Now Companies too have profiles on LinkedIn!
Well, I've tried to stay away from the blog for as far as I can, but Mario has been really bugging me about blogging for LinkedIn and announcing LinkedIn's Company Profiles gave him the perfect opportunity to get me in front of the camera (see below). As you can see, we had a fun shoot yesterday where I give an overview of Company Profiles.
Check out a few examples of Company Profiles | eBay, Google, Yahoo!, Oracle, etc...
For those of you who don't have time to go through the 3 minute demo below (and I can't fault you on that), here's a quick summary:
What are LinkedIn Company Profiles?
Starting now, you'll be able to see over 160,000 profiles of companies on LinkedIn, ranging from Fortune 500 companies (e.g. eBay) to philanthropic organizations (e.g. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) as well as LinkedIn's own Company Profile page. Company Profiles on LinkedIn is a succinct overview of a company's industry data in combination with LinkedIn data along certain key metrics. You'll get a better picture of it as I show you a quick demo and an overview, after the jump.
Video demo (2:59 minutes)
If you've taken a quick look at the demo, I basically walked through some of the key components of Company Profiles, which I'm also going to outline below (with screenshots) for those who couldn't catch the video.
Overview
1. Finding Company Profiles
The easiest way to access any company profile is stumbling upon it through individual profiles themselves. As you're browsing any profile, look out for a logo right next to company titles, in any individual's work history. Clicking through the highlighted company links will take you to the Company Profile directly.
So, keeping in mind the unwritten "rule of the LinkedIn blog", which is insert an Adam Nash reference at every given opportunity in the blog. So, let's start with Adam Nash's profile.
Clicking on the company name (in this case, eBay, Inc.) will take you to the Company Profile page, which you can find here.
An alternative to navigating company profiles is also the Search box that you can find once you are on any company's profile page.
Please remember, this is still in beta and we'll be adding easier ways for you to access this information in the following weeks.
Once you're on a company page you'll notice two sets of modules, the set of modules on the left is about about relevant people information and on the right you can see some key company stats modules. Given below are more details.
2. Relevant People Information modules
The modules you see on the left pane of the Company profile are about professionals within the organization, highlighted and sorted by relevance and distance from You, in four key categories.
* People in your Network
The first module in this space shows you the people in your network who work at that company. As with all LinkedIn results, these are sorted by the number of degrees they are away from you within the LinkedIn ecosystem.
* New Hires
In many companies, especially fast growing companies such as ourselves (at LinkedIn), it's always great to find out who're the most recent hires and this module answers that question.
* Recent Promotions and Changes
Another question that I'd love to find an answer for are who're the movers and shakers within my organization. This could be particularly helpful for large Fortune 500 companies and since the results are sorted by how close they are to you, the chances are you'll always stumble upon peers you know well.
* Most Popular Profiles
The last module on the left pane, shows those individuals who're in the News recently. As you can see the eBay examples show the President, two Senior Vice Presidents and Chief Marketing Officer among others.
3. Key Company stat modules
To the right of the relevance modules, you'll be able to find two key information modules on the company, which are described below.
* Related companies
The first of the two company modules, surfaces relevant information about the career trajectory of the company's employees. Not only does it show the companies they come from and go to, but also connectivity among professionals working at different companies.
* Key Statistics
The information you find in the key stats module is aggregated from non-personally identifiable data of LinkedIn users who are currently employed by this company. There are two modules within Key Stats that we surface. One is basic data on Industry, Type, Status, etc..., which we get from our partner Business Week while the second module has unique information culled from LinkedIn that hasn't been available before. They range from Common Job Title, Top Schools to Median Age and Tenure within the company.
Related blogosphere coverage:
* TechCrunch | LinkedIn, Now for Companies
* CNET News | LinkedIn's business directory goes live
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Have fun perusing profiles of companies from the mainstream to the Long Tail
of corporate America's ecosystem and stay tuned for updates as we make
this more relevant for each LinkedIn user. As I said in the video, please continue nagging Mario by leaving a comment below. Keep those comments coming in :)
Magnus Mar 20, 2008
Sorry if I missed it but how would a company add their profile, assuming they can?
Antoine Mar 21, 2008
Maybe a stupid question, but I can't find where I can create a company profile ... ?
Very interesting tool, I'd like to set it up for produWeb...
Thanks for your help!
mark g Mar 21, 2008
So the only way to get to a company profile is
"stumbling upon it through individual profiles themselves"
that can not be right, could you provide a clearer understanding of your UI here.
Also, all companies do not have a profile and cannot start one is this correct? is it a select group of companies? How is that determined?
Can you please make clear when any company can start a company profile.
Kevin N. Murphy Mar 21, 2008
Hi!
This is an exciting feature, and nicely done. I was sadden to see my startup was not listed as a company. How can smaller startups like mine be added to the directory?
Please email me to let me know, thanks!
Kevin N. Murphy Mar 21, 2008
Hi!
This is an exciting feature, and nicely done. I was saddened to see my startup was not listed as a company. How can smaller startups like mine be added to the directory?
Please email me to let me know, thanks!
Hayden James Mar 21, 2008
Great launch! Very useful. Thanks for the in depth post and video, well done... minus the feet on the table ;)
Vincent Wright Mar 21, 2008
While it's a function I intend to use in the future, in taking a cursory look at the Linkedin for Companies feature, I noticed some returns which weren't accurate.
For example, take a look at the returns for Yahoo Corporation: http://www.linkedin.com/companies/1288/Yahoo!?
If I were to add to my Linkedin profile the 500+ Yahoo groups I've created, Linkedin's algorithm would show me as an employee of Yahoo Corporation. (I wouldn't mind that but, it's not the case that I'm a Yahoo employee.)
Indeed, I've noticed that one of my first degree contacts shows up as a Yahoo employee: However, a careful review of his profile shows that he's a Moderator of one of my Yahoo groups, not an employee of Yahoo Corporation.
Likewise when we take a look at Linkedin's own company profile, we get some non-employees showing up as "employees": http://www.linkedin.com/companies/1337/LinkedIn
--
Thanks,
Vincent Wright
Steve Mar 21, 2008
So how do I get my company in the system?
Jason Gamby Mar 21, 2008
Hey haven’t you heard of Virtudex.com? It’s the best business social network. Invite only so here is the pass code - 1z1code Lets see they have Blogs, Groups, Personal File manager, Homepage news feeds with RSS, the best privacy settings I've ever seen on a social networking site...
Mario Sundar Mar 24, 2008
Thanks for the comments!
Let me clarify that this is a beta launch and the team is working on remedying some of the issues you've pointed out here.
At the moment, the easiest way to access Company profiles is to click through any of the companies on your own LinkedIn profile. Soon, we'll be allowing companies to customize their pages. If you've suggestions/feedback email here (feedback@linkedin.com) or just shoot me an email (msundar@linkedin.com).
Mario Sundar Mar 24, 2008
@jason gamby
we'd love to hear your take on the content of the blog post itself. But, please refrain from using it as a promotional tool.
thanks!
Bryan Moss Mar 24, 2008
I still did not se a clear answer on what most people are asking. Can I do this for my company? I know it was mentioned that companies could soon customize their pages, but my company does not even have a page now to click to.
Tim Star Mar 24, 2008
Great feature... Maybe take it one step further and link the company pages to other outside sources like Manta.com, Hoovers, etc.
Antoine Mar 24, 2008
interesting feature you guys have launched - our company is also not among the 160,000 companies that have a profile in this beta version - curious to hear how we can add our profile as well.
Antoine
Jon Clark Mar 24, 2008
I would also like to know the steps necessary to have my company listed or included in this beta test.
Mario Sundar Mar 24, 2008
@bryan, @jon, @antoine and all else who are wondering when and/or how you can add your company to the directory.
Very soon, we'll be providing functionality for users to add their companies to the directory. For now, feel free to email me the following details
Company Name
URL
Description
My email | msundar@linkedin.com
Dennis O'Malley Mar 25, 2008
Fantastic tool that enables all types of partners or potential partners to quickly asses the culture of company. For our team actual accuracy of individual data is not important, the aggregate of demographic info produces quality trend analysis. This is a useful business development tool in addition creating a corporate recruiting solution/portal.
francois dauphin Mar 29, 2008
I think that this could be worth adding a feature which would allow people to feed in the corporate social responsability rating of the various companies which we're going to reference.
For what's about Europe the most popualr one is vigeo (http://www.vigeo.com/csr-rating-agency/index.php?lang=fr) and most companies does now have their own rating avaiable on the public domain.
Hope this helps
Tobe Sexton Mar 29, 2008
I would like to make a sugestion.
Along side employees it would be nice to have an associates section. This would be for people who work regularly with a company but more as freelancers not actual employees or their time working with the company is limited to 2 to 3 month periods and then they are laid-off.
Here is a scenario that may be very specific to the film and entertainment industry but one I and others deal with continually: My company maintains 3-4 people full time but when we are making a feature film (about 2 to 3 times a year) we employee and utilize upwards to 250 people per project. We use largely the same people and they would be better described as associates as they are not truly employees. Also you should consider a section for individual associates and Company associations.
If associates isn't the right term then I open it to the floor for discussion.
mohit Mar 31, 2008
Nice feature.
One comment -> Giving the company name in a certain manner brings up a hyperlink on my profile. If I have given the right ticker symbol but the complete company name the hyperlink does not show up. Example "xyz" vs "xyz Systems Ltd."
The hyperlink should be based on the ticker symbol because once I reach my company page, it does show me on that page but does not show the hyperlink on my profile which I would like to see.
mohit Mar 31, 2008
Regarding my last comment .. it was my mistake. It works. I was seeing my profile in edit mode.
The hyperlink shows up when I click on "View My Profile".
-mohit
Bud Lake Apr 1, 2008
Great improvement! Our company is having problem. We are a business school and our students are showing up as employees. Are we doing something wrong that is classifying them this way?
Jason Bailes Apr 1, 2008
I made another custom search engine to help find the company profiles as they become indexed in the Google search results pages.
Here are a couple of URLs:
http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=012022021532202637257%3Asll0poktas0
http://customsearches.blogspot.com/2008/04/linkedin-company-profile-search.html
I hope you find this helpful.
P.S. - I also made a LinkedIn Groups Search custom search.
Mario Sundar Apr 2, 2008
@dennis. Thanks!
@francois and @tobe, thanks for the suggestions. I've added it to our suggestions database.
Also, @tobe, have you checked out our Service Providers section (http://tinyurl.com/22xe58). That may help serve some of the needs you bring up.
No worries, @mohit :) It happens.
@jason and for everyone else who'd like to search for company profiles we've a search box right on any Company profiles page. For e.g. go to LinkedIn's page and try searching for a company.
http://www.linkedin.com/companies/1337/LinkedIn
This way you can accurately find any of the 160,000 companies and all the new profiles we'll continue adding.
Mario Sundar Apr 2, 2008
Also, a quick "Thanks" to all of you who've sent me your company profile details.
Please stay tuned to the blog for info on the ability to make those changes yourself.
Philippe Apr 3, 2008
Wow, great feature! Do you plan to add "school profiles" too?
Kirk Apr 5, 2008
Philippe's mention of a school profile reminds me of a question I've been wanting to ask -- how come the Advanced Search doesn't have an option for searching by school? I'd love to be able to browse through all the people who went to my alma mater.
Also, I think LinkedIn should have a suggestion box or a forum for general suggestions.
These suggestions are meant in a helpful spirit - it's a great service.
Barbara Lemaire Apr 13, 2008
I am interested in linking NonProfit organizations - at this point specifically in New Mexico - are you considering a nonprofit section?
Sivasubramanian Muthusamy Apr 13, 2008
Hello,
Can you tell me if a company needs to set up a separate type of account to open a linked in company profile ?
stephen peacock May 4, 2008
This is a very powerful feature that will help my me focus my sales efforts and harness the power of my happy customers to get new business.
Alexander May 5, 2008
Companies will be very helpful, but how about non-profits, specifically arts and cultural organizations in Philadelphia? I would like to be able to filter within my region and perhaps have additional granularity within non-profits, arts, culture, education, healthcare, etc. Maybe this should be in groups and I am out order also a month late for posting here. Also have you thought about a free packaged or bundled group of services for non-profits that have less than 25 members or something to help out the little guys. This could also swell your ranks of users. I see the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance is a Companies beta, they are a terrific local organization and I would suspect distribute a LinkedIn non-profit sign up package. Thanks, lovin the linkedin.
Mario Sundar May 5, 2008
@philippe, @barbara
no such plans.
@kirk,
duly noted.
@sivasubramaniam,
nope. the company doesn't need to set up a separate type of account.