Sorry, couldn’t resist one more post here.
Mario Sundar, the resident blogger at LinkedIn, posted this great item late tonight:
The LinkedIn Blog: Have You Posted Your Photo Yet?
Check out this great picture of the profile team at LinkedIn… While we all have our professional headshots, we swapped them so everyone has a different face. Cracks me up to see it online.
Can you guess which one is me?
A lot of excitement tonight at LinkedIn, as we rolled out our latest release. The big new feature this week is the debut of a Profile photo.
You can read more about the feature and the thinking behind it on my post on the official LinkedIn blog.
The press coverage has been great, but because my photo is in the sample screenshots, it has been a little strange to see my face everywhere. Here is a quick snapshot of Techmeme – I think you’ll see what I mean.
Here are some quick links to some of the early pieces on the release. We’re maintaining a more complete list on the official LinkedIn blog post.
Since this is my personal blog, I have a personal question to ask my readers. I’m obviously going to upload my photo to my LinkedIn profile, and we’ve even had new headshots taken here internally. However, there is a little debate going on between myself and our Director of Communications on which photo to use.
So, do you like the photo of Adam, 2004 (from eBay):
Or, the more recent photo of Adam, 2007 (from LinkedIn):
You be the judge. Let me know in the comments. Thanks!
Visiting for just a couple of days to meet the LinkedIn customer service team and discuss some of the exciting features planned for the rest of 2007. I’m really excited to meet everyone in person.
This is my first trip to Omaha, and to Nebraska for that matter. No flight problems, although I got moved to a middle seat on my leg to Denver, and both flights were packed completely. Started a new book on the crash of 1907.
I’ve actually been hoping for a trip to Omaha for over a decade, but for a different reason. I have always planned to one year come out for the Berkeshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting to see Warren Buffett in his element, but somehow have never gotten around to it.
Maybe next year?
I thought I’d post a quick follow-up to the Office 2.0 conference, especially since I mentioned the appearance on this blog earlier this week.
The Office 2.0 conference is dedicated to exploring the use of Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise, and I was a bit surprised by the dedication and passion that many of the attendees and fellow panelists had for the topic.
There are a few summaries of the panel that I participated in, called “Social Computing”, already online.
To stick with Jeremiah for a second, his blog calls our panel, “the best panel I’ve seen in a long time.” In particular, Jeremiah appreciated both the atypical format of the panel as well as the fact that we spent some time talking directly about Facebook and the question of the blurring of social & professional lives, particularly among the millenial generation. Here’s the direct quote:
While I despised the vendor pitching from one panel on mobile (Attention moderators, control your panelists, respect those who paid to attend) the best panel I’ve seen in a LONG time was the one moderated by Shel Israel, focused on Social Computing, the esteemed panel included: Anil Dash of Six Apart, John McCrea of Plaxo, Adam Nash of LinkedIn, Shiv Singh of Razorfish, Athena von Oech of Ning. I enjoyed the format, it wasn’t the usual Q&A, but each speaker (moderator included) were able to present their ideas and concepts up front, great format. As expected, Anil elevates the conversation to a strategic discussion, it’s always a pleasure to hear him. Many of these vendors are from social networking companies, and although Facebook wasn’t on the panel (those guys are hard to get) the conversation persisted around Facebook. As with most vendors, if they don’t have a ‘facebook strategy’ they pass it as a fad, or are nonchalant attitude. I clearly see the threat for some of these vendors, hence my focus on the topic. I like the shift the panel took, towards the impacts of social computing (social networks, blogs, media, live web) tools towards society, in which Buzz Bruggemen piped up from the audience that he only had business contacts, not personal contacts on Facebook. In response, I tickled the panel for their opinion on personal/business lives meshing, especially with the millennial generation. The panel answered back, that those who had both merged were rare.
I’m probably going to write up something a bit more formal for the official LinkedIn blog on this topic, but as a personal note, I’m proud of the panel for taking on real meaty questions head on, even though a 45-minute window really isn’t enough time to do the topic justice.
For me, the event was my first chance to take some of the vision and excitement from my first few months with LinkedIn, and share it with a public audience. I’m more convinced than ever that the most important aspects of our professional careers are our reputation, experience, and connections to those who we know and trust, and who know and trust us. LinkedIn is extremely focused on building a platform that enables professionals to be more effective on a daily basis, and based on the comments of those who came up to me after the panel, it’s clear that this vision resonates with people who are passionate about Web 2.0 in the enterprise.
For those of you in the city, I’ll be on a panel at the Office 2.0 conference at 1:30pm on Thursday, September 6th. The panel is on social computing, and will feature the following people:
Shiv has a post up already about the panel. I haven’t met any of the panelists before this conference, but I’m looking forward to it. You can find out more about the conference here, and more about the panel here (as it is posted). The full schedule is here.
Just a quick pointer to my new post over on LinkedIn’s blog:
5 Tips on How to Search LinkedIn Like a Pro
For regular readers of my blog, you may find some of the concepts familar, as I used the same approach to help people earlier this year learn how to search eBay like a pro.
In both cases, similar concepts can help you use the search engines much more effectively. And although different sites use different search technology, once you learn these types of tricks with one, it is fairly easy to learn to apply them to another.
LinkedIn is a great search engine for people. Check out this earlier post where I compare LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, and Google for people search. Something to think about the next time you are looking to learn a little bit more about someone you know (or someone you don’t).
Enjoy, and let me know if you have any particular tips about using LinkedIn search!
It sounds so much more official that way… much better than, “My mom posted on the LinkedIn blog today…”
Either version is true – today’s post on the LinkedIn corporate blog is from my mother, Dr. Sharon Nash, Ph.D. After my initial post on the corporate blog, I was surprised at how many people sent in comments about the fact that my mother was on LinkedIn. Since she is a relatively new user to the site, and a professional expert on relationships and people, we thought it would be an interesting user story to tell.
Considering that it is her first blog post ever, I think she did quite well. In fact, I think the bigger dilemma for her was picking the right picture to use. 🙂
The fact that my mother has enjoyed LinkedIn so much that she has recommended it to over 85 (and counting) colleagues and friends is incredibly validating. I spent four years at eBay trying to break her of the typical e-commerce habit, and never succeeded. Not even eBay Express, I’m afraid.
I’ve become increasingly convinced that the opportunity for LinkedIn goes far beyond the site as it stands today. There is a very real human interest in connecting with your trusted colleagues and friends in a professional environment. We have only scratched the surface of the interesting and useful applications for professionals built over this platform. Right now, most software and web applications are still based around a model that assumes that data & information are the basis for getting things done. However, in the real world, most problems are solved by referral and advice from the people that you trust & respect. LinkedIn enables exactly that type of model, and that makes me incredibly optimistic about the future for the site and the platform.
Or if you don’t believe me, ask my Mom. 🙂
I’ve mentioned the official LinkedIn blog here before. Well, as of today, I now am one of the contributors to that blog as well.
Check out my first post.
Yes, I know that readers of this blog will recognize the joke about my Mom being on LinkedIn. What can I say? I think it’s really interesting how excited she is about LinkedIn and connecting with all of her professional contacts. In fact, last night, she was already explaining to me all the new features she wants for the site.
This is surprising to me, since even after 4 years at eBay, I was unable to ever get my Mom to successfully bid on an auction, or buy an item on eBay Express. But LinkedIn for some reason has grabbed her, and I think that speaks to the power of connecting with people.
I really love the fact that LinkedIn has an official blog. Now that I’ve been blogging here for almost a year, I really regret not having official blogs at eBay for the products and teams that I was responsible for. It’s such a great way to tear down the walls that normally separate people creating products from the people using them. It makes the web more human, and I think that type of open communication really benefits both the community using the product as well as those working tirelessly to improve it.
In any case, I’ll now be posting from time to time on the official LinkedIn blog about new features or about new ways to use LinkedIn. As always, I’ll be keeping this blog to primarily personal content.
I’ve been thinking a bit about how people find people online. To sample, I tried three different services: Google, ZoomInfo, and LinkedIn. I wanted to get a sense of three different approaches to online people search.
Let’s start with web search! Google doesn’t really focus on people as a first-class entity, so it basically just aggregates web pages based on its algorithms for content relevance.
When I search for Adam Nash on Google, I get the following:
The results are pretty good… for me, at least. 4 of the top 5 links are actually my pages. The top two are this blog. The fourth is my old homepage at Stanford, and the fifth is my current personal home page.
Of course, none of these pages would give you excellent data about me, really, but they all contain pointers to good, deep information.
Next up, ZoomInfo, and the magic of web scraping & aggregation. I did the search and was surprised to find 52 reconds for Adam Nash. Even more surprising, 6 of them look like they are pieces of my history, but in a mish-mash that combine strange pieces of data. In some cases, my data is mixed with someone elses.
Here are the 6 versions of Adam Nash in ZoomInfo that I can verify should really be one version: me.
What a mess. It’s not that the information there isn’t partially correct, it is (or was), and it’s interesting to see some of the articles scraped together. But the fragmentation is terrible, and I’m almost offended to see my picture on top of information for someone else. Certainly, anyone looking for me on ZoomInfo would have a very hard time figuring out who I was, or what I was doing with any accuracy.
Now, of course, our user-generated content site, LinkedIn. Here is the search I get back when I’m logged onto the site:
Ok, Ok, that’s cheating 🙂 But that’s close to what anyone in my broad network would see (over 1.4M members). The data is correct and up-to-date.
How about a public search on LinkedIn, with no LinkedIn account at all? Also good:
The first link there is mine. Clean results, correct information. You can’t beat my public profile for accurate and relevant professional information.
Not surprisingly, I think this indicates the strengths of the different mechanisms for finding people online today. Google, representing natural search, does a decent job focusing on existing content. LinkedIn, representing user-generated content, does a fantastic job of accuracy and relevancy. ZoomInfo, representing aggregated web scraping, seems to have a ways to go before it will a trustworthy directory.
As always, your mileage may vary.
One of the most common questions I get now that I work at LinkedIn is how to best use the site. There is a post on Guy Kawasaki’s blog from earlier this year that highlights his top 10 ways to use LinkedIn, and it’s definitely worth reading:
Guy Kawasaki: Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn
Unfortunately, Guy leads off the post with this little dig at Harvard MBAs:
The average number of LinkedIn connections for people who work at Google is forty-seven. The average number for Harvard Business School grads is fifty-eight, so you could skip the MBA, work at Google, and probably get most of the connections you need. Later, you can hire Harvard MBAs to prepare your income taxes.
*sigh*. It’s not always easy being a Harvard MBA in Silicon Valley.
Guy also provides the following useful tidbits:
- People with more than twenty connections are thirty-four times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than five.
- All 500 of the Fortune 500 are represented in LinkedIn. In fact, 499 of them are represented by director-level and above employees.
I highly recommend reading the entire article. But, for those of you who like spoilers, here is the bullet list of the ten ways to use LinkedIn:
Yes, there are actually eleven. Guy must be a Spinal Tap fan…
I’m impressed that he actually added two more that came in from comments since the original post:
So get cracking! Even my Mom is on LinkedIn now…
From PodTech:
LinkedIn founder and angel investor Reid Hoffman talks with Mercury News venture capital reporter Connie Loizos about where he sees the social networking space headed, as well as his investment strategy these days.
Working with Reid is great for a lot of reasons, but one of them is certainly his depth of experience around the consumer internet and social networking in particular. I think this video is a nice way to get some of his insights on his investment in the space, and on LinkedIn.
[podtech content=http://media1.podtech.net/media/2007/06/PID_011489/Podtech_LinkedIn_Reid_Hoffman.flv&postURL=http://www.podtech.net/home/3223/catching-up-with-linkedins-reid-hoffman&totalTime=695000&breadcrumb=b6865191ba0d41208c0e8a20e4a62100]
This is a just a quick note to officially state that my first day at LinkedIn is tomorrow, May 29th. I’ll be joining as Sr. Director of Product, working for the founder, Reid Hoffman. I’m incredibly excited to join such a great team and to work on such a great product.
As with my previous role at eBay, I don’t plan on blogging about work here on Psychohistory – this is my personal blog. However, I’ve always been open and honest about my background and my work, so this announcement is fair game.
If you aren’t familiar with the company, LinkedIn is a great new site that is based on the premise that the single most important asset of your professional career is your relationships with the people who you know and trust, and who know and trust you. The site offers a suite of powerful tools that make it exceptionally easy to communicate & leverage your professional network in entirely new ways. You can read more about the site and what it offers here.
Here are a few links you might find interesting, if you would like to learn more:
On a personal note, this means my 15-minute commute to San Jose has just become a 10-minute commute to Mountain View. Such is life in Silicon Valley.
In case you were wondering where I was last night, I had the chance to go up to San Francisco for the LinkedIn “In the Black” party, to help celebrate LinkedIn’s first year of profitability. The Web Strategist blog has some great coverage and photos.
What are the chances of a web startup making it? 5%? 2%? not very good for most? We should take a lesson from business networking tool LinkedIn.
LinkedIn celebrates over 14 months of profitability, which is an amazing feat for the thousands of web companies in Silicon Valley that sprout.
Check out the full post here.
For me, it was a chance to actually wear a suit and take Carolyn up the city – not something that happens every day with two little ones at home. There was a very warm feeling at the event – something about the LinkedIn culture is incredibly open, friendly and very human.
As a bonus we discovered several friends also at the event. The funniest introduction at the party was pre-school related – apparently being the father of Jacob Nash has its privileges. They were the parents of one of Jacob’s pre-school classmates, and I believe the direct quote was, “Jacob Nash is a really big deal in our household.” It’s possible that this is Jacob’s world, and I’m just living in it. 🙂
The food & wine was excellent, but my personal favorite of the evening was the chocolate. A wonderful table of extremely rich chocolates with exotic infusions like tea and grapefruit. Even a small exit gift of gorgeous truffles.
It was wonderful to be included, and a great night out. I can’t wait to get started next week.
Congratulations to the entire LinkedIn team.
Update (5/21/2007): Two great posts on the event on the LinkedIn blog, and on Mario Sundar’s blog. Check them out.
In case you hadn’t heard, LinkedIn is hosting a Lunch 2.0 event at their new offices in Mountain View on May 23rd.
From the new LinkedIn blog:
Yes, you heard it first here. We’re moving! And, we’re throwing a Lunch 2.0 party on May 23rd. We’d love to have you there. Here are the details:
2029 Stierlin Court
Mountain View, CA 94043Map It
So, whether you’re interested in checking out our new digs or just interested in hanging out with the teams behind some cool new LinkedIn products, this is the spring party to be at. We’re even thinking of throwing in a “Wii” little surprise into the mix.
You can RSVP here. You can read more about Lunch 2.0 events here.
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