Ed.note: Nearly 54 million professionals across different industries use LinkedIn to their competitive advantage. Starting this month, we’d like to focus on how professionals from different verticals are finding value on LinkedIn. Thanks to Don Low – Biotech Project Lead at Baxter Biosciences, for sharing LinkedIn tips for biotech professionals.
It’s human nature to mark the passage of milestones, and people often place special significance on those that have round numbers attached to them. Two round milestones with global significance happened in 2009 – 150 years have passed since the publication of Charles Darwin’s landmark Origin of Species, and 40 years have gone by since the Department of Defense launched ARPANET, the nucleus from which the modern Internet developed.
Darwin’s work revolutionized our understanding of biology, and is now part of the scientific foundation supporting the modern-day biotechnology industry. Similarly, the Internet has grown from a network connecting a modest 4 host computers to the worldwide web linking millions of hosts, forever changing the way we gather and handle information. These seemingly disparate global phenomena are becoming increasingly intertwined as Internet technologies find ever more uses in the biotech workplace, speeding communication. We’ve come a long way from Darwin’s elegant letters that he exchanged with fellow scientists in his field.
Today, social networking sites like LinkedIn are emerging as powerful tools to identify and connect with hidden resources that can give a project team leader a much-needed edge in an increasingly competitive world. The following slide deck is a presentation I gave to the NorCal Biopharma Project Managers group on how biotech professionals can find ways to maximize their usage of a social network like LinkedIn.
These are stormy times for the industry – we face a severe economic downturn and downward price pressures due to increasing globalization and the prospect of large-scale health care reform. Perhaps Darwin’s ideas are relevant to our industry in another way – social networking sites are growing in power and rapidly changing to better suit the needs of our specialized projects. Forward-looking biotech companies must in turn adapt and utilize the latest tools to stay ahead and escape – you guessed it, extinction.
Over fifty million users entrust their professional identities and relationships with LinkedIn, helping build LinkedIn into the largest global professional network today. However, professionals around the world use a wide variety of applications and Web sites to get their work done, and they have spoken loud and clear that they want the ability to leverage their professional networks wherever they work.
Starting today, developers worldwide can integrate LinkedIn into their business applications and Web sites. Developer.linkedin.com is now live and open for business.
The evolution of the LinkedIn Platform
Over the past months, LinkedIn has supported integrations with some of the most prominent and critical software applications in the enterprise. Partnerships with companies like IBM, Blackberry (Research in Motion), and most recently Microsoft, have given us time to invest in both functionality and scalability of the platform.
S
oftware is moving to the cloud, and business applications need context for who people are and how they are related. LinkedIn now is the obvious choice as a provider for those services. It is hard to imagine a business application that would not benefit from LinkedIn integration.”
– Roger Neal, SVP/GM at BusinessWeek Digital, McGraw-Hill
At LinkedIn, we have always believed that business applications are better when they are built over a platform of professional reputation and relationships. In real life, our most valuable professional assets are the skills and experience we acquire and the trusted relationships we build. It’s not surprising that business software becomes more productive and valuable when it is built over these services.
How can I start developing for the LinkedIn Platform today?
Registering as a LinkedIn developer is as simple as filling out a form on developer.linkedin.com. The LinkedIn platform leverages the open OAuth standard to make integrations from almost any language and development environment as simple as possible.
W
hat a breath of fresh air. We were able to go to http://developer.linkedin.com, request a key, and actually write functioning code in less than 15 minutes. It’s amazing to have access to such a powerful platform on tap at any time.”
A number of developers who have helped provide us with feedback and guidance in our development will be announcing integrations in the coming weeks. For example, TweetDeck is announcing full support for the LinkedIn platform in its next version. Now you can easily view or take action on your LinkedIn network updates from within TweetDeck, with the full integration of the LinkedIn profile information of the person who posted the update.
This is the beginning of a new set of opportunities for the LinkedIn platform, and we look forward to seeing the integrations that developers will launch in the coming weeks and months.
Stay tuned for additional enhancements over during the coming months as we learn and grow this platform together.
Today, Microsoft announces an exciting new addition to the upcoming Microsoft Office 2010 – the Outlook Social Connector. The Outlook Social Connector is designed to seamlessly bring communications history as well as business and social networking feeds into your Outlook experience.
LinkedIn will be the first networking site to support the Outlook Social Connector. The LinkedIn functionality will be available in early 2010. Our big belief is that you can be much more effective if you have your professional network close at hand, and you can leverage your online identity in the work you do on a daily basis. The Outlook Social Connector will bring your LinkedIn Professional Network to where you work – right within your e-mail inbox.
Here are three key benefits you get from this integration:
1. Keep up with LinkedIn connections right from your e-mail inbox
One of the great things about LinkedIn is being able to learn what your professional connections are working on and thinking about. Just glance at the Network Updates on your LinkedIn homepage and you’ll be able to learn what articles & books your connections are reading, what conferences they are attending, and what questions they are asking and answering on LinkedIn. Many use this information to keep current with their industry and profession, as well as to learn new things and expand their horizons.
The Outlooks Social Connector makes this even easier – by automatically showing the latest activity (i.e. Network Updates) from any LinkedIn connection that sends you an e-mail. So now you can get the latest information from your LinkedIn network even without having to leave your inbox.
What’s more, for any connection with a public LinkedIn profile photo, you’ll even get to see their picture as you communicate.
2. E-mail your LinkedIn connections directly from Outlook
Know that perfect LinkedIn connection to help you with a business task or question but don’t remember their current email address? No longer do you have to go to the LinkedIn website to find their contact information before sending them a message, as your LinkedIn network is now available right within your inbox. Just start typing the name of a LinkedIn connection in the “To:” field of an Outlook message and the connections’ e-mail address from LinkedIn will automatically appear as if they are an existing Outlook contact. In fact, the Outlook Social Connector will create an Outlook Contacts folder for all of your LinkedIn connections and bring down their contact information, professional details, and picture from LinkedIn into Outlook.
3. Keep building your professional network from Outlook
Working with someone new but haven’t had a chance to connect with them on LinkedIn? By bringing professional networking to where you work, the Outlook Social Connector again makes it easy. Just click a button next to any e-mail you receive and instantly send an invitation to connect to the e-mail’s sender. It’s that easy.
We hope that these functions start bringing some of the key elements of your LinkedIn professional network to where you work – your Outlook e-mail inbox, sometime early next year. But these are certainly just the first steps. Let us know what else you’d like to see by leaving a comment below.
Last week LinkedIn launched a significant integration with Twitter, enabling professionals to expand their personal brands to their professional networks and vice-versa. To show our users how that might work, today we’re asking you: What’s the best business advice you’ve ever received?
The best business advice I ever received seemed to be something of an oxymoron. As an entrepreneur, you’re told frequently, “Be persistent! Follow your vision! Flatten obstacles!” But on the other hand, you’re urged to “Learn from the market! Adapt to changing conditions! Take a different course!” Knowing when to persist and when to be flexible is more of an art than a science. So in a fluid, fast-changing world, sometimes you stick to your vision, and sometimes you adapt quickly.
Unfortunately, that’s more than 140 characters! So watch the video to see how Biz and I resolve our best advice to the unique Twitter format. And tweet your best advice today with #in.
Here’s how you can share the best business advice you’ve received on LinkedIn and Twitter
1. LinkedIn and Twitter users can participate by tweeting the best business advice they’ve received with the hashtag #in.
2. If you’ve already linked your accounts, this hashtag will automatically update your LinkedIn status, enabling you to share your wisdom with both networks simultaneously.
[Ed. note:This is the first in a series of posts on LinkedIn around the world. We just announced LinkedIn's country manager in India - Hari V. Krishnan - and here are his initial thoughts as he visits our Mountain View headquarters this week]
I am truly excited about my new role heading up LinkedIn India – a platform which has been an integral part of my own career. The Indian internet has grown strongly and changed dramatically over the last 5 years with social media, e-commerce and advertising all beginning to come of age. Having witnessed the change first hand working with leading companies like MySpace and Yahoo and start ups like Travelguru, I see the need to share knowledge assuming a more central role in sustaining the growth. I’m convinced that LinkedIn will play a strong role as a platform for sharing connections and knowledge.
India is the largest democracy on earth and one of the fastest growing economies globally. We have a large, skilled workforce and in the recent past our IT, services and telecommunications businesses have given us global acclaim. With the internet helping to shrink the world, Indians have already started developing their global connections. On LinkedIn, we already have over 3.4 million members from India and we continue to add 70,000 new users every week!
In the coming years I believe talent, professionalism, collaboration and networking will play an increasingly important role in sustaining India’s position in the global economy. The years ahead will also be full of great learning and growth for India’s professionals.
As I conclude my visit to LinkedIn, here in Mountain View, the excitement for the future of India and global professional networks is palpable. The pumped-up planning discussions and smiles (and lack of yawns) at every meeting, tell me we are excited to meet the challenges ahead. I look forward to linking up with many of you when I’m back in Mumbai. See you soon!
Today we’re announcing a partnership between LinkedIn and Twitter – and new features that we think are going to make both Twitter and LinkedIn more powerful for you.
The idea is simple: When you set your status on LinkedIn you can now tweet it as well, amplifying it to your followers and real-time search services like Twitter Search and Bing. And when you tweet, you can send that message to your LinkedIn connections as well, from any Twitter service or tool.
Why? Because when you’re trying to get something done, you want Twitter and LinkedIn to work together. Like peanut butter and chocolate! Or at least that’s what Biz and Reid think:
LinkedIn has always been about helping you to build your professional identity on the web. The many elements that make up your online professional brand range from your LinkedIn profile to the many professional conversations you’re a part of. Status has proved valuable to our users, from finding new assignments and jobs to kick-starting a global business enterprise.
Now you can amplify those messages by broadcasting them to your audience on Twitter.
How does LinkedIn work with Twitter?
The feature is now available to all of our users, and with today’s launch, we’re making that two-way communication between your status updates and tweets a breeze to set up. Here’s how it works:
1. On LinkedIn
Want to share some interesting ideas about an industry-specific article you’ve just read with an even broader audience? Or how about letting people view your Twitter account name on your LinkedIn profile? Begin by joining your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts in just a few clicks. All you need to do is check the Twitter box under your Network Updates box on the homepage and follow a few simple steps.
Syncing your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts
Clicking through the setup process will allow you to specify the Twitter account that you’d like to sync and/or display on your LinkedIn profile.
Display Twitter on your LinkedIn profile
2. On Twitter
As a professional online and in the real world, you’ll often find articles or think of ideas that would be useful to share with your Twitter followers and your LinkedIn connections. It’s about sparking interesting conversations. Now you can share from anywhere. As part of the setup process, you can choose to either send all your tweets or select tweets from Twitter back to LinkedIn as a status update.
Share tweets as your LinkedIn status
If you pick the latter, don’t forget to add the #li or #in hashtag to every relevant tweet you’d like to send back to LinkedIn. Here’s a good example:
Include #in with any tweet to post as your LinkedIn status
So go ahead and get started. Link your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts today to add a new dimension to your professional conversation.
As of early this morning, LinkedIn has 50 million users worldwide and we’re growing that figure at roughly one new member per second. When LinkedIn launched in 2003, it took 477 days — almost a year and four months — to reach our first million members. This last million took only 12 days.
Where are these 50 million users? LinkedIn has been global since inception — about half of our total membership is international. There are now 11 million users in Europe alone. India is currently our fastest-growing country with almost 3 million users, while the Netherlands has the highest rate of adoption per capita outside the U.S., at 30%.
While 50 million is an important milestone, we’re even more excited about how our members are using the site. Around the globe, people turn to LinkedIn to create and manage their professional identities online. They reconnect with former colleagues and develop new relationships, enabling them to create and collaborate with a network of trusted individuals. Every day professionals use LinkedIn to define themselves —and their businesses — to the world.
We’re proud to have reached this latest milestone, and we very much appreciate our members’ use of LinkedIn. However, in the context of our mission – to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful – we’re just getting started.
[Ed. note: This is a guest blog post from Scott Lawley from SAP on their first community app on the LinkedIn platform: SAP Community Bio.]
Like many of you reading this blog post today, I’m an avid LinkedIn user. For me, LinkedIn is an effective tool that I use on a regular basis to network with people within my industry, and to research new leads and opportunities. Given time constraints I often don’t have the time to update my online profiles on various social networking sites and would imagine this is a pretty common scenario. Starting today, we’ve made it extremely simple to share your SAP Community Network contributions to your LinkedIn network without any hassle.
As a product manager of the SAP Community Network (SCN), I am often asked similar questions by our members about making available SCN user profile information on LinkedIn. Because our members develop a reputation over time through their contributions and community involvement, they would like to be able to take that with them to other social networking sites. And, now with the launch of SAP Community Bio, you can install an application on your LinkedIn profile that pulls data from your SCN business card.
Here are the particulars of the application. The SAP Community Bio pulls your SCN membership status which is linked back to your SCN business card, total number of points, areas of expertise, active contributor status, SAP Mentor status, and links to your most recent blogs on SCN. Here is a screenshot of my SAP Community Bio:
This application installs just like other LinkedIn applications. The installation process is simple and will require that you authenticate it on SCN in order to complete the installation. You can learn more about this application and start the installation process by visiting the SAP Community Bio page on SCN.
Once installed, this application appears on your LinkedIn profile page, the page that other LinkedIn members will see. In essence, your contribution to the SCN and your expertise now can be extended to the entire LinkedIn community. So, if for example you are a Business Intelligence (BI) consultant and write blogs on the topic, users who are looking for BI consultants on LinkedIn will see that you are an expert in the field with links to your most recent blogs on SCN. Pretty powerful stuff, eh!?
The next step in the evolution of community and user profile integration is a SCN application which pulls information from LinkedIn, thereby enriching your SCN business card with your LinkedIn profile information and connections. I would love to hear from you what you feel are the most important features to include in this next application.
Scott Lawley is a Product Manager and member of the Solution Management Office for SAP Community Network. Learn more about the app here.
I often come across interesting profiles on LinkedIn, but I’ve found it challenging to save profiles so I can easily come back to them later. Usually, I resort to bookmarking the profiles in my web browser or scribbling down names on a piece of paper.
Today we are launching Profile Organizer, a new Premium feature that lets you save profiles, organize them into folders, and add notes. Anytime you find an interesting profile, simply click “Save Profile” and the profile is bookmarked for you within LinkedIn.
When you click “Save Profile”, the profile is added to your Profile Organizer. You now see a module on the profile page from which you can save a profile into a designated folder, add contact information, and private notes that are visible only to you. It’s a great way to remember relevant details about contacts, and develop your relationships.
The Profile Organizer is a workspace accessible through the Contacts tab, where you can manage all of your saved profiles organized into specific folders.
Profile Organizer also lets you save profiles directly from the search results page. With just one click, you can save a profile and add it to a folder directly from search.
If you do many searches on LinkedIn, the single-click “save profile” action can save you time. You no longer need to review each interesting profile in detail: just save from the search results page, and you can narrow down your list in Profile Organizer later.
A few of us at LinkedIn have started using Profile Organizer and find it particularly helpful after attending networking events or conferences. In the past, I collected a stack of business cards and came back from the event unsure about what to do with them. Now, I find the contacts on LinkedIn, and jot down relevant information into Profile Organizer. The next time I go to a similar event, I simply glance through my notes to recall details about our past conversations.
If you have a minute, check out this short feature demo:
Get started using the new feature by clicking on the “Save Profile” link from any LinkedIn profile or search results. Alternatively, you can also check out your Profile Organizer page here.
Profile Organizer is a Premium Account feature, but we are offering a 30-day free trial for all of our members to try it out. Learn more here. We’d love to hear your questions and / or feedback at feedback@linkedin.com. Or follow us @linkedin.
I’m happy to report that as of today, as part of Palm webOS 1.2, the most common feature request from LinkedIn members has now been delivered: seamless syncing of your LinkedIn connections to your Palm Pre, via Palm Synergy. Now every application on the Palm Pre can benefit from the information provided by your LinkedIn network.
The process is incredibly simple:
Make sure that you have received the new webOS 1.2 over-the-air update on your Palm Pre. LinkedIn is only available with Palm webOS 1.2 or later.
Click the “Contacts” application
Select “Preferences & Accounts” from the menu
Click “Add An Account”
Select LinkedIn, and enter your LinkedIn email address and password.
That’s it. You’ll find your address book, available to all applications, is now sync’ed daily with your LinkedIn connections. The following fields will be automatically updated with every connection:
Email address
Title
Company
Photo
In addition to integration with Palm webOS, we’re also pleased to announce that we’ve uploaded the v1.0 of our LinkedIn for Palm Pre application. It features a number of performance improvements, and offers an improved user experience for search, the number one feature for mobile professionals. Now there is even less excuse to walk into a meeting without taking 30 seconds to type in their name and get the full detail about their professional experience.
We appreciate the feedback that you’ve given us on our first Palm Pre application, and we hope you enjoy these improvements. Stay tuned, we’re planning to roll out additional LinkedIn mobile enhancements in the near future.
We love to hear from you. So feel free to comment, but keep in mind the basics of blog etiquette — no spam, no profanity, no slander, etc. All comments are moderated.
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Ed. note: Nearly 54 million professionals across different industries use LinkedIn to their competitive advantage. Starting this month, we’d like to focus on how professionals from different verticals are finding value on LinkedIn. Thanks to Don Low – Biotech Project Lead at Baxter Biosciences, for sharing LinkedIn tips for biotech professionals. 
Today we’re announcing a partnership between LinkedIn and Twitter – and new features that we think are going to make both Twitter and LinkedIn more powerful for you. 
[Ed. note: This is a guest blog post from 
