February 22, 2005
Improving schmoozing on LinkedIn
I have recently grown quite fond of LinkedIn. And they seem to have enjoyed a resurgence of popularity since the former PeopleSoft employees--whom Oracle chose to delete from their human resource management software--have gravitated to the service to network. LinkedIn is adding new functionality and polishing their identity and making other improvements on almost a daily basis.If you haven't had the chance to use the service, it's a means of managing and visualizing your network (professional, personal, whatever), with a catch. The catch being: you can only "see" people within 4 degrees of you. You can tell who is using the service if you have an email address that matches an email address that the service has on file, but you can't see the users profile. And you can see people who list the same employers as you. However, in all cases, you can only contact or invite people for whom you have a current email address.
(A little aside, I didn't realize that you could only search within 4 degrees when I first started using the tool. When you start, you can't see anyone, really, and your network is fairly small. So, I fired off a couple of emails to some of my more well-connected colleagues with the air of "I'm surprised I didn't see you on there." Should have imported those contacts first, because they were there. Oopie.)
Needless to say, LinkedIn can be a powerful tool for managing your contacts and gaining a better understanding of who-knows-who. I've found it incredibly useful, thus far. But I'm starting to hit a usability ceiling. And I think there are some very basic things that the LinkedIn folks could be doing to improve their service by simply analyzing how people, like me, use their service. (NOTE: I have sent quite a few enhancement requests which have been cordially accepted by way of an autoreply. No word from any human as to whether my feedback has been received or not.)
So what could LinkedIn do to improve?
1) Listen to your market. Build a better system for enhancement requests and bug reports. You have a huge populous using your tool in a variety of ways, and your enhancement system has just barely upgraded from an "email your idea to the dead letter office." I'm sure there are tons of people with great ideas (ego aside, even better ideas than the ones I submit here or there) who could truly help improve the tool if you had a better way to listen.
2) Create incentives to build out your resume and history. I've noticed that a good chunk of the LinkedIn populous never gets beyond adding their current company. Usually, the only non-geeky folks who go through the task of adding an entire history are job seekers. This alone is the single greatest hurdle in helping me find those former co-workers with whom I would like to reconnect. (That is, the majority of the folks aren't looking.) You could give people with complete profiles more opportunities to search beyond their network. Or give them more compelling reasons for filling out some history. Or stock options. Or something. Anything. We users need some other carrot to get our friends to complete their profiles.
3) Give everybody a personal inbox for contacting people directly without a current email. I don't know about you, but there are a ton of people with whom I have worked in the past. And some of the contact information I have for them is older than... well, it's old. For me, there are a number of these former cohorts in the system within four degrees. I can see them. I can review their profiles. But can I contact them or invite them to my network? No. Why? Because I don't have a current email address for them. I just get to sit like a mime, wildly gesticulating at my computer screen in hopes that they will contact me. Storage is cheap. Provide some sort of communication option beyond email.
4) Give me the option to send text emails or generate my own invite URLs. "I never received that email. My spam filter must have eaten it." It's one of my favorite responses to salespeople. True or not. But, I have people who don't usually lie to me or avoid me avoiding me because they never get my LinkedIn invites. Why? Their filters eat HTML email as if it were some rare delicacy. Chomp. All gone. Do I have another option with LinkedIn? Nope. I wish I did. I would like to think that I would have a much better success rate with inviting people to my network. Wouldn't it be worth it to add the functionality for the simple reason of crushing my ego and putting me in my place when I realize that these folks just don't like me?
5) Give me a mechanism for introducing people in my network to one another. One of the most amazing things about analyzing my network are the connections I see that don't currently exist. These are of the "that person would really like that person" or "why haven't these two ever worked together" variety. LinkedIn is the perfect icebreaker. If I could introduce these people as potential connections, we all get something out it. Believe me, trying to just talk them into going through the effort of submitting a referral is paddling upstream, uphill, in three feet of snow, barefoot. I could tell you some stories.
6) Global searching. Nuff said.
I see companies who are handling different aspects of the puzzle well. Look at Guru and Classmates.com for ways to better manage the interactions and such. Keep looking to improve, LinkedIn. You're doing a good job already, but you could always get better.
Wish I was in your LinkedIn network? So do I, but I don't have your email address. Thoughts? Comments? Please comment. And I hope you find some time to return.
Improving schmoozing on LinkedIn
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