses and corporations to network, connect on issues, and “get real work done”!
Thank you so much LinkedIn!!! :-)
Roman Ripa August 29th, 2008
Discussions are really helpful feature for making groups “live”.
We appreciate also the ability to embed small Linkedin Discussion Widget into the web related to the group. It would enable to:
- see 5 recent discussions of the group,
- send posts into the discussion,
- open the list of group members.
The appropriate HTML code for “pasting” widget into the web page will be generated upon a new command at “Manage Group” for managers of particular group.
We use a similar vehicle for sharing links stored at del.icio.us, see “New Tips” section at http://www.bluestrategy.cz/en/doporucujeme.php and http://delicious.com/bluestrategy.
Roman
MK August 29th, 2008
Great features, gotta love it.
One recommendation though: In the ‘My Groups’ page you should show how many new Q&A’s there are.
MK
Nikolay Klimchuk August 29th, 2008
Actually that was the step what I always expected.
What was the reason to have groups with users which just URLs to nowhere?
Bill Sodeman August 29th, 2008
I’ve already posted a discussion thread in an alumni group that I manage.
I’m hoping that spam and recruiting messages will not become a problem in the LinkedIn groups. It should be easy for small groups to control these issues, but larger groups might encounter problems.
Tom Van Vleck August 29th, 2008
The listing of members has become less useful.
The number of members in my group has increased but
I can no longer sort by date joined, so I can’t find
out who it was.
John Carson August 29th, 2008
Ben, is that why for the last little while I can only see a set amount (9) of Connection Updates?
John.
Guillaume Castevert August 30th, 2008
Hi Ben,
Thanks for the good work in setting this great feature!
As with any communication tool, the fisrt usage is of course SPAM… It has already started in many of the groups I belong to: persons posting discussions only to advertise their own profile or group.
Therefore I have a suggestion: can you allow the group owner and managers to moderate the comments and discussion topics and also allow users to flag comments (like on the “answers” feature). Therefore the managers can delete these innapropriate “discussions” (which by the way end up on the top of my linkedin home page… very annoying) and warn the indelicate users that if they pursue this they can be banned from the group. This should do…
Thanks again,
Guillaume
John Sheridan August 30th, 2008
I was excited to see this new feature. However, it appears as an option in all of my groups, except one. And that one group, is where I needed it most.
I raised a ticket with customer service, but have not heard anything. I guess there are still a few bugs to be worked out.
Jeffrey L. Taylor August 30th, 2008
Across the board, this is a terrific enhancement to LI Groups. Congratulations – well done – and I look forward to your next installment of new applications for LinkedIn. Thanks. JT
Sheilah Etheridge August 30th, 2008
I think this is a positive change for the groups. However, it appears as though any member can start any discussion and the group owner cannot moderate the topics. As a result people are starting discussions about connecting and finding jobs which have absolutely nothing to do with the group. Unless the group owner can moderate these groups will simply become another avenue for spamming and abuse.
Is there a plan to allow the owners to moderate?
Sheilah
Audrey chernoff August 30th, 2008
This is great, however going through groups that I belong to, I noticed spam messages to ask people to connect with them. I have one message like that in the group that I manage/own and would like to delete the discussion, but there seems to be no way to do that.
“Am I correct? I really searched for a way to delete or flag it. And I never flag anyone, I just don’t want my discussions to be filled with spam. Thanks!
Tom Bomar August 31st, 2008
Thanks for getting to adding features to the Groups. The discussion will make it easy to get and keep the group active. Since, like in most things, we always want more, I’ll put in my two cents for adding some moderation authority of the discussions to the group manager. Other than that I’ll take a Red Rider BB-Gun for Christmas.
Philippe Ory September 1st, 2008
I agree with Laurent Dubois… Moderation of discussions should be possible for the owner and the managers, if only to avoid spam and other forms of unsollicited advertising.
In the meantime, I tried to disable discussions for the group I own. However, I was unable to change any of the group settings, including that particular one. LinkedIn seems to believe that I want to create a new group going by the same name of the existing one, and I am getting the following message “Sorry this group name is not available. Please choose a different one.” for the Group Name field (which I have not tried to change!). Is it just me?
MJ Ray September 1st, 2008
I thought the most-requested feature would be an easy way to recover abandoned groups using our name without permission…
Most of my groups already have places for discussion. Please can you let us link to them in a persistent and easy way from the linkedin groups?
Brett A. Scudder September 3rd, 2008
Good day to you LinkedIn,
I must say that this is clearly the most admirable feature and resource of the network and I can’t begin to tell you how much of a value this adds to it.
Keep up the great work and I can only see LinkedIn being the social network of the future for IT professionals as long as we don’t get carried away and lose track of the intended use and focus. LinkedIn should enhance the features of the network by making it better and offering more choices, I feel like i’ve been losing more of the service than gaining as with every new feature enhancement I lose some access controls.
A few new changes in LinkedIn’s policy is working against us group owners/leaders. The limitation of group ownership is uncalled for as you’ve already limited us to 50 groups. I recently had an issue which I had to raise with customer service and will share it here.
Unable to edit discussion topics.
Once created, the owner can only delete the topic if there are any typos or errors in it. One should be able to edit the topic.
Group manager vs. owner
Clearly LinkedIn’s choice of words will cause this kind of misguidance and misunderstanding. These new changes have and are taking the network to a whole new level that lessens the value of the network to those of us who have already been spoiled by the features of it.
As a manager we don’t “own” the group(s), we simply help to manage the groups. The choice of the word “own” means you created/started the group. I don’t see the people I promote as managers to be owners of the group so this is clearly a bad choice of words and presentation from LinkedIn.
I don’t understand why LinkedIn would want to limit the number of owned groups with the already limited number of groups one can belong to as it contradicts the whole value and use of the groups feature especially with the addition of the discussions feature.
If managing is considered owning the group then we’ll just request to be removed as managers from the various groups in order for us to create a new group(s) as it is being counted against the 50 total.
Keep up the great work, we apprecilove it.
Thank you and have a great day,
~Brett A. Scudder~
Joe Gordillo September 3rd, 2008
Chris,
Just another comment. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could look through your group and do a search that allowed you to scale through? For example, I go to my Northwestern University Alumni Group, go to members tab, type in “Miami” and I get 100 names, but then I go down a second tier and type “Latin America”, it comes back with a result, of the 100 names I had before, which ones have “Latin America’ in their profiles? Etc. Maybe you could allow 2,3 or 4 tiers?
Joe
Christine Peiffer September 3rd, 2008
Just to say I think you guys did great with the groups.
We just started one and the discussions are abundant!
I love my LI.
Christine
Adam Greco September 3rd, 2008
Is there any way to search within Discussions themselves (not members)? It would be great to be able to have an RSS feed of all discussions for specific keywords…
AG September 7th, 2008
It would be great to include an easy means of identifying new discussion threads for all of your groups. The ‘home’ summary is nice, but it still forces you to drill down each group to which you’re subscribed. If this is not clear, I’ll provide short video clip as an example.
Steve Dunkerley September 9th, 2008
I am now torn between asking a question via the Q&A featue and raising the same question in a Group discussion. Is there any way that you can syncronise a Q&A quesiton with the Group discussion?
John Larkin September 9th, 2008
Yes, please allow for manager moderation of discussions. I would love to publicize the LinkedIn Group to members of my association, but can’t right now.
Thanks,
JL
Herve Kabla September 15th, 2008
It would be great to have the number of members and number of open discussions for each group we are part of, displayed in “My Groups”.
John Bishop September 25th, 2008
Hi,
The group feature of LinkedIn is great – it’s really helping to grow the Columbus IT Community!
I just wanted to echo a comment above: please let group managers sort members by date joined! This helps us know who to reach out to for a ‘welcome’, without having to track dates ‘joined’ in excruciating detail.
Thanks!
Maarten Zeinstra October 29th, 2008
Hello,
It would also be great to have a widget or badge of a group that can be placed on the website of the company or association that group belongs to.
Is there such a thing?
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Joe Pearson February 12th, 2009
The group discussions feature on LinkedIn is great, but I can’t find a couple of features that major internet discussion boards have (like vBulletin, phpBB, SMF):
1. I want to be able to see at a glance which discussions have new comments since I last read that discussion – and to be able to jump directly to the latest comment
2. I want to be able to see which discussions I’ve commented on, with a flag, and ideally to be able to flag (subscribe to) discussions I’m interested in but haven’t yet commented on.
Do these features exist? Are they in the plan?
Thanks
Joe Baker March 13th, 2009
LinkedIn has clearly made some significant improvements in the Groups functionality. However, there is a lot more to go. As a university group, it would be quite helpful if LinkedIn actually enabled some basic group communications features. For example, LinkedIn Groups should allow Managers to communicate with an entire group to announce events or simply group updates.
Clearly, Northwestern has invested quite a bit of effort in to developing LinkedIn Groups and (as a result) LinkedIn membership. So, LinkedIn should try to provide functionality to group managers that would allow them to benefit from the group.
dirkfrey March 23rd, 2009
@ Joe Pearson We recently released the functionality that allows you to follow a discussion without having to comment. Simply go to the Discussions tab and click on the follow link under the topic you wish to follow. We also offer the ability to view discussions in your group based on the following categories: Recent Activity, Recent Discussions, Most Comments, My Discussions, My Comments, My Followed Discussions.
rduclos March 30th, 2009
Would like the option to filter out the different types of discussions. For instance i get spamed with recruiters jobs and only want to see the actual discussions in my digest.
dirkfrey March 31st, 2009
@ Joe Baker -The LinkedIn Groups feature continues to evolve. Group owners and managers can now send up to one group Announcement per week from their group to members who have chosen to receive such emails. It also posts as a discussion where the owner/manager can also make it a featured discussion which will pin it at the top of the page in the ‘Discussions: Recent Activity’ page.
Lorna Li April 14th, 2009
Hi there,
Can we please get an RSS feed for Group Discussions? That would be immensely valuable, especially for Group Owners that want to promote their group off site and encourage membership.
Do you ever plan to add this feature? Thanks!
Dirk Frey April 21st, 2009
@Lorna – I have submitted this on to our product group for consideration in future enhancements. Thanks for your feedback!
Lorna Li April 21st, 2009
@Dirk Thanks a lot, appreciate it!
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Alane Anderson June 15th, 2009
When creating a discussion, does anyone know how to mark it as “featured discussion”. In a few groups, I’ve started discussions with several feedback/comments received from members, however, they tend to fall at the bottom of the page – well below discussions marked “featured” that only have a couple comments/responses!!
Dirk Frey June 17th, 2009
@alane- A discussion can only be ‘featured’ if you are a group owner or manager…is that the case? If so you can just click on the article you want to feature and then under their first entry and question there should be a link that says ‘Make featured’. Click that an it will pin it to the top of any discussions that are going on.
Jacob November 18th, 2009
I agree. They need to have a widget box for groups so people may be include them in a blog, website, facebook page, etc.