Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now
Alright, Mario, listen up. I need the following five tools from LinkedIn, and I’m going to ask everyone in my community to chime in and tell you what they might need, too. Sure, you might not be able to get me these all by close of business Friday, but let’s see how much we can manage, okay?
A Cork Board
I need a LinkedIn cork board, where I can put sticky notes to remind me to write C.C.’s recommendation, and where I can put John Swords’ hiring need details. It’ll be where I remind myself to swap out my pic next time I have a moment. AND, I want to be able to allow friends to put sticky notes up there without seeing mine. (So, two boards.)
Groupings
I want private groupings within my address book. I don’t think alphabetically. Do you? I need LinkedIn to let me group my media friends together, my enterprise IT friends together, my friends who live around Philadelphia. And I want multiple groupings for the same contacts.
Commenting
What if I could add a layer of metadata to my entire LinkedIn profile? I might want to tell stories around the details, or layer in how many projects I used to do back in the old days. I got the idea by looking at the FriendFeed tools. In fact, what if the recommendation tools were a bit thinner. They’re not super difficult now, but it’d be amazing how many more “thumbs up” votes you’d get if that were a click versus a written recommendation. (Maybe layers of voting in that case?)
Visual Data
I need to SEE how people connect, and where they are the hub and where they are the node. Even if the other people don’t choose to expose all their contacts, I might get a sense of someone I need to reach being accessible in different ways, instead of you providing me just a link. It would also be instant “influencer” candy, especially if you could do things like show “velocity of connections” and “frequency of logins and updates” in a dashboard way, too.
Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that LinkedIn feels relatively static. This one dynamic would offer a sense of motion that wasn’t there before, and would provide me with data as to how FRESH someone’s efforts are.
An Open Platform
Oh, you mentioned that one back in June of 2007. I’d love to see this happen. Why? Because frankly, you’re sitting on some HUGE opportunities, and they can be monetized, and you could be generating revenue, and I would be willing to pay for features that you’ve not rolled out yet.
What’s Your Take?
As the need for better social network tools and more robust networks come about, I believe the “needs” I’ve listed above are only the starting point. What do you think? What’s your wish list for LinkedIn? Do you think I’m too far off base with my wishes?
And by the way, I really really really admire Mario Sundar and believe that LI owes him more than what they’re paying him, no matter what that number is.
