It’s been almost 16 months since my last LinkedIn Feature Request post, and thankfully, the folks at LinkedIn have not been sitting idly by.
No, they still haven’t brought back the Personal Plus membership (or a reasonable $5-10/month alternative) to bridge the gap between the free service and the $20+/month offerings.
And I am still awaiting – with bated breath – for a customized structure of tiered contacts that would allow us to group people in up to, say, 5 categories. Plaxo supports a static 3 groups (Family, Friend, Business) which is infinitely more useful than the flat network that LinkedIn provides, and Facebook gives tremendous freedom to create groupings of your contacts. Either of the two options would be a huge improvement. My earlier post was detailed enough on these items that I won’t elaborate further here.
I am happy to say that some improvements were made in the following areas:
- LinkedIn Groups Functionality
- Facilitating Introductions
- Making Feature Requests
- Searching within Content Areas
The Groups feature has probably gotten the most attention, especially within the past few months. At the time of my previous post, the area of LinkedIn that received most of my attention was Answers. Now, it’s definitely Groups.
Unfortunately, little to no improvement was made in the following areas:
- Tiered Contacts
- Better UI Navigation
- Bookmarking or Favorites
- Contact Management Features
- More Control of the Homepage Layout
- Bring Back the Personal Plus Membership
Contact Management Features
There was a LITTLE something done in the contact management area, with the Notes functionality that can be updated on each of your contacts. I use this feature extensively to keep track of when I accepted an invite, and by what means we have met (whether in person or via some LinkedIn group).
I’m happy that we have at least this functionality, but more is needed. When you think about it, it’s rather silly that LinkedIn doesn’t automatically provide this info to us, since it is information that is germane to the issue of obtaining and managing contacts.
Also, being able to set a few custom responses and introductions (like you can with the Outlook integration component) would help us to move away from the generic greetings that LinkedIn provides by default. Currently, I make use of DropBox in order to synchronize my responses across all systems that I use for accessing LinkedIn, but this would be far more convenient within the application itself.
Better UI Navigation
The UI still needs a lot of work to be intuitive. Very little has changed or improved in this area. Of critical importance is the need for a centralized configuration screen that would allow someone to make changes across a number of areas at a time. For instance, it should be a whole lot easier to change your default email address across a dozen groups. Another example would be the need to allow a person to accept more than one invite at a time, and possibly update the appropriate notes field in a certain way.
It almost as though the LinkedIn developers are afraid of efficiency. Not sure what the deal is there, but technology that is cumbersome is ultimately replaced or ignored, and right now, too many parts of LinkedIn are cumbersome when trying to take action on more than one item at a time, or trying to move between certain areas of the site, or trying to get back to where you were only a few minutes prior.
As an example, just look at how many steps you have to take to leave a group.
More Control over Page Layout
Let’s face it. The LinkedIn screens are cluttered. This is somewhat true of all social networking sites (it’s enough to give you epilepsy!), but the pain of this confusion can be offset by robust controls over what shows up on your page(s) and where. Come on people, it’s really not that hard. How many years will we have to wait to realize the full value of Web 2.0? Technology should free us to become more organized, or, at the very least, facilitate our personal brand of disorganization, not that of the developers.
For instance, I don’t necessarily want to see a list of all of a person’s activities when I visit their profile page. If it has to be there, please allow me to roll up the window so that I can get to the info that I really care about on that page.
And give me options for listing contacts, such as the following, just to name a few:
- By # of Recommendations
- By # of Connections
- By Date of Connection
- By Date of Recent Activity
- By Region
Mobile Accessibility
I would be immensely grateful if LinkedIn would provide an application for the Blackberry that has similar utility to the Facebook Blackberry application. While there is a mobile version of LinkedIn, it is not nearly as cool as the FB app.
Discussions (and Answers)
It would be nice to have a signature block that you could configure for each Discussion or Answer. Better yet, make it two: A signature that gets used automatically for new messages, and a shorter one for replies.
Also, why is the default for “Discussions I’m following” in order of creation, oldest first? And why can’t it be changed? Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to consider that I would be more likely to want to follow-up on my most recent messages?
Yes, this is a derivative of my overall UI intuitiveness complaint, but it’s a perfectly good example of small changes that would lead to a vastly improved experience.
In Conclusion
Hopefully, we won’t have to wait for a year to see the bulk of these requested changes put into place in some shape or fashion. This platform has so much potential, and the inclusion of different features such as Box.net, Trip-It, Events, and Blog.Link, has been incredibly useful. But I’m looking forward to networking on steroids, and the features above have a lot to do with getting to that point.
On another note, although I am still a member of at least a half-dozen other professional networking sites (including Naymz, Twine, Visible Path, and Marzar), I don’t see enough value in them to access them more than once or twice a month. They have lots of features, but not enough members. LinkedIn is still the place to be for professional networking, as is Facebook for social networking. I remain active on Plaxo as well, because of its attention to managing contact information. These three are my primary networking vehicles, and I really don’t see that changing for quite some time, if at all. (You never can be sure, though)
Presently, LinkedIn has the majority of the eyeballs, and trying to recreate my network on all the challenger networking sites is not for me. But there is still a need for LinkedIn to improve in meaningful ways, or they will find that in 18-24 months, someone has cut into their market share with a better combination of pricing and functionality. Let’s hope that they figure that out before it is too late.
I just came across the following article while checking through my LinkedIn group discussions: Some IT Leadership Principles for CEO's & Business Leaders
It is definitely a worthy read, and requires very little commentary. These simply stated principles encompass a wealth of information which organizations would do well to consider and apply.
The only point I would like to add to this excellent list is as follows:
If your IT function does not go beyond mere order-taking, it's not adding value to the business.
Let’s endeavor to apply these principles for the betterment of both our individual businesses and the economy at large.
As a plus, it looks like I just found myself a new blog to track regularly… :)
![MMj03365690000[1]](http://home.asbzone.com/blogs/asb/MMj033656900001_6D0FA3BB.gif "MMj03365690000[1]")
May 2009 has been a rather eventful month for me. Lots of activities and responsibilities at work, home and church. For the most part, everything has gone very well.
On the 24th, I celebrated my birthday, and the day began with a conference call for a data/application migration that was in progress. Yes, that’s the best way to spend one’s birthday on a holiday weekend. Such is the profession I have chosen. :)
As it turned out, my darling wife had been planning a surprise birthday for me, and she managed to get my kids to keep it a secret, which is probably the biggest part of the surprise, all things considered.
I figured we were just going out to eat at a restaurant, right up until she offered to drive, and asked me to get blindfolded. Still, it was the overall scope of the event and the planning that struck me. I expected maybe a few folks from our church would have attended (I wasn’t sure who she had invited, but that seemed the most plausible), but when I saw friends from work, and friends from past jobs, and friends of long ago, and my sister, and my brother and his family from Maryland…
That was an entirely different matter. It was almost overwhelming, but very much appreciated. We take a lot of things for granted, not realizing how important relationships are, and how short life can be.
I got a cool reminder of the former – one that I will always cherish.
Once again, I want to thank all of my friends who came, and all of my friends who were unable to come, but who provided me with birthday wishes throughout the week last week. (I especially want to thank Saulo Nunez, who would have come were he not working for me on the very same data/app migration project, and who has been instrumental in my successes over the years.)
Life is too precious to be wasted, even if you expect the afterlife…
Good people sometimes do really dumb things, and nothing brings out more stupidity than stress. The reason behind the stress almost doesn’t matter. Whether it’s a tight deadline, a personal crisis, the global economic situation, or a seven-game NBA series, stress causes issues, and has a tendency to bring out the worst in people.
As an example, check out the comments made by Dwight Howard of the Orlando Magic, after the Magic blew a 14-point lead in the 4th quarter of their game with the Boston Celtics.
Embedded video from NBA Video I happen to like Dwight, but he was wrong. You can’t call out your coach like that. Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley and Chris Webber hit the nail on the head – especially Kenny. There are ways to address that problem, and the media is NOT one of them.
But this issue is not confined to sports. You can see it manifested in a number of other areas, particularly in the corporate arena. Projects slip, deadlines loom, and people start to lose their minds. My personal philosophy is that you have to remember yourself, and remember who your friends are.
Don’t let any temporary stressful situations cause you to “forget yourself”. A momentary slip can have lasting impact, as people who have been hurt will not easily forget or ignore the situation.
People that keep their composure in times of crisis, and teams that keep their composure in moments of stress, are those who will ultimately triumph. You have to manage stress lest it manage to destroy you.
Dwight is a young fella (so I’ll give him a *little* slack), and hopefully someone will pull him aside and say, “Son, that’s not how you go about dealing with things.” Hopefully, it will be the coach, and they’ll get that situation squared away pretty quickly. If not, it is likely to undermine the team dynamics, and result in failure.
Likewise, a failure to properly address stressful situations at work and relieve them, will undermine cohesion in the team, department or division, and success will be virtually impossible. Sadly, many learn this lesson far too late, if at all.
Two of my favorite tools for online storage and collaboration are DropBox and Box.net. Because each product offers features that the other lacks, and because they appear to be attacking the challenges of collaboration different perspectives, I make use of both products, albeit to achieve slightly different objectives.
Due to the desktop client component of DropBox, it is my hands down favorite tool for synchronizing my data (particularly scripts and documents) across multiple machines, while also allowing providing for real-time collaboration of documents without me having to specifically upload them somewhere. I can store and edit them in place, and once I’ve finished working on them, they are automatically available to any friends and colleagues that I have previously shared them with. In a pinch, I can use the web-only access to DropBox to upload or download any critical content, but I almost exclusively use it for the backup and synchronization functionality of its client component. Support for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux are available, but I only use it on Windows.
Box.net, on the other hand, is online only, but it has a rich integration with 3rd party products and services, including LinkedIn, Google Gmail, Twitter, and Facebook, just to name a few. The integration with LinkedIn was what got me using Box.net, and the addition of even more services will only increase my usage. Because Box.net offers lots of flexibility in how you can share and organize your files (and still be able to get a web link for them), I use Box.net more for files where I want to provide remote access to them – especially if I don’t want the source files to be altered. Not only does it offer superior sharing and permissions options, but it allows you to track external access to shared files. Auditing is pretty good (although you have to pay for an upgraded account to track anonymous users).
Another Dropbox advantage is that the free product offers more default space (2GB vs. 1GB) than Box.net, and rewards referrals by giving you up to 5GB total space. Both vendors providing a couple of subscription options, with Dropbox offering up to 100GB storage, and Box.net offering up to 15GB with a 14-day trial.
As it pertains to value, I don’t think you can directly compare the price of these two services – certainly not a per GB basis. That is simply because I wouldn’t (and don’t) use them in the same way or to accomplish the same goals.
I do think that both services are worth an upgrade (I’m using the free version of both right now), but I’d sooner upgrade Dropbox only because I’m more likely to run out of my current 5GB storage with that service before I exceed my 1GB Box.net storage. Only time will tell if my usage patterns change. Perhaps, if I were to begin collaborating more on various projects, I might need to expand the Box.net storage first, but for now, it doesn’t look quite that way. Either way, I have two great tools that serve complimentary functions using slightly different methodology. More options for me!
I’d recommend that you give both of them a try, especially DropBox, which has achieved “must use” status in my toolbox.