The interns were gathered for LinkedIn’s first open Intern Hackday — a chance to [...]]]>

On July 29, 2011, LinkedIn’s Mountain View cafeteria was filled to capacity with over 170 interns both from leading tech companies throughout the Bay Area and leading schools (Berkeley, Stanford,  Waterloo, Upenn, and MIT among others).

The interns were gathered for LinkedIn’s first open Intern Hackday — a chance to win a MacBook Air, an iPad or Apple gift card — but more importantly, a chance to earn permanent bragging rights among their peers.

Linkedin put together a timeline of tweets and relevant photographs that captured the highlights of those 24 hours. Click through the picture below for a closer look. 

Here are the winners:

• 3rd place went to beam.it: peer-to-peer file transfer in the browser
• 2nd place to LinkedOut: use LinkedIn data to predict the probability of someone moving to a certain company and the effect this would have on their network
• 1st place went to Rocks: a real-time, 3d, multiplayer, in-browser game similar to capture the flag with some impressive feats of WebGL and hardware acceleration

Launched in 2003, LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Mainly used for professional networking, the company reported more than 100 million registered users as of March 2011. With [...]]]>

[Tina Safi blogs weekly at http://medianeedle.com/blog/. She works at Media Needle, a social media/word-of-mouth marketing agency based out of Los Angeles.]

Launched in 2003, LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Mainly used for professional networking, the company reported more than 100 million registered users as of March 2011. With last month’s LinkedIn stock market launch the company is more talked about than ever. While LinkedIn’s main draw is its connections feature, which allows registered users to maintain relationships with business/personal contacts, the site offers many other business-oriented features.

Overview of LinkedIn

At its most basic, LinkedIn’s functions are: People search, keeping in touch, and extending your network. As opposed to searching for people on larger web engines, LinkedIn allows you to conduct a concise and organized search that focuses on the business information that you want and need. LinkedIn also serves as your private business directory; despite the frequency of people switching jobs and career paths, you’ll always have access to updated contact information via the site. And lastly, as far as extending your network, whether you’re looking to make contacts in the movie industry in a specific city or are searching for an experienced lawyer in your area, LinkedIn allows you to introduce yourself to these contacts. Here is a list of uses for LinkedIn.

Improve Your Visibility

Fill out your LinkedIn Profile like an extensive resume. By including past companies, affiliations and activities, you’ll be sure to show up in more searches. If you’re associating solely with your current company in your LinkedIn profile, you’re limiting your ability to connect with hundreds of people. It is considered professionally appropriate to include a link to your profile as part of your email signature. Whereas attaching a resume to an email can oftentimes come across as pushy in the initial stages of a business relationship, allowing potential employers/employees to view your LinkedIn profile is the status de rigueur.

Also, instead of using the default URL, customize your public LinkedIn profile’s URL to be your actual name, to improve your Google PageRank.

Improve Your Job Search

At a career standstill and don’t know where to go from here? Use LinkedIn’s search tool to find people with educational and work experience that is similar to yours, and check out their profiles to see where they now work. When you’re beginning your job search on LinkedIn, ask yourself this: Does my profile provide the best and most accurate representation of me? If it doesn’t, spend some time perfecting it as you would a resume, by adding extensive educational and work background and making it as comprehensive as possible. Choose a professional photo (headshots are best) to round out your profile. Once you’ve done this, begin your job search by using two of LinkedIn’s functions: Job Search and People Search. Experiment with keywords when conducting searches, refining your search until you come across what you’re looking for.  Look at LinkedIn as you would a cocktail event; you’ll want to “network” and introduce yourself to as many people as is appropriate. Request introductions to people, send InMail, and ask former colleagues and employers for recommendations.

Create and Maintain a LinkedIn Group

You’ve started a group on LinkedIn, but you only have four members. Primarily, remember that groups on LinkedIn, much like on Facebook or other social networking sites, thrive off of discussion. To maintain and promote your group, you’ll need to be encouraging lively conversations.

Again, keep in mind a cocktail party: No one enjoys a cocktail party with zero interaction between the guests. That said, as group manager, you’ll have to start your own discussions by throwing out engaging questions and asking your group members questions about themselves and their businesses. As host of this party, you’ll also want to quickly answer any questions thrown out by the group and throw in a few ice-breakers weekly. Thank people for participating and send out group messages and updates, but limit them to once a week or less. Allow new members to promote themselves and resist the urge to police the topics too much. Lastly, promote your group outside of LinkedIn, through Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.

Click on the image below to see the full-size infographic!

via [...]]]>

With LinkedIn’s current valuation of $8.16 billion dollars, the 5 LinkedIn founders would  rank No. 5, at $274 million each, it seems as though there will be other high-profile IPOs in the near future.

Click on the image below to see the full-size infographic!

via RetailMeNot

(View more pictures from the bell ringing ceremony taken at the New York Stock Exchange, the day LNKD started trading – May 19, 2011.)

After becoming the first social network to go public on May 19, 2011, LinkedIn is now in the hot seat as finance pundits [...]]]>

LinkedIn is at a tipping point.

(View more pictures from the bell ringing ceremony taken at the New York Stock Exchange, the day LNKD started trading – May 19, 2011.)

After becoming the first social network to go public on May 19, 2011, LinkedIn is now in the hot seat as finance pundits examine whether the company’s market valuation is realistic.  One major question that investors have about LinkedIn is: “How can Linkedin grow?

Here is a brief analyis.

U.S. Market

According to Experian Hitwise, LinkedIn saw only about 0.51% of all site visits to social networks in December 2010.  Even though LinkedIn boasts that it has 100 million members worldwide, a cold, hard fact is that only around 25 million US internet users visit the site each month, according to comScore reports.

It is not a secret who get the lion’s share of the social media action.

While some people may argue that it is not a big deal that Facebook has more unique visitors than LinkedIn, they cannot deny these this 2 facts:

1. The market valuation from LinkedIn can only be sustained by a positive expectation for growth: more and more users. One main factor for opening and maintaining a LinkedIn profile is that HR professionals will find you through there.  A summer 2009 survey conducted by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com indicates that 47% of U.S. HR professionals use Google to search for the names of their job candidates. 29% of U.S. HR professionals use Facebook and only 26% use LinkedIn. So, technically you would be better off by creating your own personal website and making your Facebook unavailable to public searches.

2. LinkedIn users don’t spend much time on the platform. According to a 2009 report from comScore, visitors spent about 13 minutes on average at LinkedIn during October 2009, while Facebook users logged about 213 minutes. A common observation from LinkedIn users is that is mostly social media marketers, the ones avidly joining and posting to groups.

Where is the Growth for LinkedIn?

Given that business men and investors alike continue to focus on Brazil, Russia, India and China (known as BRIC), LinkedIn is in the right track to expand its member base in these countries. eMarketer reports that in March 2011, leading up to the eighth anniversary of its launch, LinkedIn released updated statistics about the site and its usage. The data showed that India is the largest source of members outside the US, with 9 million members, followed by Brazil and Canada, both at 3 million. Brazil is the fastest-growing source country of new users, with 428% year-over-year growth in membership in 2010.

Ignite provided an update from the top regions for Linkedin for all of 2010.

More importantly, LinkedIn needs to continue to fuel its main source of time-on-site: groups.

Takeaway

To maintain its market valuation, Linkedin needs to provide proof that it can have sustainable growth and activity in the BRIC region.

Back in May 5th, 2003, the LinkedIn network started with just 10 people — the founding employees connected to each other. Since then, it’s grown into one of  the world’s largest professional network with more than 100 million professionals in over 200 countries and [...]]]>

Every Cinco de Mayo LinkedIn celebrates its anniversary.

Back in May 5th, 2003, the LinkedIn network started with just 10 people — the founding employees connected to each other. Since then, it’s grown into one of  the world’s largest professional network with more than 100 million professionals in over 200 countries and territories. LinkedIn currently has over 1,000 employees in 12 offices around the world, including London, Paris, Sydney, and Mumbai.

Here are some pretty cool pics that show LinkedIn’s growth in both number of users and number of employees.

LinkedIn at 500,000 users

LinkedIn at 2 million users

LinkedIn at 5 million users

LinkedIn at 13 million users

LinkedIn at 20 million users

LinkedIn at 40 million users

LinkedIn at 50 million users

LinkedIn at 100 million users

Photo credit: LinkedIn Blog

Photo Credit: LinkedIn

Why should you share content on LinkedIn?

According to LinkedIn (as of 11/30/10),  because LinkedIn has:

During these tough economic times, as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that as of July 2010, the number of unemployed persons [...]]]>

Back in May 2009, I wrote a review of the application LinkedIn Polls available on LinkedIn and how LinkedIn Polls can be used to do some great permission e-mail marketing polling.

I strongly believe that this LinkedIn application is a great way to gather data fast and [...]]]>

Back in May 2009, I wrote a review of the application LinkedIn Polls available on LinkedIn and how LinkedIn Polls can be used to do some great permission e-mail marketing polling.

I strongly believe that this LinkedIn application is a great way to gather data fast and to create actionable bar graphs that you can e-mail to your colleagues.  More importantly it follows the fundamentals of permission e-mail marketing by making polls more personal, relevant and anticipated.

On this post I wanted to provide an example of how we can use LinkedIn Polls not only to meet the fundamentals of an e-mail permission marketing campaign but also to gather useful qualitative data from your respondents.

Background

Currently I am working for a non-profit organization that has as one of its goal to provide its Alumni and Associates (anybody who has either participated in a conference, seminar or event) engaged through its world wide network.  My job is to develop and maintain our online presence, which includes a website, a blog, several online communities (e.g. LinkedIn) and e-mail newsletters.

Details of Current Scenario

Notice that I mentioned “several online communities”. We have a LinkedIn Group, 2 Facebook Pages, 1 Facebook Group, and 1 Harris Connect Online Community. There’s now even talk of creating several Ning communities and a Twitter account.

Are all of this online communities necessary?

To answer this question, I created a quick online poll on LinkedIn.

Methodology

I access LinkedIn Polls on Linkedin:

I create a LinkedIn Poll:

You can submit your poll to either your 1st degree connections or a target audience of professionals in the U.S (this option is free for premium subscribers).  I would recommend to stick with the first option (targeting your first degree connections) because this makes your poll personal (”Hey Mike can you take a loot at this?”), relevant (”Susan, your input is important to me because I know your expertise in marketing while we worked together), and anticipated (Linkedin is a site for networking!).

This is what all of my connections received:

Bonus

Even though you may have lots of connections on LinkedIn, you should consider including the link to you LinkedIn Poll on RELEVANT LinkedIn Groups. In this case, I included this poll in the Alumni groups or associations that I belong to in LinkedIn such as University of Alberta Alumni, Beta Gamma Sigma, Delta Upsilon Fraternity, among others.

There are lots of different kinds of groups on LinkedIn. Join the ones that you strongly believe that will provide you added value. Also, make sure that you actually qualify to join because some may have a list of requirements (e.g. company e-mail, student ID).

Results

How do people prefer to keep in touch with their classmates?

Facebook. There’s no contest.

Notice that this poll was conducted on LinkedIn and still LinkedIn is only preferred by 16% of respondents. (Disclaimer: Yes, it is a small sample, 62.

Here are some reasons why Facebook is preferred:

Male software consultant:

Use what most of them use – Facebook. It’s better for casual conversation.

Male small business entrepreneur:

For 20 to 40 somethings…Facebook, Facebook, Facebook!

However, still for those that realize that Facebook is the best way to keep in touch with the bulk of their classmates, they comment on the need of a more professional network such as LinkedIn.

Male consolidator trainee:

Of course Facebook is the most popular way to keep in touch with classmates. I think it can work for students who stay in the same unviersity over 5 years. But when you travel, you get to know a lot of people and facebook isn’t the most appropriate for keeping in touch with classmates. Therefore I do prefer Linkedin.

Female communication and marketing professional:

I think that people’s preference depends on how they see their classmates – as friends or colleagues. In my case, some of my classmates from my graduate classes are, of course, my friends, but often they are more in the category of colleagues who share the same research interests. For me, Facebook is great in order to maintain a relationship with close friends but not necessarily with somebody from your professional community. Therefore, in my case, I prefer definitely LinkedIn over Facebook.

Female consultancy entrepreneur:

Facebook primarily, but LinkedIn also works.

Male consultant:

Most of my former high school classmates that use technology are hooked in with me via Facebook, because they tend to be “personal” connections, while my University faculty of business classmates are “linked-in” because it was business school where we launched our careers, and many of those relationships are primarily career related. Again, as others have indicated, which medium is best depends on the individual relationship. My closest alumni friends are hooked in with multiple media; we use LinkedIn for business networking and Facebook for personal “fun” stuff.

Conclusion

Facebook is the preferred method of keeping in touch with classmates by people. However, there is recognition of the need of a professional networking such as LinkedIn.

One important caveat raised by 16% of respondents:

Don’t forget about the “social” in social media

Female writer and photographer:

I prefer Skype. Because they are those selected people that you actually keep in touch with and share valuable updates on each others’ lives.

Female student:

I prefer either to meet them in person or talk to them on the phone rather than chatting over the Internet.

Male consultant:

In person (i.e. drinks or lunch) is always best for those we were closest with. Next best is phone (if they are a long distance away) followed by email.