TECHNOLOGY: Visible Path helps business people manage social networks

Friday, November 9, 2007

https://hooversconnect.visiblepath.com/

 

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Visible Path helps business people manage social networks and build relationship capital.

Our free service helps business people map and manage their professional social network, connect to contacts, collaborate with colleagues and gain insight into the relationships they have and access to the ones they need. Our paid corporate networks help companies connect their employees and provide access to the corporate social network to sell, market and recruit more effectively.

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Looks like they dusted it off and spruced it up. Maybe the feed the hamster inside cause it seems to be working now. As opposed to the way it was, which was to just sit there. Never would get off the front page. But it’s doing stuff now. We’ll see if it is of any value.

By the way, it should say “manage its own social network”; it doesn’t speak to LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, or any of the other 80 or so social networks that I know about. So that certainly “observation #1”.

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LINKEDIN: Track the origin of the species

Friday, November 9, 2007

In building your LinkedIn circle of connections, it appears wise to have some organized system of tracking them from the beginning. Lest, awhile down the road, you WILL be asked “How do I know you?”. Sometimes that’s a tough question. Unless you have anticipated it.

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LINKEDIN: Reaching out to your LinkedIn contacts

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

FROM A LINKEDIN QUESTION, MY ANSWER:

*** begin quote ***

I recently started a new job. How can I send an update message in to all of my LinkedIn connections letting them know?

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I’d suggest going the extra mile and send each person a personalized email.

It can be identical in content but you’ll find that individual messages get through spam filter easier.

Also, if by chance a email address is out of date — not likely that would ever happen with LinkedIn-ites — my current number of bum address is 7% — you’ll have some personalized text to resolve it. Sometimes bounces don’t really give you enough to go on.

You can even repay the Universe for your good fortune by asking if they need you help.

If you use Microsoft Word, Exce, and Outlook, it’s pretty easy to do a merge. I download LinkedIn contacts into an XLS sheet. Spruce up the name field. Create a message in Word. Then run a merge. It’ll stuff them in your Outlook email outbox and they ship out on the next send receive.

All pretty easy to do.

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TECH SERVICE: TinyLoad – a file upload service

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

http://tinyload.com/

 

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TinyLoad – a file upload service started in Columbus, OH by a student of The Ohio State University – offers a solution to the overwhelming mayhem. The service allows users to upload a file once and distribute to various storage platforms depending on size or other requirements. TinyLoad does not currently account for the 80+ sites listed on Mashable, but includes more popular services like RapidShare, Amazon S3, FileSend, EasyShare, DivShare, and five others.

***End Quote***

Interesting. Store “important” files in multiple free places. Can you spell “encryption”? But an interesting concept for disaster recovery purposes.

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LINKEDIN: Getting a subtotal by first letter of last name

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

You can subdivided you contacts into “panels” by the first letter of their last name. (It’s useful for may things. Days Outstanding measurement. Balancing what LinkedIn thinks you have versus what you have in Outlook.)

I have a little trick for finding out how many of a certain letter LinkedIn has. If you go to the “contacts” screen in LinkedIn and tap on the letter in the index, then up at the top is “showing xxx of yyyy connections”. And there is your check total. It’s better than trying to count, or print to count.

fwiw

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LINKEDIN: LinkedIn requires a lot of activity to stay in sync

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

In my LinkedIn Outlook folder, I have 1109 contacts. In LinkedIn, I have 1100. Why the discrepancy?

And, it’s not easy to figure it out.

One can count until you’re bleary eyed. But it’s like counting sheep, it’ll put you to sleep.

And, is it an “activity trap” type of activity? Or, does it lead to something useful?

Don’t know.

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LINKEDIN: You can be in LinkedIn’s “dog house” and not even know it!

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

FROM AN EMAIL TO A LINKEDIN CONTACT WHO HAD BEEN “POUNDED”:

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FYI Your profile has been sent to the “dog pound” by LinkedIn. I think you need to take some action on that, but I don’t know what to tell you. It’s my understanding that you will not, repeat NOT, be found in any LinkedIn searches if you’ve been “pounded”. So right away, I think you have a problem. It’s my again my understanding that LinkedIn has done this to anyone who has their email, or other strange characters in their name field. The hard part is only YOUR first level connections can see this “pounding”, and tell you about it. Others that I have told, have “fixed” the problem and about a week later were “un-pounded”. Please advise if, after you “fix” it, you want me to check for you again.

Fjohn

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AND HERE”S WHERE I FIRST HEARD ABOUT IT:

*** begin quote ***

Is Your Profile Ending Up In The Linkedin Dog Pound?
Posted by: “Vincent Wright”
Tue Nov 7, 2006 10:01 pm (PST)

Because of the way the symbol for it is pronounced, I think of the “#”
Section of Linkedin’s Remove Connections as “The Dog Pound” . (Some may
think this a good name for certain types of profiles. :-))

In case you’re not familiar with the “#” Section on Linkedin, it’s located
at the end of the alphabetized list of your contacts at:
http://www.linkedin.com/connections?displayBreakConnections

You and I cannot place any contacts in this area. Profiles are assigned
there by Linkedin’s contact algorithm based on certain types of elements
being present in the name field – I believe.

Food For Thought: Some people may use this as a way to clean up “weak”
connections en masse. If this happens, your profile may unintentionally be
removed even by a connection who may know you pretty well as a “strong”
connection.

—
Thanks!
Vincent Wright
Chief Encouragement Officer
www.VincentWright.com

*** end quote ***

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LINKEDIN: LinkedIn missed the boat?

Monday, November 5, 2007

A LinkedIn Question
by Rob Richard
Entrepreneur & IT Consultant

*** begin quote ***

Has LinkedIn missed the boat?

Is it me or does LinkedIn seem stagnant; complacent? I’ve not seen any new features in eons, and it really is getting rather old.

With the recent and sizeable cash infusion to facebook from Microsoft ($250 million worth!), what is LinkedIn’s response? There are so many things that could enhance the service. Open it up to developers just as facebook has. I think facebook is more young-people / early adopter centric, but LinkedIn could at least learn a lesson from them and stake their claim in the business and professional networking sites by adding more stickiness.

On more than one occasion I’ve sent suggestions on how to improve the site and its offerings and never heard anything in return. Now as a web entrepreneur, if I have people giving me free suggestions on how to make it more useful, I’d listen. So the question I ask is: “Has LinkedIn missed the boat?”

*** end quote ***

A very tough question.

I personally am not sure of the benefits versus costs of LinkedIn. It may well be an “activity trap” where effort far exceeds results. I think that they have a tiger by the tail.

I haven’t seen anything better.

Facebook came the closest with it’s using college email addresses to define “networks” and with some widespread adoption. But they were aiming at a different value equation.

I think LinkedIn’s poor (in some case non-existent) customer service, it’s new five “idontknows” lockout, and the MONUMENTAL blunder about hassling the LinkedIn affinity groups like LinkedInNewYork and all of Vincent Wright’s efforts is indicative of their “cluelessness”.

Have they missed the boat? No!

Have they failed to capture the wave? Yes!

If Amazon, Ebay, the Ron Paul Presidential run, and other web20 successes taught us anything, it should be that within a very well defined meme let the users surprise you with their energy. And, then hang on tight.

I suggested eons ago, that LinkedIn give me three fields for each of my contacts. One for a private note, one for a note visible only to them, and one was a “last contact date”. The private note was for my use to trigger my memory or record an important fact.The mutually visible note would be for me to record how I knew the person or what I owed them. The date was so I could produce a “days outstanding” metric and sort a “make contact list” by age. NEVER, never, never heard anything back on the idea. It showed me that they weren’t serious about servicing my needs. Only their own.

Later when they hassled the user groups, I knew they had NO CLUE about making LinkedIn a success from my point of view.

So, “No, they haven’t missed the boat” only because there is NO competition to jump to.

imho.

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LINKEDIN: Aligning what LinkedIn has

Monday, November 5, 2007

Arghh! This is annoying. I have ten discrepancies between what I show and what LinkedIn has. And, I didn’t even start reconciling what Outlook has.

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LINKEDIN: Measuring your LinkedIn contacts

Sunday, November 4, 2007

(1) Not easy to do.

(2) I watch my LinkedIn-ites pretty carefully, I have an excel spreadsheet that use to track. However many adjustments are needed to reconcile.

(3) In my spreadsheet, I have a column that takes the first character of the last name with the formula =UPPER(LEFT(celladdr,1)). That establishes what I call a panel.

(4) A separate sheet in the workbook creates a 1 in the A column if the panel cell is an “A”. B column tests B. and so on until Z. Row and column summaries look for errors.

(5) I hate when on LinkedIn people silently leave. I don’t want to keep them if they don’t want to be linked, but I would like to know that they have left. This is one of my gripes with LinkedIn. How do you handle the “leavers”?

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