Hi Everyone. I’m writing today to announce the launch of LinkedIn’s applications platform that will enable over 30 million professionals on LinkedIn to communicate, collaborate, and share information even better than before.
This initial roll out features productivity applications that range from gathering information that professionals around you are generating to enhancing your abilities to collaborate and communicate more effectively. You’ll be able to work much more closely with your contacts on LinkedIn with tools such as file sharing, project management, business trips and many more.
The nine applications that you see live today on LinkedIn include productivity enhancing applications from Amazon, Box.net, Google, Huddle, Six Apart, SlideShare, Tripit, and WordPress as well a Company Buzz application developed by LinkedIn. Each of these applications will help you stay current and competitive as a professional in today’s rapidly changing business world.
The video below gives an overview of our application platform featuring many of the application partners mentioned above.
This is the direction that the LinkedIn platform will take in the coming months to help make you effective and competitive as a professional.
I’d like to announce today the launch of our new search platform, currently released to a small percentage of our LinkedIn users. In addition, a certain percentage of the remaining users can explore the new search experience by simply clicking on the “Try LinkedIn’s new People Search” link at the top of search results pages.
As the largest global professional network, we’ve had the privilege of having millions of users enter over a billion professional search queries, and we’ve been working hard to build a much more robust professional people search engine. We interviewed lots of users and aggregated thousand of pieces of feedback. The end result is a completely redesigned search experience aimed at making it easier and faster to find the most relevant professionals that you’re looking for.
Here is a quick summary of the new features that will be phased out to all of our users in the coming months:
1. Unified search results:
We eliminated the need to switch tabs if you want to see professionals outside your network. The new search will retrieve the most relevant professionals from the entire LinkedIn community.
2. More powerful relevance algorithm:
The new relevance sort not only takes into account keyword relevance but also leverages both the professional graph and the rich profile data to ensure that the most relevant professionals are always shown at the top of your search results page.
3. Redesigned search results page:
Speaking of the search results page, we’ve redesigned this page from the ground up to make it more readable and actionable. This includes a new streamlined look, the ability to refine you searches from a new “Modify your search” module on the right rail, easily accessible sorts and views, and the ability to take actions from the results page as you mouse over results.
4. In Common:
“In Common” is a new field in search results that lets you see what connections and groups you share with the selected user.
5. Saved Searches:
This is one of the most requested features. We’ll allow you to save searches and very soon we’ll let you get reminders over email if we find someone new that meets your criteria.
6. Views:
We now offer two views as part of the search results redesign, basic and expanded. In addition, we also let you create your own view. You’ll be able to add or remove fields from search results based on what makes the most sense for your type of searches.
7. Spell check:
We know how hard typing people’s names is. We hear it from our users and also see it in the data. As a result, we built a robust spell checker for names. We’ll expand the spell checker to other type of keywords very soon.
8. Type-ahead for connections:
We also saw in the data that many of you use search to get to your connections quickly. In order to make it more efficient, we developed a type-ahead widget that recommends connections as you type from any people search box.
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We’ll be testing all of these features over the next few weeks as we fine tune them for full release. Stay tuned for more here, as these improvements mark just the beginning in helping your professional people search.
I’m happy to announce today that we’ve received strategic investments in LinkedIn totaling $22.7 million from market leaders in the enterprise software, investment banking and business information sectors; all of whom believe in the power of LinkedIn as a way to connect professionals and help them be effective. This round of funding includes world class strategic investors Goldman Sachs, The McGraw-Hill Companies, and SAP ventures; as well as a re-investment by Bessemer Venture Partners.
This financing is a follow-on of the Series D round of funding we announced in June of 2008, in which we raised $53 million. Led by Bain Capital Ventures LinkedIn’s Series D financing round has raised $75.7 million. You can find my thoughts on our Series D announcement here.
I’d like to reiterate our commitment to creating the right partnerships to help us build a great service for over 30 million professionals on LinkedIn today – a number that’s growing by leaps and bounds each month. This funding strengthens LinkedIn further, and will help us to continue creating additional services for professionals to connect and collaborate more effectively, around the world. Services that allow you to connect with the people you trust, build out a robust online professional profile and collaborate with members of your professional network on LinkedIn.
The LinkedIn blog is broken down into two broad categories: Using LinkedIn (Features, Answers, and Users) and LinkedIn News (Press, People and Events). Our primary focus is to bring you breaking news on every features that maximizes your LinkedIn experience. In addition, we’ll also be covering some of the recent press mentions we’ve received under the Press category.
Let’s start off with a post on the business of productivity (USA Today) written by Jon Swartz, which references LinkedIn’s presence in that space.
(Dan Nye, CEO, LinkedIn. Photo: Dave Getzschman)
The article quotes our CEO, Dan Nye, on the future of business productivity and how every professional’s network could help them get more done in less time. See below.
Practically, corporate social networks also cut down on unnecessary e-mail and instant messages among co-workers, says Dan Nye, CEO of LinkedIn, a social network of more than 28 million people, most of them business professionals. Private social networks let “people choose what they want to read and discuss, based on their participation, without being intrusive and annoying,” he says.
LinkedIn’s new service, Company Groups, digitally gathers into a single, private Web forum all of a company’s employees. There, they can talk to one another, share ideas and ask company-related questions. So far, 1,000 companies have signed up for the service.
Make yourself more productive on LinkedIn – today! Here’s a quick tip:
LinkedIn Groups:
LinkedIn Groups is your destination to find and join communities of professionals based on common interest, experience, affiliation, and goals. Stay in touch with organizations, schools, and companies that you are and were a part of, network with professionals with similar interests and goals, and collaborate in a professional community online.
The above tips are just the “tip of an iceberg” that’ll help you reduce the time spent finding that next client or that dream job of yours. (Source: LinkedIn Learning Center)
Ron Lissak, managing partner at Catapult Advisors told me in an interview (see below) how he uses LinkedIn to equalize the differences between a smaller firm like Catapult and the much larger firms he’d worked for in his past. In the video interview below, Ron talks about LinkedIn as a research tool and its ability to unearth hidden connections through the power of common contacts.
Many of those connections have yielded millions of dollars in business and brought in “many, many hundreds of thousands of dollars” in fees to firms such as Ron’s. In his own words:
It enables a small firm like Catapult to compete effectively with much larger firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley!
LinkedIn User Snapshot
Who: Ron Lissak, Managing Partner at Catapult Advisors:
How: The key to Ron’s success using LinkedIn lay in LinkedIn search, which he used effectively to research potential prospects and clients. How many of you are aware that the power of LinkedIn search is tremendously amplified when you try Advanced Search?
Also, for single point access to search across different pages (People, Inbox, Answers, Groups, and Jobs) try the search bar on the top right hand corner of your homepage right above the header.
LinkedIn Tip from Ron:
Research people, answers, groups, and jobs using LinkedIn Search
The right person, talent, or knowledge you’re looking for is already on LinkedIn. Use search to find what you need to be more effective professionally:
Search by name and other distinguishing characteristics to quickly locate the person you are looking for.
Use the advanced search to target specific skill sets or find subject-matter experts.
Conduct reference searches on potential job candidates and business partners.
The volatile economic situation in the USA has been up, front and center in the news these past few weeks throughout the globe. It’s of particular significance to small business owners in this part of the globe given the political climate. Just ask Joe, the Plumber.
Today’s featured question comes from Bill Dunkelberg, Chief Economist, NFIB, National Federation of Independent Business. Bill asks small business owners what they are doing “to keep customers happy and coming back during these difficult economic times.”
The latest NFIB (National Federation of Independent Business) Economic report shows that “decreasing sales” is now the No.1 concern for small businesses. A recent LinkedIn community discussion recommended “focusing on your existing customers” as the top measure for dealing with economic downturn . How would you best work with your customers so they will keep their business with you and ride out this storm together?
The answers featured keywords such as “trust”, “communications”, “value”, “passion” and more. Take a read here. Given below are a couple of answers that exemplify the common themes.
Steve Kownacki, Producer/Director/Owner @ Final Focus Productions, writes:
Service. Service. And oh, service. We have 2 main words in our mission statement “value” and “passion”. Exemplify them in everything you do and everyone you communicate with. Treat each client as though they are your only client. You be honest about what you can deliver for a given
budget.
Just got back from lunch with a long-time client – they gave us 2 new jobs! – his comment: “I come to you because I have no worries. I know it’s in good hands.” This is all I ever need to hear. But never take it for granted.
Ronn Irving, Vice President, the TASCON Group, opines:
Many business owners and their “Trusted Advisors” are going through the process of planning for the coming year. When they review their performance to date and forecast for changes in the coming year, it becomes clear they need to have a plan in place to generate more revenues to offset the skyrocketing costs of doing business.
There are three ways to do that – 1. Control costs, both fixed and variable costs. 2. Increase sales – sell more widgets. 3. Increase sales price.
Bill Dunkelberg is the Chief Economist at NFIB, and a featured speaker at the Weather the Economy Forum, a series of webinars dedicated to helping small and mid-sized businesses survive and thrive in a tough
economy.
I’m glad to be back with more Groups enhancements, which provide you ways to share, customize and organize the groups that you’ve now become a part of.
1. Sharing your Groups with your professional network
How many times have you wanted to share your favorite new LinkedIn group with other members of your professional network? Starting today, you should be able to share that group with select connections in your group from the Group Profile page.
2. Customize your Group Discussions
Also, for those of you who’ve been wondering how to edit or delete either a discussion or comments in a discussion thread, we’ve now included features that should make those possible.
3. Easier organization of your groups
For members of multiple groups who’d like better tools to organize and prioritize so that the most important groups (for you) show up on the left hand navigation bar on your homepage (see the highlighted portion below), check out our new “Groups Order and Display” page.
Comments, feedback and suggestions are always welcome.
As many of you know, the Profile page is one of the most important pages on LinkedIn. It is how you present your professional background and identity to other LinkedIn members and it is what you look at first when you consider contacting or connecting with someone on LinkedIn.
Well starting today, the Profile page will have a new look. All the information & tools you’ve come to expect are still there, but the page now has a cleaner look with subtle enhancements.
Here’s what to look for:
1) A new visual presentation
We’ve taken this opportunity to clean up the presentation of the page — grouping related elements and tools, simplifying some editing prompts and tips, and making sure that the most important information stands out from everything else.
The “blue card” you’ll see at the top of every profile page is one way of doing this – serving to highlight and organize the most important profile information.
2) An enhanced Profile Completion meter
The Profile Completion meter is an ever-present indicator of the state of your profile throughout the site. Unfortunately, many of you have complained that it’s hard to know what to do to complete your profile and move that meter toward 100%. Today’s meter does showcase a suggested next step in completing a profile — but the suggested step may not always be an easy one.
The newly improved Profile Completion meter, however, shows all the steps you can take to further improve the completion of your profile (and how much each step will move the completion meter). Hopefully, the additional options will help everyone on their way to 100% profile completeness.
3) A single location for all profile tools
Each profile you view gives you a set of actions you can take in relation to that profile and the member to whom it belongs. You can contact the LinkedIn member in question via InMails and messages, leave a recommendation for one of your connections, or forward the profile.
But, did you know that you can also print out a profile? Export a profile to a PDF file? Or as a premium account holder, quickly search for background references on any member whose profile you view? Many of you were not aware of these more advanced LinkedIn tools because they were not easy to find on the profile page. Well, once again, we’ve tried to fix all that — with all the available tools now appearing in the upper right hand corner of any profile.
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We hope these changes improve your LinkedIn experience. But as with any significant change, there may be small issues to fix or adjustments that still need to be made.
So, as usual, feel free to leave us any feedback by commenting on this post or clicking the “Help improve LinkedIn” link at the bottom of any LinkedIn page.
Darrel Rhea was a LinkedIn user who wasn’t sure how to leverage his professional network on LinkedIn effectively. A quick 10 minutes that he spent importing his Outlook contacts to LinkedIn yielded a chance encounter with a former client. One thing led to the other, yada, yada, yada and before he knew it he had signed off on a $1M project with his client.
Within the first week, a former client responded and we connected. Out of that came a $1 million consulting contract, just because we were able to connect and remember each others’ competencies and what each other were doing.
The value of your online professional network increases exponentially with the number of your real world connections that you populate it with. The more closely your online network reflects your real world network, the better are your chances of finding that million dollar client.
I think that was the first big Aha moment for me. It [LinkedIn] is just a way of expressing and valuing those relationships that will ultimately pay off in your career and pay off in your business.
And, the best part of the story was how effortless it was. As Darrel concludes (see video below):
That was a pretty good Return on Investment, probably the ten minutes it took me to make those invitations!
How: For those of you eager to replicate Darrel’s success, look no further than LinkedIn’s Webmail importer. Not only can you import your contacts from Outlook’s email client, but also check out the ability to bring in your contacts from webmail clients such as Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail, and AOL Mail.
LinkedIn Tip from Darrel
Bring your real world professional network to LinkedIn through the Webmail importer
Yesterday on the Shifting Careers blog over at The New York Times, Marci Alboher wrote up a great account of an international LinkedIn success story.
Dutch tech consultant Henk van Ess was frustrated with his 3G iPhone’s battery life, so he turned to LinkedIn.
…[van Ess] sent out a note to a few groups on LinkedIn trying to find a way of extending the battery life of his new iPhone. A representative of a Chinese manufacturer answered his query with information about its battery and he bought one. He was immediately pleased with the results.
But that’s not the success story. After updating his status with something like “You hate the battery life of your iPhone too? Perhaps I have the cure,” he found himself in the position of fielding orders from his network. That turned into something much bigger:
“I didn’t want to do all this paperwork so I set up a little Web shop, and then the company asked me to be one of its distributors.” He says that in his first day of online sales, he took orders from 1,200 customers…
This story illustrates several angles of business opportunities on LinkedIn. At the consumer end, Henk turned to his Groups looking for a solution to his battery woes, and a Chinese manufacturer met his need. On the retail end, Henk updated his Status to see if anyone else had similar needs, which unwittingly made him an international distributor and developer of his own iPhone battery, 3GJuice. On the manufacturer end, they have a new product, a new market, and a whole new pool of customers, just by maintaining a presence in the Groups. If this is what users can accomplish unintentionally on LinkedIn, focused entrepreneurs might start reaching out to their networks and updating their status daily. To learn more about using LinkedIn features, check out learn.linkedin.com.
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