With around 200 million users, LinkedIn is one of the most popular ways to showcase your academic and professional career milestones and to broaden your network with others in the same or different industries.
In a previous post – ‘Become a Local Blogging Celebrity with LinkedIn’, we see that LinkedIn can be an adequate tool to establish yourself as a local expert offering your skills and knowledge to those in need of it. By engaging with locals, for example via Facebook or Twitter, you can easily establish a community with loyal customers and relationships that are fostered by your expert advice and consultation. The article defined the outcome as a social brand on a local level by pointing out that “while a global network has endless contact possibilities, it is also filled with endless competition”. read more
Are you a technology buyer who is getting ready to purchase a new smartphone, tablet, ultrabook, or other gadget? According to the team at LinkedIn there is a very good chance you are utilizing social media to decide on the product you will buy.
LinkedIn on Tuesday released its annual Consumer Technology study in which it learned that “88 percent of LinkedIn members own smartphones, compared to 46 percent of the general population.” The company also found that “62 percent of LinkedIn members own tablets, compared to only 22 percent generally.”
Realizing the pull it has among tech savvy buyers the social network examined the purchasing behaviors of its users in December 2012.
According to LinkedIn Marketing Solutions lead Michael Weir, 56 percent of LinkedIn members turn to their social networks for advice before they make a purchase.
The study also found that 53 percent of LinkedIn members share information about what they buy after making the purchase. That information in turn helps other tech savvy buyers on LinkedIn make their next buying decision. read more
Question and Answer website Quora now allows users to share answers directly to their Linkedin profiles.
Announced on Wednesday the new integration joined Twitter, Facebook and email sharing buttons that were already available to Quora users.
Quora hopes that by promoting professional answers on LinkedIn more users with experience will show off their knowledge base.
In a company blog post Quora notes:
The knowledge and expertise you share on Quora can now become part of your professional biography and identity.”
According to the Q&A company, many users are already using the site to boost their professional standing through top notch answers. In its blog post the company notes:
Utilizing social networks properly involves catching peoples attention, in order to gain the attention you want originality is a big plus. Unfortunately many users in 2012 used their LinkedIn accounts to echo the same sentiments as other users.
LinkedIn on Tuesday revealed its list of the 10 most-overused buzzwords job hunters used in 2012 to find new jobs. Job hunters apparently feel that being “creative” is a huge plus. Creative was the same term that ruled last years buzzwords list.
According toSimla Ceyhan, a data scientist at LinkedIn: read more
There are a number of social media sites that have captured the hearts and attention span of the modern world. Internet users rely on social networking a great deal for any number of tasks, originally personal but not more along the lines of professional. In fact, using such sites for self promotion, business networking and marketing is becoming second nature to the site genre.
Some sites have been created specifically for this purpose, and one of the most well known is LinkedIn. Well established, full of people in every industry and very beneficial, you probably already have an account or have thought about getting one. It is recommended, as a quick means of making connections with others in relevant industries, or just maintaining and easily accessible online resume.
But beyond that, LinkedIn can provide a fantastic method of local marketing. This is a means of targeting a local audience to become a kind of celebrity of sorts to those in your immediate area. This is much more simple to achieve than gaining a mass notoriety within your industry. read more
6.5 million users watched as their personal LinkedIn account information was hacked in June 2012 and now the company has promised to counter future network breaches by spending big network security.
LinkedIn reported another strong and profitable Q2 2012 and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner told investors this week at the company’s earnings call that the cost of security would effect the bottom line by upwards of $2 million to $3 million.
According to Weiner:
“In June, we reported the theft of six-and-a-half million LinkedIn member passwords that were published on an unauthorized website. Though no member login information was published, we disabled the passwords of the accounts that we deemed to be at risk. Since then, we have redoubled our efforts to ensure the safety of member accounts on LinkedIn by further improving password-strengthening measures and enhancing the security of our infrastructure and data. The health of our network, as measured by member growth and engagement, is as strong as it was prior to the incident.”
Weiner’s sentiments were echoed by LInkedIn SVP and CFO Steve Sordello who told investors the company has already spent upwards of $1 million handling the breach. read more
There was a lot of doubt from analysts and users when LinkedIn decided to launch its initial public offering (IPO) however the company has since proven its business model and in Q2 2012 the company once again reported a profit.
In a letter to investors Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn noted:
“LinkedIn had a strong second quarter with all of our key operating and financial metrics showing solid performance. Our ongoing investment in product innovation drove healthy engagement as measured by unique visiting members and member page views, and our three revenue streams all experienced significant growth.”
Those unique visitors now number 175 million members while the business reported a 107% increase in revenue from its hiring solutions platform, up to $121.6 million for 53% of the social networks total revenue. In the same period of 2011 hiring solutions accounted for 48% of the networks revenue.
In a statement to investors linked in posted the following financial information: read more
Email has failed to disappear despite the warnings of social media experts and if Microsoft has anything to say about it MS Outlook is actually about to make email software better. The company has announced that the new version of Office software will come with easier LinkedIn connections for Outlook.
While LinkedIn works with Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010 there is at least one big issue that was addressed on Wednesday via the LinkedIn blog:
Today, we’re really excited to share that the Outlook Social Connector for the next release of Office will no longer require an additional download to sync with LinkedIn. This means you just have to sign-in once with your LinkedIn credentials and immediately you’ll start seeing rich profile information, like photos and LinkedIn network activity for any connection that emails you. You’ll also see LinkedIn profile data surface when you view a People Card throughout the new Office experience.
Microsoft then published the following sample image on the Microsoft blog: read more
Since going public LinkedIn has managed to record record profits, grow quarterly and attract millions of new users. Unfortunately the company has also failed to live up to security measures which has led to a $5 million class action lawsuit.
Last month 6 million user passwords were leaked to a Russian website and the company has been hit with several phishing scams.
The full lawsuit was uploaded to Scribd by the user jeff_roberts881 and was filed by Katie Szpyrka “on behalf of all others similarly situated” against the “LinkedIn Corporation.”
The lawsuit specifically addresses LinkedIn’s inability to protect email addresses, passwords and login credentials. The lawsuit claims that the lack of security is in direction violation of LinkedIn’s own “User Agreement and Privacy Policy.” read more
LinkedIn has announced plans to disable user accounts that are still using hacked passwords. The company says it will suspend the accounts of 6.5 million users and then send those users the information necessary to reset their account.
In a blog post LInkedIn director Vicente Silveira wrote:
“Our first priority was to lock down and protect the accounts associated with the decoded passwords that we believed were at the greatest risk. We’ve invalidated those passwords and contacted those members with a message that lets them know how to reset their passwords.”
Silveira continued:
“Going forward, as a precautionary measure, we are disabling the passwords of any other members that we believe could potentially be affected. Those members are also being contacted by LinkedIn with instructions on how to reset their passwords.” read more
There are a number of social media sites that have captured the hearts and attention span of the modern world. Internet users rely on social networking a great deal for any number of tasks, originally personal but not more along the lines of professional. In fact, using such sites for self promotion, business networking and marketing is becoming second nature to the site genre.
