LinkedIn

A good friend of mine asked me for some tips on how to use LinkedIn. I sent him a long email and figure that I should share my thoughts on this with all of you. I'm not an investor in LinkedIn, but think it's a great service. Here's the scoop.

Editor's note: After you read Mark's guide below, check out all of our LinkedIn coverage and join our LinkedIn networking group.

Why you should use LinkedIn:

1. The service allows you to see who your contacts know - something that is virtually impossible to do sufficiently through normal social interactions. LinkedIn takes the coincidence out of networking.
2. It enables you to passively keep up to date contact information for all of your contacts.
3. It facilitates introductions through your broader network.
4. It enables people to find you based upon your background and who you know.
5. It is a professional network that excludes unnecessary personal information.

Why You Should Expand Your LinkedIn Network

I find that a lot of people define 'using' LinkedIn as having a profile, but not a lot of connections. As a result, I think it's worth pointing out that the more you expand your network the more valuable the service will be for you.

As you add more contacts:

1. You will have a larger database of people to search through when you are looking for a contact. When you search for a person or a background you can only see contacts in your three degrees or contacts - more contacts means more people in your searchable pool.
2. More people will be able to find you when they search for someone with your background.

LinkedIn Best Practices

Here's my short list of LinkedIn best practices (and how you do them):

1. Customize your LinkedIn profile page URL name. Go to 'edit my profile' in your LinkedIn account and click on 'edit' next to 'Public Profile' a little way down the page.
2. Add your LinkedIn profile page to your email signature. For gmail click on 'settings' in the upper right hand corner and in the text box half way down the page labeled 'signature' enter a custom signature including your new Public Profile URL.
3. Connect with your existing contacts. Click on 'add connections' on the left side of the screen and follow the process of letting LinkedIn scan your gmail, outlook or other contact lists. By doing so you will be able to invite your contacts to connect using the very easy process provided on the site. Note that you will not automatically invite everyone in your gmail or outlook contact list.
4. Use the Browser Toolbar. The most important feature of the browser toolbar is that it adds a LinkedIn icon next to email addresses in your gmail. This icon enables you to see a LinkedIn summary (job title, position in your network, number of contacts, etc) of any person who emails you. It also enables you to invite people to LinkedIn from your gmail account - making it easier to connect with people.
5. Use the Outlook Toolbar. This application integrates into your outlook as is useful in a few ways. First, it adds a LinkedIn icon that is similar to the one described in the browser toolbar. Second, it enables you to update your outlook contacts based upon changes that people make to their LinkedIn profiles - keeping your contacts up to date.
6. Add a picture. It's always helpful for other people to be able to associate your face with your background, making it easier for people to introduce themselves at social events.

LinkedIn Etiquette

Standard for connecting. When I first started using LinkedIn I viewed a connection as an endorsement. I no longer see it that way, because I realized that my connections do not have direct access to each other - I have to approve introductions. At this point, I am willing to connect with anyone with which I would normally exchange contact information (e.g., a business card).

Appropriate use of the name field. Some folks insert additional information into the name field on their profile. The most often additions are a title or an email address. I understand that they do this because in some forms of search on the site the name field is the only thing that shows up. However, I don't like it. Not only does it seem aggressive in general, but also it screws up their contact information for everyone that uses the outlook toolbar.

It's OK not to forward an intro: People can request that you introduce them to someone else in your network. While it's a bit awkward to say 'no', I think that it's appropriate to do so if it makes you uncomfortable.

LinkedIn community evangelist Mario Sundar has posted a chart from Nielsen showing the top social networks and their growth over the past year (March-March). I've embedded the chart below. The analysis is based on U.S. home and work traffic and does not include international traffic.

LinkedIn shows growth at 319% while Facebook only grew 98% and MySpace barely grew at 9%. I'd suggest that Facebook and MySpace have the market nearly tapped so their growth will be slower than LinkedIn. Buzznet also grew nicely at 49%.

A year ago the Facebook fans claimed LinkedIn was dead and that Facebook would replace LinkedIn as the business networking tool of choice. I haven't seen that happen and if anything, I've seen more LinkedIn requests than Facebook requests lately. Do you believe Facebook will still replace LinkedIn as the business social network?

Drama 2.0 also wonders Are the Most LinkedIn Really LinkedOut?

We've just received our first batch of limited-edition stickers (thanks Mark!) and are ready to share them with all of you, our great, loyal readers. And to celebrate the printing of the stickers, we've launched a new Facebook group and a LinkedIn group which we would love for you to join.

Once you have joined a group, submit your address and a sticker will be shipped to you at no charge! We ship worldwide.

Thank you for continuing to read and support CenterNetworks!

IT Venture Partner Mark Davis has launched a new group on LinkedIn, "The NY Venture Community Group". In just three days, the group has over 400 people subscribed and a good bit of activity.

Davis explains the purpose for the group, "The New York Venture Community is the LinkedIn group for entrepreneurs, startup teams, venture capitalists and venture service providers in the New York region. The purpose of this group is to make it easier to 1) find other people in region interested in venture and 2) connect with these people. Lastly, being part of this group will make it easier for others to find you."

If you are seeking funding now or plan to in the future, you need to be reading Davis' blog. He has a huge library of information about every facet of the funding process. Frankly I think he should be selling this information because it easily could mean the difference between getting the funding and not.

Pingdom is out with their latest stats regarding downtime for the major social networks for the first 60-ish days in 2008. Bebo leads the list with over 12 hours of downtime after their big downtime in January. We wondered if that downtime was due to the rapid expansion of the Bebo developer platform.

Other notables on the list include Friendster with 6 hours of downtime, LinkedIn at 4 hours, Facebook at 95 minutes and LiveJournal at 10 minutes.

As a side note, these type of blog posts from Pingdom are what I try to explain to new startups all the time. Use your tools to show off your tools. This is something I rarely see and, where applicable, should be on every marketing plan.

LinkedIn has released a new beta version of their site this morning. And to quote Jan, "widget widget widget". Mario from LinkedIn has a good overview of the new features. There's also new APIs coming soon. Along with the APIs, I'd love to see some new widgets to integrate into a Web site - profile, jobs, etc.

The new home page looks great - an absolute improvement over the old, crusty version. It has a widget feel to it and sure enough it has some widgets that you can move around, add/delete as you wish. The contact viewer is also cleaner than previously. The page feeds very open and airy and a nice 2007 flavor.

They also moved the job board to the home page. Perhaps LinkedIn should look at offering a job board similar to the Job-a-matic board offered by SimplyHired.

If LinkedIn's goal is to create a more sticky environment, why not partner with a start page provider such as Netvibes or Pageflakes and then you could actually create a very strong business networking environment. Feeds, travel, etc. -- all should be available.

From my perspective, LinkedIn still wins over Facebook for business networking. I get 7-10x more LinkedIn requests than Facebook requests. If you'd link to link me up, check out my profile.

Mike Butcher from TechcrunchUK has a source on a rumor of News Corp. acquiring LinkedIn in 2008. I like this a lot. This makes absolute sense for News Corp who needs to get deeper online and since LinkedIn works for the business crowd and there is some overlap with newspaper readers, this is a deal I can approve.

This is a much better plan than to go after Digg. Except for possible ad revenues, the Digg audience does not match up well against News Corp. But LinkedIn does. It would instantly increase the userbase of LinkedIn and *could* bring some new readers to the WSJ newspaper.

Mike notes, "However, while online revenue is growing it isn’t offsetting the declines in print revenue. So newspapers need another way to monetise their online operations, and social networking - which is eating into classified revenues - is the natural route to take."

Check out our previous LinkedIn coverage including "Are the Most LinkedIn Really LinkedOut?" and our coverage of new Yahoo competitor Kickstart.

I have been working on several ventures recently. While these ventures have strong technology components, they are focused on other markets. As such, I've been dealing most frequently with people outside of the technology world and through this I've confirmed something that I saw hints of previously: the people who are truly the most "linked in" are more often than not the most "linked out."

Let me explain. I've been a member of LinkedIn for quite some time. It's a useful service but I would not consider myself an avid LinkedIn user (the type who wants to "join your network" after a five minute conference call). I do, however, make it a point to connect with trusted business associates. Some of the people I've been working with recently are very well-connected (and well-known) in their industries. But typically they're not on LinkedIn or have very few connections on LinkedIn. It seems that, in non-technology industries in particular, if you're truly connected, you're not using LinkedIn. This probably isn't entirely surprising, but it does highlight the fact that amidst all the hype about online social networking for professionals, at the highest levels of business the physical Rolodex hasn’t lost importance.

Different people may have different reasons for not using services like LinkedIn. Here are a few:

You're too prominent. If you're well-known, being on LinkedIn may not be a very attractive proposition for you or your inbox. The value of the service's utility is probably marginalized by the annoyance of being too accessible to others. For instance, I was disappointed when I couldn’t find Ivanka Trump on LinkedIn, but then I realized that she would almost always receive requests from wannabes as opposed to stand-up businessmen like Drama 2.0.

Your network is too valuable to be exposed publicly. In many ways, you are only as good as your network and it's not what you know but who you know. Providing a public list of your business associates is probably not appealing to a lot of professionals. While LinkedIn's privacy controls enable users to make their connections private, there's not much utility in building a network on LinkedIn for the sake of being able to log in and see who you know.

The people in the highest positions are far too busy to use social networks. While LinkedIn can be a good tool for individuals who need to locate or connect with other professionals (i.e. prospective employers, prospective business partners, etc.), LinkedIn is probably an unnecessary service for many.

Not enough utility is provided. LinkedIn can be useful for locating and connecting with other professionals and is somewhat useful for maintaining relationships with associates you already have relationships with. In addition, the company does offer a suite of premium services. But in my experience, it does seem that a significant number of users use it for little more than "collecting" associates like MySpace users collect friends.

There's no doubt that LinkedIn is very popular and is well on its way to building a successful company but I think there's still opportunity for existing professional social networks to improve and for upstarts to compete. A couple of suggestions:

• Maintaining relationships is just as important as making connections. Services that make it easier for professionals to manage their relationships might be more compelling than services that seem focused on listing relationships.
• There may be a place for niche professional social networks that are focused on specific industries. Depending on the industry, these networks might be made invite-only to help ensure privacy and quality.

If nothing else, my recent experiences have reminded me that in a day in age when online social networks get all the attention, the best social networks still are still very much exclusive to the real world. Hopefully as more and more professionals join services like LinkedIn they won't forget that and they would be wise to also remember that building and maintaining relationships requires more than adding associates to an online list.

This post was contributed by Drama 2.0. I still have no idea who he or she is.

Last night there were reports about Yahoo launching an exciting new tool for students and alumni. Named Kickstart the idea is basically a "connection" source for those looking for a job, hiring or just keeping in touch. With that said, I am bringing out the WTF ALERT.

Someone please help me understand the purpose for this site. It's a direct competitor to LinkedIn. And it has less functionality which sometimes could be beneficial but not in this case. You create a resume and then "find" others that are associated with the school or companies you have been a part of. But that's it. No groups. No invites, just search and friend.

Mike Arrington appears to really like the service and notes, "What I liked about the service when I saw a demo last week was the possibility to find a deep database of individuals that went to the same schools that I did." Mike - can't you do this on LinkedIn?

Barry Schwartz at SearchEngineLand has a screen-by-screen walkthrough of the sign-in process. No idea why but heck I got a chuckle out of it :)

NY Nate wonders WTF he is supposed to do after signing in. And Charlie O’Donnell brings the house down with 5 reasons Kickstart won't start.

Had Yahoo been smart, they would have approached say the Big Ten or the ACC and signed each school up. This way a base of users would have already been in the program. Instead searching on my MBA school provided me with 2 results and my undergrad provided me with zero. Compare that to LinkedIn where hundreds of connections could be made. Their top 10 speaks mainly to making connections and that's a great idea but what good is it if no one is there?

Not to be completely negative on Kickstart - if they tied it into Yahoo user accounts and allowed for easy export, there could be some potential. But alone I just can't picture this working. Is this Yahoo's spaghetti marketing strategy?

At the bottom of the Kickstart page it says "This is Yahoo!" If this is Yahoo, I am scared for their survival. I am the biggest Yahoo supporter since day 1 but lately the company hasn't shown any innovation and sadly Kickstart is more non-innovation cloning. C'mon Yang get it together pal!

With all of the platforms launching these days (even our own), LinkedIn is taking the smart road and opening up their system to applications that expand their mission. LinkedIn is a business networking tool, period. And it should stay that way. While the Scobles of the world have left LinkedIn for Facebook, when I talk to business execs not in tech, LinkedIn is still their tool of choice.

Saul over at the NYT has an interview with LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye. In it Dan discusses how they will open the system, why they won't allow "hamburgers to be slung" and thier plans for an IPO.

Some notes:

“We have no interest in doing it like Facebook with an open A.P.I. letting people do whatever they want,” Mr. Nye said. “We’re not going to have people sending electronic hamburgers to each other.”

“On many other Web sites, there is a lot of noise and a lot of interference,” he said. “When you go to LinkedIn, we want you to be confident you can accomplish your goals, be productive and move on with your day. We are not trying to get you to come back multiple times throughout the day.”

I am not sure I agree with Dan's last comment. LinkedIn should become the business water cooler (not gossip) and to do that, you need return visitors daily. Maybe not 20x a day, but more than once. Top of mind fellas, top of mind.

LinkedIn has lost some of the popularity they had as many of the bloggers have moved their attention to Facebook and the upcoming platforms from other social networking tools. LinkedIn needs to get that blogger buzz back as it works on opening up. I would like to see a smarter LinkedIn as well.