Raising the ActionBar for Groups’ users
Over 100,000 LinkedIn users have shared over a million professional news articles with their groups and connections, since we started offering the news sharing feature. We’ve received a ton of great feedback on the feature, with some of our users mentioning how inconvenient it was to participate in a group conversation given the additional step of returning to the news discussion page to leave a comment.
We’re now incorporating some of these suggestions we gathered, starting with the ActionBar. Moving forward, any user who clicks through an article shared on a LinkedIn group will be able to share and comment directly from the news article. You can also discover related news content through the same toolbar, without having to switch back and forth between the news discussion page (on LinkedIn) and the news article.
All of the above three actions can be made directly through the ActionBar that you can find on the top of the article you’ve clicked through to. Check out the screenshot below.
LinkedIn’s ActionBar will allow group members to find and add value to the news that is most important to their respective groups. And, our goal with this iteration is to make it even simpler for users to participate in these conversations.
As always – we look forward to and appreciate your feedback. Feel free to leave a comment on this blog or send us a tweet to @linkedin.
Tags: jen-granito, linkedin-groups
trackback
http://blog.linkedin.com/2009/05/19/raising-the-actionbar-for-groups-users/trackback/
Peter Thomas May 19th, 2009
Jen,
I like the concept of the bar, particularly the abilities to share an article with connections and to comment directly from it.
I have had a couple of problems where the target news site has not appeared correctly – generally offset upwards and with no bar, but I guess some sort of teething troubles is inevitable.
I will be interested to see what other users think.
Peter
Richard May 19th, 2009
I also am experiencing problems with the new bar. My landing page is unable to scroll down the entire page, only 3/4 of the page is viewable. Also, my pop-up window is only partially displayed. I can view the entire page if I tab down to the bottom.Is there a restriction on the page size now???
Thanks.
Bob DeMarco May 19th, 2009
Fantastic feature that should really start working once more people become aware of its usefulness.
The first few times I saw it, I did not really get it.
My guess is over time it will create lots of interaction.
Great job, well thought out in my opinion.
Bob
Jim Gilbert May 20th, 2009
Jen as a frequent poster of news for direct marketers, I like this capability. Thanks for your continual innovation. Now if you would only take the 50 group join limit away, that would be perfect.
Regards,
Jim Gilbert
http://gilbertdirectmarketing.wordpress.com/
Paula Bonnafant May 21st, 2009
I like the concept of this feature, however there are some issues with scrolling; articles no longer fit on the page properly. In order to view entire articles, members need to view them at 50% which makes reading difficult.
I also find that many group members do not realize they need to actually click on a link to read the entire article. They often respond to me, thinking I am the author.
Mirela Pirlea May 21st, 2009
I have problems with the LinkedIn ActionBar :
1. I can’t see the whole article (I can’t scroll down to see the whole article)
2. I can’t use the social Bookmark. Let’s say that somebody else offer a link to an interesting article – if I want to keep the link using my Google Bookmark is the LinkedIn group link and not the article link that I save on Google Bookmark.
Conclusion : Please do something to correct that !
Tim Tyrell-Smith May 22nd, 2009
HI Jen –
I like the new action bar – I’ve already seen more comments than usual on my new articles.
I also like the fact that we can now auto-follow the conversations on articles. I always like to respond back to folks and this saves me a ton of time checking each group for comment activity.
Thanks!
Tim Tyrell-Smith
Spin Strategy™ – Tools for Intelligent Job Search
http://blog.spinstrategy.com
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=963877
Christian Pielow June 3rd, 2009
Hi Jen,
I am also having the scroll issue, and it messes up the colors/layout of the webpage. Are you working on these problems? This is very problematic for my use of linkedin.
Thanks!
Christian Pielow
http://www.linkedin.com/in/christianpielow
Amy June 3rd, 2009
This is an interesting set up, but I have a question. Does this mean that if we post articles from our website the traffic won’t show up anymore? I post a lot of our content in various groups across LinkedIn and a couple weeks ago our traffic from LinkedIn dropped dramatically and hasn’t recovered and I am wondering if this new set up is the reason.
Neil Warren June 9th, 2009
Yes I asked the same question last Wednesday Amy (after customer services suggested I air the problem in here) – but they deleted it. I guess “open forum” and “deal honestly with a critical question” rules don’t always apply!
For example – are you still with us Jen?
Regards – Neil
Christopher Lees July 21st, 2009
The whole idea is good Jen and I’m sure the scroll issues will be worked out as soon as possible. I have not yet tried it though, this is my first comment at linked in.
Christian Pielow July 22nd, 2009
Hi Jen,
Still the action bar messes up the look of my website, when clicking a news link. Please can you advise when these issues are to be resolved, or if I can remove the actionbar?
Thanks,
Christian
Dirk Frey July 22nd, 2009
@ Christian- The actionbar will always appear when a member clicks through a 3rd-party link available in a group. The aim of the actionbar is to make it easier for group members to comment on and share the item with more people driving more views of the 3rd party page.
-Dirk
Neil Warren July 23rd, 2009
@ Dirk – So have you got any figures yet Dirk about the average number of additional posts this has generated per “3rd party” published material?
And/or how is this stacking up against the increased LI traffic figures, that I have a sneaking suspicion might also form part of the thinking?
- Neil
Christian Pielow July 23rd, 2009
@Dirk
Hi Dirk, thanks for the response! Yes I understand the use of actionbars but when you click though to my company website, it turns all the White to Grey. Is this a recognized problem?
Thanks,
Christian
Christian Pielow July 23rd, 2009
Also, the majority of my traffic from linkedin isnt being registered in google analytics, like Amy asks above, could this have something to do with the actionbar?
Thanks,
Christian
Dirk Frey July 30th, 2009
@Neil, Christian and Amy-
It might not show up on Google analytics as an entry point to the site. A couple of pms I’ve spoken to say that it won’t affect SEO though because search engines can’t crawl pages that aren’t public (which groups aren’t.)
Dirk Frey July 30th, 2009
@Christian- I’m not aware of this as an issue with others. It may be possible that your company is recognizing this feature as some sort of flash which impacts how it is presented.
Neil Warren July 30th, 2009
@Dirk
It’s not a question of SEO Dirk, it’s a question of having LinkedIn as a referring site.
Before the action bar we achieved 2,600 referrals in a 30 day period, and after it LI has dropped off the chart.
Simple fact of the matter is that it is our published content that is on offer for our readers whether they be direct, search, referring site or whatever, and it is very dubious practice by LI to be keeping those readers (of our copyrighted material) on the LI site. Period.
And what exactly is the principle of asking Group moderators to go to all the trouble of providing this focal point, and the reading material, if we then get no traffic or benefits as a result?
Regards – Neil
Dirk Frey August 6th, 2009
@Neil- I think you have some good points. I’ve forwarded your comments on to the product manager for review and possible further investigation.
Neil Warren August 6th, 2009
Thank you Dirk – I’ll hold my breath and watch this space then….
Jeri Vespoli September 11th, 2009
Love the news feature, but need to be able to DELETE and/or EDIT NEWS ARTICLES! Example: Event Brite allows posting of events in news sections of groups, but the wrong date is entered initially for the event. There is no way to delete the incorrect ‘news’ article with the wrong date.
Dirk Frey September 15th, 2009
@ Jeri- Thanks for your comment. I’ve forwarded your thoughts on to the Product Manager for review.
controlware December 8th, 2009
Hi, I like the action bar and the ability to comment and follow etc.
But is there any way that you can take the comments made under the action bar and put them back into wordpress for example?
It would be good to have the comments made via the Linkedin action bar to be visible on the wordpress.com blog for example too. Anyway this could be achieved?