For quite some time, those of us who have large LinkedIn Networks have been asking for better tools to manage our network connections. This starts by being able to export full contact information, industry, groups, and other profile information from our 1st degree contacts. It is my view that when I agree to connect with somebody, I also agree to provide them my contact information as part of the deal. Not everyone feels this way, the same way not everyone wants to make their connections public. The public sharing of contacts issue was easily resolved by opting out of this feature in the account settings. I believe the default should be to provide contact info, but that is a separate discussion. What matters, is that the current functionality is completely inadequate and becomes an increasingly larger problem the larger one’s network becomes. Ironically, the people who have the largest networks and the ones who are the most frustrated with this are us paid subscribers. Folks, this isn’t Facebook, it’s a business tool, one that I pay for I might add…Fix this problem or someone will fix it for you by coming up with a better service that caters to your best paying customers. Here’s what I would like:

My suggestion is to use this as a marketing benefit to paid subscribers. As a paid subscriber, I get the ability to download full contact info (if permission is granted by my connection), industry info, title, location, group info, connection preference, and other information that can be sorted either in a spreadsheet, or in the program itself. Ideally, LinkedIn would allow me to create a custom list (1st degree CEO’s, in NY and LA, in Entertainment, interested in new business deals). This feature ideally should also integrate with Outlook. I might also recommend an alliance with a company like Constant Contact or some other newsletter service.

Those of us who have adopted LinkedIn as an essential part of our business have been asking for this basic functionality for quite some time. Folks, this isn’t Facebook, it’s an integral part of my business that I pay you to help me with. If you won’t fix this, I’ll gladly switch if another better mousetrap comes along. Hopefully someone is listening.

Thanks,
Richard

Having a Notes section is good, but I don’t see much advantage to the rest of it, sorry.

For example, I use LinkedIn to keep tabs on business associates but why not extend it so that I can also use it as my virtual address book; to create an online forum for my family members (for reunions and such); to manage communications to membership groups; or to communicate with my old high school classmates? This would provide a lot of value to me – value that I’d be willing to pay for. Here’s some thoughts.

-Allow members to maintain their own addresses and phone numbers in their profile and optionally expose them to their connections – think about it – how many times do we lose track of someone because they moved? If all LinkedIn members maintain their current contact information then you will always be able to reach friends and family!

-You might consider extending the education section to high school. Reunion.com and Classmates.com have little value and are quite expensive for what they provide – why not bring them to submission and simply extend your features to old high school friends? You’d steel marketshare away from those two sites in a few months.

-More photos – would be great to be able to post a few more photos or to at least see larger photos of members.

-You could easily turn this into a family connections site where family members all join the same group so that you can communicate to everyone in the group and best of all – the family members are responsible for maintaining their own contact information – fantastic for communicating family reunions, announcing births, or sharing photos. A couple quick ads on geneology sites and you’d have a huge base overnight.

-Membership Groups could gain a ton of value using LinkedIn. I belong to a small, professional non-profit and we’re looking for ways to grow our membership. I’m proposing that we create a LinkedIn Group for our organization and have our core membership invite their contacts to join our group so that we can promote ourselves to their contacts so we can at least market to potential members. Just a thought.

Anyay – thanks for this fantastic tool. Looking forward to future features!

I agree with having this link into what the person had put in their profile for phone numbers, addresses, etc. The other advantage to this ability (or disadvantage to entering the information yourself) is that you would not have to enter all of the information for every contact and you would not have to update the information any time that contacts information changes.

Sincerely,
Christopher J. Scharer

Vivit Iowa Chapter Leader
http://VivitConnect.LeverageSoftware.com/Profile_View.aspx?CustomerID=CScharer

Just my 2 cents…