Since we launched the LinkedIn Store almost 8 months ago we've been
adding items and accessories at regular intervals for all LinkedIn
Fans. The most recent store update was radical, both in terms of the look-and-feel as well as a slew of new products.
Here's a sampling of new products, accessories and more importantly - our new LinkedIn models. Click through the pictures to find out who's who:
And, finally for the headless LinkedIn'er. Guess who?
Once again, thanks to Paul Navabpour, who runs the promotional agency that provides these top-quality
products and helped us build this custom store, and photographer Dave Getzschman, whose magic makes our in-house talent shine.
And, you may stumble upon a cameo or two from me as well. Check out the store to find out more.
Well, as we'd promised with the last blog post here's a quick wrap-up and summary of last week's LinkedIndia Celebration. Those who read my previous post know that we reached the million member milestone for LinkedIn professionals from India. To celebrate the occasion we threw an India themed party with special servings of South Indian crepes and mango lassis [one of Kay's favorites] while Bollywood movies played in the background. Too bad we couldn't accommodate Krista’s requests for an elephant.
Check out more pictures from the event. We were lucky to have a large and enthusiastic team to help out with the party: Thanks to Adi for arranging the food and being the overall Master of Ceremonies (and advising our CEO Dan Nye of the celebration protocol), Nishant for buying the sweets, Nayan for the decorations, Manav for the entertainment, Agila, Pallavi, Nalini, Bhupesh, Krista, Florencia, Dhananjay, Maria and many others for the setup, and Kay and Mario for the photographs to record it all. I guess we got most of them in the photograph above.
I’ve been waiting for a while to use that headline in a blog post ;)
Recently, we reached a great milestone in our business – 1 million members in India. Between those of us at LinkedIn who are from India originally (including our very own Blogger-In-Chief Mario Sundar), and those of us who spend time there, there are a lot of us who are both personally and professionally excited about this achievement.
But we can’t take all the credit – it’s the enthusiasm and success of our members that has driven this growth.
When I was in Delhi recently, I sat down with one member, Ajay Jain, an author, journalist, blogger, and enthusiastic LinkedIn user to ask him how LinkedIn has made a difference in his career. Here’s what he said:
LinkedIn has actually enabled me to move from being just a journalist and blogger to being an author and publisher too. And the site has proven to be just the right marketing platform too for all my work. I wrote my book after extensively interviewing and interacting with LinkedIn users. I use LinkedIn Answers to get additional inputs for any newspaper columns and blogs posts I write. All this has enabled me to enhance my brand equity in many ways giving me visibility and introductions to valued people who I would otherwise have never known about. LinkedIn is working for me. All I am doing is following my own advice in my book.
But we know that there are thousands of more member stories out there. I posted a question on Answers yesterday to find more successes:
We’ve already gotten some great answers, and we’d love to have more – feel free to post your own story on Answers, or on this blog.
Our million member milestone is good news for our members outside of India, too – in an increasingly global economy, LinkedIn continues to expand in markets around the world, and in a very big way. With over 24 million members representing every country you can think of, we’re the world’s largest and most powerful online professional network.
What does this mean for you? Unparalleled opportunities to accelerate your own professional success, by building relationships and exchanging knowledge, opportunities and advice– across town, or across the ocean. Looking for a marketer in Mumbai? A supplier in Sao Paulo? An answer from Amsterdam? We’ve got you covered.
We here at LinkedIn will be celebrating our million Indian members with a small celebration – watch for photos on our Flickr stream next week. But more importantly, we want to offer up a big THANK YOU to our current and future Indian members – and to the members around the world who invited them.
As mentioned last week here on the LinkedIn blog, I had the privilege to deliver a keynote at this year's O'Reilly Graphing Social Patterns 2008 conference in Washington, DC. LinkedIn was one of the featured keynotes, and it was great to have a chance to present our philosophy & vision at the event. Here is my LinkedIn blog post from last week, where I review the Keynote and the slides presented.
I wanted to take a moment to follow-up with a second post on the conference, specifically about the NEED for FEEDS panel that I participated in Tuesday afternoon. The other panelists included:
It's normally hard to have a great panel late in the afternoon - people are starting to wear down from waking up early, and sitting a few hundred people in a dark room is not a great way to generate high energy. This panel, however, was extremely high energy (we even tried to get a Web 2.0 buzzword bingo game going) and ready to engage passionately on the topic.
The balance of the panel was good too - Kevin represented 3rd party application developers well, David & Chris did a great job advocating for open, user-controlled integration, and Dave & I representing the platforms.
I won't try to cover all the questions or topics from the panel, but there were two points that I made at the panel that I think are worth sharing broadly:
1) Network Feeds are the interesting information problem for this generation of the web.
It's quickly forgotten, but it wasn't too long ago that the question of how to present the best 10 search results to a natural search query was a hotly contested product space. When Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft get a query of just a few keywords, they have to decide in an instant which 10 pages out of millions to show you. Similarly, Amazon has to decide, out of millions of products, which 3 to merchandise to you at any given time.
The question of how to filter and present information and micro-events from your network to you in a digestible form is an extremely difficult and important question, and one of the most exciting things going on right now is the experimentation with different approaches to providing the right events to people at the right time in the right context.
2) How do you define success for Network Feeds?
What makes this challenge particularly difficult is that unlike search
or merchandising, it's unclear in this context what the right
"success" events are to measure. With search, it's clicks. With
e-commerce, it's purchases. What should we measure with feeds, where
sometimes the value is received just by reading the message? Is it a
click? A hover? A rating? Dave Morin talked about optimizing for
user engagement, but I think we're all still experimenting with the
best ways to measure success for feeds.
At LinkedIn, we place an extreme emphasis on business relevance
in every application we develop. Nowhere is this more important than in
Network Updates, where people count on getting useful updates on
activity in their professional network. As the number of activities
and users on LinkedIn grows, we continue to investigate and experiment
with ways to optimize the feeds we provide our users. We have some of
our best product, design and engineering talents on this exact problem.
With those two points made, I just want to say thank you to Dave McClure and the rest of the panelists for the great event. I'm looking forward to the next one already.
* By the way, as a lesser known LinkedIn tip, you can click the RSS button next to "Network Updates" on the homepage, and take your Network Events stream with you to any RSS reader. Chris' post shows you how.
As mentioned last week here on the LinkedIn blog, I had the privilege to deliver a keynote at this year's O'Reilly Graphing Social Patterns 2008 conference in Washington, DC. LinkedIn was one of the featured keynotes, and it was great to have a chance to present our philosophy & vision at the event.
Since I know we have many members who may not have had a chance to attend the event, let me be the first to say that it was a great conference. There are so many interesting problems right now on the social web: economic, technical, and philosophical. Many thanks to Dave McClure and team for setting up and hosting such a great event
Here are the key highlights from the presentation:
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network: the new medium for how business gets done. Our members
find new ways to interact with each other and improve their business
every day.
LinkedIn a Purpose-Driven Network. LinkedIn was built and designed specifically with the business professional in mind. That kind of focus and relevance makes us as valuable as possible to the professional who comes to LinkedIn for the specific purpose of getting business done.
LinkedIn believes in Business Relevance. The one thing professionals need more of is time. We work every day to bring as much focus and value to every single interaction on LinkedIn, and that deeply affects the design of our product.
Our focus on business relevance extends directly to our thinking around advertising and application development on our professional networking platform.
Here are the three live-blogs of the keynote I gave, called "LinkedIn: The Business Social Network":
Last month I took one for the team here at LinkedIn. I'm happy to do the gig no one wants. I'll suck it up and get the job done. So in early May I booked a ticket for Nice and headed to the Cannes Film Festival.
As the Entertainment Market Manager, my mission at Cannes was to find out how filmmakers were using LinkedIn. Certainly I discovered much about how a bewildered American navigates Southern France without a cell phone or a single Euro. But I also found out the truth about Cannes — the terrible secret they don’t want you to know. Watch the video for more.
LinkedIn sponsored The American Pavilion, a place where yankees can meet and network amidst the fury of the festival. The member badges proudly announced, "I'm LinkedIn at The American Pavilion". There's nothing like a badge to make you feel like an insider. Vis à vis:
LinkedIn is quickly becoming a required utility for the entertainment industry. Studios, agencies, record labels and guilds are all discovering the incredible utility of visualizing your network and making connections you didn’t know you had. For a volatile industry, it helps to know where your people are. Cannes is swarmed with filmmakers, producers and distributors all looking for business. Check out the video for some first-person accounts of how LinkedIn proves invaluable — and here are some more practical tips I found useful.
1) Use status to promote your film or French phone number
Many folks get a temporary phone while they’re in Cannes, which gives them a new phone number every year they’re there. Some have taken to posting their temporary numbers in their status fields – that way anyone over in Cannes can look them up on LinkedIn and get their +33 number. Those that don’t get a French phone can quietly promote the properties they’re shopping at Cannes, like Chatsby Films President Adam Matalon, who posted, “Adam is in Cannes doing business for ‘Seasons In The Valley’ and ‘Death on Demand’.”
2) Include your LinkedIn URL in your email signature
No one in the film business wants to field calls from unknown entities. Validate your career efforts by placing your custom URL (e.g., www.linkedin.com/in/jdvandenberghe ) in your email signature. This enables people to click through and quickly see where you’ve been, what you’re up to now, and why they might take a meeting with you.
3) Upload a photo to make connecting easy
It’s not unusual to make more LA connections in Cannes than you might living in LA. But Cannes is a busy place, and trying to meet up with new people can be hit or miss. Uploading a photo will enable new connections to know the face they’re looking for in a crowd of strangers. And for reconnecting with old colleagues and classmates, nothing beats a familiar face.
4) Link directly to your media properties
As LinkedIn represents your professional brand online, use the three outgoing hyperlinks to send people right to your movie, music, or filmography online. Got your projects on iTunes? Netflix? Amazon? IMDb? YouTube? Link to these and enable people to review your creative efforts first-hand.
-- Keep checking the LinkedIn Blog to find out how other industries are using the site to open the right doors and develop opportunities for their companies and careers. I'll be here doing the dirty work for LinkedIn, leaving no stone unturned to get the story. Special thanks to Marcio and Telemetrik for use of their song "Nova"!
UPDATE: Download an mp4 of the video: 320x240 (10.3 MB) or 480x360 (48.9 MB)
This weekend I am flying out to speak at the O'Reilly Graphing Social Patterns 2008 conference in Washington, DC. LinkedIn is one of the featured keynotes, and we're extremely excited to be presenting our philosophy & vision at the event.
For the keynote, the primary topic will revolve around LinkedIn's focus on the professional, and how it impacts our strategy on both our advertising and application platforms. We'll definitely follow up here on the blog with a copy of the slides from the event, as well as thoughts and learnings from the conference.
If you are interested in attending the event, it's not too late. Click here to register, and use the code gspe08fos to get a 20% discount.
Many of our blog readers are probably not aware that we have a LinkedIn customer support team in Omaha, Nebraska. You may have read an earlier post on LinkedIn privacy from April Kelly, who is the Director of the Omaha Center.
Today, I'm blogging for a cause. Corporate teams from throughout Omaha are participating in a sand sculpting competition. And the best part is that the event aims to raise
awareness and funding for the programs of Nebraska Children's Home,
which includes statewide adoption services and education, pregnancy
services, foster care, and child care.
The 5th Annual "Sand in the City" will take place at Miller's Landing (on the Omaha
Riverfront) between June 6th and 8th. This will then be followed by two days of Family Fun
open to the public on June 9 (10 am to 8pm) and June 10 (11am to 5pm). The event concludes with an awards ceremony and the Sand Blast Party held on the River City Star that evening at 7pm.
Wondering what our sand sculpture's going to look like? It's called "No more monkey business, get LinkedIn". Check out pictures of our sculpture model as well as a picture of the LinkedIn Omaha team, busy at work.
On Monday, May 12, at 2.28 p.m. Beijing time (6:28 GMT), a major earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale jolted southwestern China's Sichuan Province. It shook the skyscrapers in downtown Shanghai, hundreds of miles away; the shocks were felt as far away as Thailand and Vietnam.
The
earthquake has rendered over 5 million homeless and a confirmed death toll of over 40,000, a number that is expected to rise dramatically as rescue teams continue to
reach the most affected areas (Source: Associated Press). In cities near the earthquake's
epicenter, thousands are buried under the rubble of collapsed
buildings. We encourage you to support emergency relief efforts by
donating to either of these organizations.
Yes, we're getting older but the spirit of fun and craziness with which we started lives on. Last week's Wednesday lunch session was a trip down memory lane as Jean-Luc Vaillant, Yan Pujante, Chris Saccheri, Candy Mielke, Sarah Imbach and Dan Nye walked us through some of the milestones we've covered in five short years!
In case you missed Chris Saccheri's post last Monday, here's a brief recap: LinkedIn emerged five years ago on the pre-web 2.0 scene on Cinco de Mayo. Since then we’ve added value to the growing number of professionals turning to our site for social networking, jobs, answers, and the list goes on.
Just last week, we welcomed our 22 millionth professional (and as is tradition) we took a picture of our team right after our Cinco de LinkedIn celebrations. Also, check out a slideshow of the LinkedIn team through the years!
Here are some more pictures from the celebration and a couple of videos as well. Also, check out the entire 5th birthday photo album on Flickr, which has more than 100 pictures and a couple of videos.
We've grown rapidly since we started five years ago, and our rapid pace of user acquisition has been outdone only by our hiring spree. Check out some of the job openings we have currently. We'd love for you to join the ride!
Cinco de Mayo holds a special place in our hearts here at LinkedIn. In addition to being an excuse to down margaritas and tacos, it marks the fifth anniversary of the day we launched LinkedIn: May 5, 2003. The web was a different place back then; Friendster was the hottest site around, terms like "Web 2.0" and "AJAX" hadn't yet been coined, web pages were still in black and white... Okay, maybe it wasn't that long ago.
As both a company and a tool, LinkedIn has changed dramatically. Here's a quick "then and now" comparison of LinkedIn '03 and LinkedIn '08:
May 2003
May 2008
Employees
10
278
Users
4,800
22,000,000+
Introductions Sent
280
7,000,000+
Recommendations Made
0
4,500,000+
Questions Answered
0
1,000,000+
Four Square Games Played
0
6,394
Note that many of the features present in LinkedIn today -- including Recommendations, InMails, Groups Answers, and Jobs -- hadn't been built in May 2003. (But we were already thinking about most of them!)
I've also put together a small gallery of screenshots showing how LinkedIn has evolved through the years. What will LinkedIn look like 5 years from now? 10 years from now? Only time will tell...
LinkedIn through the years
And finally -- as a bonus to anybody who read this far -- here's an easter egg from the old days. Probably the last page I finished before the launch was our Founders page. It took forever to get everyone's bio together so, in the meantime, I wrote a few on my own. We didn't leave it this way for long, but here's a screenshot for posterity.
LinkedIn may have grown from 0 to 21 million professionals over the past few years (we're pretty close to our anniversary actually) but the one thing that's remained constant over these years, besides the tradition of taking pictures like the ones you see below, are the absolutely talented and fun teams responsible for bringing you these features. So, here's a slideshow featuring pictures of our teams through the years - a great way to bring the week to a close.
* 20M users - Mountain View
* 13M users - Mountain View
* 5M users - Palo Alto
* 2M users - Palo Alto
* 500K users - Palo Alto
* Way back when? - Mountain View
This was one of the first few pictures taken of our second office in Mountain View, Shoreline, pretty close to where our offices are situated right now. Thanks to Jean-Luc Vaillant for sharing some of these pictures. And, in case you're wondering who's that working away in the pictures below - that'd be Ian McNish.
A large group of Linkers were present at Digital Hollywood's Media Summit event in NYC March 12-13, 2008. The conference had a great turn out and terrific keynotes from folks like Bob Iger of Walt Disney. LinkedIn's VP of Marketing, Patrick Crane, spoke on a panel about "Social Media, UGM, Web Applications and Advertising: Monetizing the Interactive Experience." During the show Patrick was interviewed by Pop17, an Internet TV show. See video below.
This event was the first time that we brought our LinkedIn kiosks with us to an event. The kiosks enabled Linkers to show conference attendees how to sign up for an account, improve their profiles and how to add new contacts that they just met at the conference to their profiles. Media Summit also did some really cool stuff like including a LinkedIn logo next to speakers that have LinkedIn profiles (so you could find out more information about the speaker before/after the event and even see how many degrees away from the speakers you are or if you have any connections in common). The LinkedIn logos on the site were hyperlinked, so you got taken right to the speaker's profile page without having to do a search.
Most importantly, the event was a great opportunity for us to mingle with LinkedIn users and hear their thoughts on what they love and look forward to seeing on Linked In. The trip to NYC wasn't all work and no play though. It was also a wonderful way for some of our Mountain View-based employees to catch up with the NYC-based crew.
Last week, three of my colleagues and I attended SXSW, as we spoke on four diverse panels. So, here's a quick wrap-up of my session which took place a couple of days ago on the "Future of Corporate Blogging". Rather than rehash what Lionel Menchaca, Kami Huyse (my fellow panelists) and I went over at SXSW, I figured this is probably the best time to go over the past, present and future of LinkedIn's corporate blogging efforts.
1. The Past
When I started off at LinkedIn we probably belonged to a small group of web 2.0 companies that didn't have a blog. Well, we definitely wanted to do it the right way and not let it be just as a me-too effort. I still remember going over with the team on whether or not we wanted to allow comments, which received an overwhelming "D'uh" from everyone involved.
Some of the blogs I personally admire from a corporate blogging perspective are Dell (Lionel Menchaca) and Yahoo! (Nicki Dugan). Nicki has done a great job with Yodel Anecdotal allowing a diverse array of internal Yahoo! teams the opportunity to speak to the user through blog posts, while Lionel with his team at Dell have highlighted Dell's user-focus with social media properties such as the Dell blog and Dell Ideastorm.
2. The Present
Our goals for the LinkedIn blog have been focused on two broad categories: User education on the newest LinkedIn feature and being a reliable source of LinkedIn news with plenty of opportunity for user feedback. Currently these are the two broad categories of blog posts you see on LinkedIn:
Based on user feedback we realize that the most important category (from a user perspective) is of course - product feature announcements. So, now we've upped the ante (I've always wanted to say that) with regular video based demos (by the product manager) for all major feature releases as well as screenshot based demos (whenever appropriate) and maybe a blooper reel every once in a while!
3. The Future
While the vision and goals for our social media efforts remain the same,what you're likely to see in the future is an increase in the speed with which you get the News about LinkedIn as well as in responding to your comments. But while commenting on the blog, please bear in mind the basics of blog etiquette — no spam, no profanity, no slander, etc. All comments are moderated.
In addition to my quick responses to your comments, we'll also ensure that wherever relevant we'll make sure that the blog post author responds to you as well.
We'd love to hear your feedback on what you'd like to see on the blog. All you've to do is leave a comment here or if you'd like to take this conversation offline; email me at msundar@linkedin.com.
I would like to thank everyone who attended our "Birds of a Feather" interactive presentation at SDWest 2008. For the first time our engineering organization had a chance to share the architecture and evolution of the LinkedIn system and stir a conversation with fellow engineers on developing a scalable social network. Here's an overview of some of the contributions from my colleagues at LinkedIn:
Nicholas Dellamaggiore presented the timeline of LinkedIn's system architecture from 0 to 20 million members, and discussed some of the challenges we encountered.
Sean Dawson talked about the development, the architecture and the evolution of Network Updates Service (the feed aggregation and distribution system that supports the Network Updates feature you see on you home page).
Yours truly went about talking of LinkedIn engineering methodology and agile processes and tools we were employing inside LinkedIn engineering.
We were also lucky to be able to have with us - Jean-Luc Vaillant, our CTO and co-founder, who talked about LinkedIn's next generation architecture.
The conversation continues...
As an engineer, whether you work in a big organization on a challenging project or trying to start your own company - we hope you have been able to benefit from this talk.
We have also tried to engage in a conversation with "birds of a feather" on how challenging and complex some of the technical and engineering challenges are, especially as we continue our fast pace of growth as a leading social networking site.
On that note let me continue to point out similar events we'll continue this conversation at. If you're at JavaOne 2008 between May 6 and 9 at Moscone Center in San Francisco, don't miss the following:
Yes, we're going to be at SXSW and here's a quick summary of the four panels we'll be speaking at, on categories ranging from design to corporate blogging. So, if you're in Austin for SXSW Interactive, feel free to join the conversation. We're listening.
Given below are descriptions of the panels/panelists as well as links to add them to your SXSW calendar:
--- And, if you'd like to follow us at the event, feel free
to check out our LinkedIn Status between March 7 - 11 (Take a quick
look at what LinkedIn Status is all about? | demo | engineering).
You may have seen some of my earlier videos on the blog (here and here) describing the engineering nuances and philosophy at LinkedIn. This time around, I'd like to announce that some of our lead engineers and I, will be sharing our experiences and best practices during a Birds of a Feather presentation at the Software Development Conference and Expo West.
The event will be held on March 4th, 2008 from 7:00pm to 8:30pm at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Feel free to check out further details here.
If you're interested at getting an inside look into LinkedIn Engineering, learn about some of the technological and organizational challenges of growing one of the world's largest professional networks from 0 to 20 million members, or just to find out the process and tools we use in our daily work then this is the chance for you to stop by and ask questions? Once again, it's the LinkedIn Birds of a Feather event at SDWest 2008 on March 4th, 2008 at 7:00pm
LinkedIn's lead engineers and managers (Nicholas Dellamaggiore - Principal Engineer, Networks team lead, and Sean Dawson - Sr. Software Engineer, Communications Platform team lead) as well as yours truly hope to share some of our knowledge and experience and will be available to answer questions in an informal setting. Hope to see you at the event.
Since we started the blog on April 24th of last year, we've had many LinkedIn events that we've covered on the blog. Here's a quick recap of a few of those milestones you may have either attended or heard about last year.
1. Moving into our new digs - again!
Since we moved into our Mountain View office almost half a year ago, we realized one floor wouldn't suffice for our engineers, product and design folk; so we have recently expanded into the first floor of the building we currently occupy. Some of you
may have read a blog post by Adam Nash describing the move.
This was the event that started it all. We decided to throw open the doors of our new digs as soon as we moved from our Palo Alto office to our current office space in Mountain View, by hosting Silicon Valley's favorite lunch past time - Lunch 2.0. It was the re-launch of Lunch 2.0 for the summer series 2007. And, boy what a turnout we had!
One of the first LinkedIn Q&A events we planned was around the concept of a book preview we hosted featuring questions from LinkedIn users. The evening saw the pairing of the ever-funny Dan Lyons a.k.a Fake
Steve Jobs a.k.a FSJ (Sr. editor at Forbes, author of "Option$") with the ever-entertaining Guy
Kawasaki (Former Apple evangelist and founder of Truemors).
Source: LinkedIn photo feed -- Also, thanks to Terry Chay (co-founder at Lunch 2.0) and LinkedIn's Jerry Luk for some of their pictures republished above.
Stay tuned to the LinkedIn blog for upcoming events this year. Subscribe to our blog if you haven't yet.
I know we'd promised you the video from our most recent LinkedIn Q&A event - Confessions of Fake Steve Jobs with Guy Kawasaki (and a surprise guest!). Although, we don't have the entire video, we've got something better. We've broken down the video into it's funniest bits and are providing you the links right below. None of these videos are longer than 3.5 minutes, so they make for quick humorous bytes for the day.
--- About Dan Lyons: Dan Lyons (Senior editor at Forbes) well known tech blogger of the Fake Steve Jobs blog, was on a book tour to promote his recently
released book "Option$":
“Options” is the
outgrowth of a blog that Mr. Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes and a
novelist, started in the summer of 2006, at fakesteve.blogspot.com.
The book weaves the blog’s greatest hits into a cohesive narrative that
enfolds recent events at Apple, such as the Securities and Exchange
Commission investigation into alleged accounting irregularities
(backdated options), and the release of the iPhone. (Source: New York Times)
Thanks!
We'd like to once again thank Guy Kawasaki for moderating the entertaining and informative LinkedIn Q&A Session and Brad Stone for his participation. And, of course, the event wouldn't have been a success without Fake Steve Jobs himself who is as entertaining in person as he is on his blog.
Here's a very quick update on the LinkedIn Q&A event held recently at the Computer History Museum. Stay tuned for the entire video presentation of the event, coming up shortly right here on the blog.
We had a little over 300 attendees for the 2 hour laugh riot, which featured author (Options)/blogger (Fake Steve Jobs blog)/Senior editor (Forbes) -- Dan Lyons. Despite facing a barrage of questions ranging from the genesis of the blog to the drama of being outed as Fake Steve Jobs (FSJ), Dan managed to entertain with his quick wit and along the way revealed some interesting episodes from his new book "Option$" (out in book stores now).
(Images from the LinkedIn Q&A Event featuring Guy Kawasaki and Dan Lyons | Source: LinkedIn's Photo Feed)
Stay tuned for the video of the entertaining evening that we'll be sharing with you shortly on the blog (Subscribe)! In the meanwhile, here's some coverage of the event:
It's just a couple of weeks since we announced the LinkedIn Q&A event (featuring Dan Lyons a.k.a Fake Steve Jobs and Guy Kawasaki) and it's risen to the top of the charts on Upcoming, overtaking SXSW and MacWorld!
RSVPs have far exceeded the seating capacity of 400 at the Computer History Museum. We'll be starting at 6pm and seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis. Here are further details:
LinkedIn Q&A Event | Confessions of Fake Steve Jobs
Venue: Computer History Museum, Hahn Auditorium, 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View, CA 94043 (Map it)
Date & Time: Today, Nov 6 @ 6 PM (Pacific Time)
SeatingCapacity: 400. Please be there at 6 PM; seating is on a first-come, first-served basis
For those of you who can't make it to the event, no worries, we'll be live streaming the event right here on our blog. Check back at 6pm (Pacific).
Have you ever wondered what goes in the mind of Fake Steve Jobs? On November 6th, LinkedIn will be hosting a live Q&A session with senior editor at Forbes and popular tech blogger, Dan Lyons (of "Fake Steve Jobs" fame), which will be moderated by Guy Kawasaki, former Chief Evangelist at Apple and co-founder at Truemors (with questions from LinkedIn users).
(from l - r: Dan Lyons and Guy Kawasaki | Source: Hyku)
Further details below:
* LinkedIn Q&A Event | Confessions of Fake Steve Jobs
* Date & Time: November 6 @ 6 pm.
* Venue: Computer History Museum, 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View, CA 94043 (Map it)
* RSVP: The event is open to all but there is only limited seating, so hurry up and RSVP.
* Ask Fake Steve Jobs a question: Even if you can't make it to the event, Guy Kawasaki would like to know what you'd ask Fake Steve Jobs if you could (via LinkedIn Answers).
Dan Lyons is currently on a book tour to promote his recently released book "Option$", which the New York Times says reads like "The Devil Wears Mock Turtlenecks".
“Options” is the outgrowth of a blog that Mr. Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes and a novelist, started in the summer of 2006, at fakesteve.blogspot.com. The book weaves the blog’s greatest hits into a cohesive narrative that enfolds recent events at Apple, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into alleged accounting irregularities (backdated options), and the release of the iPhone. (Source: New York Times)
New York Times' Liesl Schillinger calls "Mr. Lyons’s portrait hilarious and eerily specific; you get the feeling he planted a spycam in one of Mr. Jobs’s mock turtles" and Entertainment Weekly's John Simons calls "the narrator of this dead-tree account so textured and real that even his most idle thoughts amuse."
Join us on Nov 6 @ 6 pm at the Computer History Museum, to find out more about the legend of Fake Steve Jobs, the real Guy Kawasaki and related topics on technology that all Silicon Valley cube dwellers will find fascinating. For those of you not in the Bay Area, no worries, we'll be live streaming the event. Stay tuned for more details.
Let the LinkedIn Sessions begin.
-- Related blog posts:
* The last time we threw a party this is what went down; you were LunchedIn!
* Our friends at Lunch 2.0 blogged about the upcoming LinkedIn Q&A event here. Also, check out upcoming Lunch 2.0 events on their blog.
LinkedIn just hit a bit of a milestone this month internationally – we reached the million
member mark in the UK. With nearly two thousand British professionals signing
up on any given day, LinkedIn has become the go-to site for those who want to
advance their professional know-how (not to mention their know-who).
Apparently, the fashionable set agrees – the UK edition of Esquire
Magazine has just nominated LinkedIn for a Man At The Top Business Award in the
Best Business Tool category.
We want to take this opportunity to thank
all our million UK members – and those from within the UK and around the world
who invited them – for making this happen. We’ll be celebrating this week with a
few of our own events in London, Birmingham and Manchester. But if you’re
elsewhere in the UK, or elsewhere in the world, why not take this opportunity to
reconnect with your own professional network? Take them out for a pint and all
that. But dress to impress – Esquire might be watching and you don’t
want to disappoint!
Also, we're hosting events in a few cities
(London, Manchester, Birmingham) to coincide with the milestone. LinkedIn staff will be there, but
more importantly, it will be a great chance to get together in person
with other local LinkedIn members.
Space is limited. Please RSVP below to
the address corresponding to your preferred city. If we
have a spot for you, we'll email back with the details. All events are
in the evening.
London: Tuesday October 16
linkedinlondon@bitepr.com (Full)
Manchester: Thursday October 18
linkedinmanchester@bitepr.com
Birmingham: Thursday October 18
linkedinbirmingham@bitepr.com
I had a chance to attend the opening session of "Graphing Social Patterns" where Reid Hoffman gave the keynote presentation on the business aspects of social networking. Reid's presentation covered three key observations and themes (after the jump).
Dave McClure and Reid Hoffman at Graphing Social Patterns (Picture Source: Dan Farber)
Three key themes covered during Reid's keynote:
1. Social Networks and Platforms 2. Social Networks and Professional Networks
3. What does the social platform mean for the evolution of the web?
The first part of Reid's presentation covered the evolution of social networking platforms, starting in 2003, from features to applications to the current concept of a platform. Suitable examples would range from early pure-play social networks that had the ability to hack in "widgets" to platforms that allowed for building any type of social network and finally a platform that's built on a broad social graph. Social networks embodies key data for utilitarian applications and hence its appropriateness as a platform in itself.
Reid then delved into the specific nature of pure-play social networking sites and the intricate differences between them and pure-play professional networking sites by highlighting specific examples of usage. For e.g. try a comparative search for names or specific keywords (like "open source expert") or maybe just searching for company connections. Other suitable comparisons between social and professional networks would be knowledge intensive features like Answers, Services or Jobs. The last few sections of the keynote covered areas related to the future possibilities, limitations, and an economic analysis of platforms. For further coverage on Reid's keynote at the "Graphing Social Patterns" conference, please check out either TechMeme or Dan Farber's Zdnet coverage.
Last week, I had the opportunity to join a great a panel at the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco. The Office 2.0 conference is dedicated to exploring the use of Web 2.0
technologies in the enterprise, and I was excited to see the
dedication and passion that many of the attendees and fellow panelists
had for the topic. The website self-describes the event as follows:
The Office 2.0 Conference is a collective experiment organized every
year in San Francisco, CA and aimed at discovering the future of online
productivity & collaboration. It is a unique gathering of
visionaries, thought leaders, and customers using innovative online
services for getting things done at the office, at home, and on the go.
Shel Israel, who moderated the event, is a well know consultant in the Social Media space, and has written a book on business blogging called "Naked Conversations" with Robert Scoble.
The panel featured great representatives from some of the key companies that are defining ways for people to use social media in the enterprise:
Shel did an excellent job setting up a great format for the event. Instead of focusing on prepared questions or remarks, each panelist took a couple of minutes to speak briefly about their company, their focus, and their passion on the topic, and then we dove straight into Q&A with the audience. It was by far the best way to make use of limited time, and the general consensus is that it led to some great discussion. (Jeremiah even referred to it as the best panel he'd seen in a long time.)
Explaining LinkedIn was relatively easy with this audience - when I asked people around the room how many already knew about LinkedIn and had a LinkedIn profile, almost every hand went up. It was great, however, to take a few moments to explain to everyone why we are so passionate at LinkedIn about professional networking. We firmly believe that the most valuable assets we build as professionals through our careers are our reputations and the people who we know and trust, and who know and trust us. We're building a platform to help professionals leverage those key assets on a daily basis.
There were quite a few interesting questions and anecdotes from the audience and the panel. Anil made an impassioned statement about the importance of collaboration and content in the enterprise. John spoke about the importance of portability and open standards (thank you, by the way, for the positive comment on LinkedIn and the ability we give every member to download their connections). Athena spent some time on the vibrance of new communities forming on Ning. Shiv kicked off with comments about the incredible growth and interest people are showing for social media in the enterprise.
What are some of the innovative online services you're hoping to see come from the office space? Leave a comment.
Walking into LinkedIn this past week has been akin to cruising the strip in Vegas. Different teams have elegantly and some not-so-elegantly (hey, is that our Vegas dedication?) decorated their cubicles in the spirit of teamwork and fun. Ever since, Candy Mielke, Julie Grosso and the HR team, challenged the teams to upgrade to some Cube Chic, we've been working on a few ideas and here are the results.
Although, there were three winners in both the categories; teams and individuals, I thought we should mention everyone's contribution since independent of how long each team worked on it, the changes have transformed the company and now when I walk in to work...well, why don't we take a walk through some of the individual cubicle creations:
Now that's how you do the Blue Steel look!
Can you notice something unique about the photo?
How did they trick me into doing this?
And, finally for the headless LinkedIn'er. Guess who?
