Just received an email from LinkedIn announcing LinkedIn Apps. Here’s a quick look at the apps they’ve launched with and my thoughts on how they might help you with your career reputation management.
“Today we’re announcing many more ways to interact with your network on LinkedIn. Whether it’s a new way to create projects and collaborate, share information, customize your profile, or gain key insights, the new LinkedIn Applications deliver.”
LinkedIn Applications available at launch (in decreasing order of first-glance importance) with my quick thoughts:
Company Buzz by LinkedIn – Very handy way for non-twitter savvy users to gauge what people are saying about their company.
WordPress on LinkedIn – Another way to promote your blog to your connections or future connections.
Google Presentation on LinkedIn – A way to share some of your work in a public way (only presentations right now, but wouldn’t be surprised to see other Google Docs added soon). Great way to promote your presentations.
Bloglink on LinkedIn – A handy way to keep up with your business network’s latest blog posts.
TripIt on LinkedIn – Keep tabs on where your network is traveling. May help you better connect with your network in person.
SlideShare on LinkedIn – Share, view and comment on presentations from your network. Use in a promotional way, or use it for pre or post live presentation feedback.
Amazon on LinkedIn – Insight into what your network is reading.
Box on LinkedIn – Share files on your profile and/or collaborate with your network.
Huddle on LinkedIn – Helpful private project management collaboration abilities.
Obviously many of these applications are available on other sites or in other ways, but having them associated with your LinkedIn business network may bring about some interesting opportunities. It will be interested to see how popular these become and what other applications are added.
So far, I’ve installed Blog link (so far first person in my web savvy ~400 person network), Wordpress (more control and better profile display than blog link), TripIt (two connections on it thus far), and company buzz (didn’t add to my profile, however). Of the three, I noticed blog link may suffer from speed issues (plus I removed it from my profile as I didn’t like the way it displayed) and company buzz doesn’t work very well compared to other twitter search tools.
Love to hear your experiences and thoughts about LinkedIn Apps.
This well-done video featuring the likes of Jennifer Aniston, Halle Berry, Courteney Cox, Ellen DeGeneres, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Jonah Hill, Dustin Hoffman, Ashton Kutcher, Eva Longoria, Tobey Maguire, Demi Moore, Natalie Portman, Forest Whitaker and other celebs, is sure to be one of the most rapidly deployed viral videos. The non-partison video is aimed at getting more people to vote using the invite 5 friends meme strategy.
At the time of this posting, the video has less than 100k views. I expect it will surge to a million views in short time.
I’m registered to vote, so I’ll pass this along to 5 more who run websites or blogs in the search community:
For those planning on attending the Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Mixer in Arizona, but haven’t registered yet, here’s a Discount Code you can use to save $200 (or $350 if you register today): ESPKA08
I’ll be there to speak about Search & Social Media (email’s not my bag, baby).
It appears that Digg is finally closer to being purchased. The leading candidates are Google and Microsoft. While the final owner won’t be known for probably another month, the future of Digg is known:
If Google buys Digg, it will become Gigg.
Rather than trusting pesky humans to digg news stories, Google will implement an algorithm developed by a team of PhDs based on previous digg analytics data. The new algorithm will look something like this:
if (headline ((pro-Microsoft, -50, anti-Microsoft, +50) (“Apple”, +100) (any game title, +35)) + if (content contains (Scantily clad women, +85, -25) (“Hack”, +35, -5) (displays ads, -20)…
If Microsoft buys Digg, it will quickly become Dugg.
Dugg will be the result of the dust that quickly develops on Digg as it suddenly becomes uncool. To make matters worse, Microsoft will implement content restrictions like no Microsoft bashing, no discussions of Apple or Google, and all gaming diggs must be Microsoft-created games only. Within weeks, Dugg will be the wayback machine of the social news site once known as Digg.
Ask will build a competing product to Microsoft Dugg called “Doug” to add a human element to the archive, but you will have to search news stories with questions like, “What male celebrity is a little bitch?”
You can now add a photo to your LinkedIn profile. I suggest you use a professional looking headshot. Unlike other social networks, racy or promotional photos won’t be well-received and could result in a loss in present or future connections. Adding a photo is very simple: just go to your profile page, click add photo where the empty box is displayed, then browse the file, upload and make sure the cropping works, then save. Shouldn’t take more than 30 seconds and shows that your connections are a plugged-in early adopter.
I’ve been impressed with the marketing tactics The Simpsons movie has employed. Back in July, by word of mouth I heard about the Simpsons 7-11 promo where select 7-11s were transformed into Kwik-E-marts including one in my hometown, Seattle (shame on the 7-eleven site for removing the page from their site) where you could buy pink donuts, buzz cola, krusty-os, etc. (I still think they should have made Duff beer).
Then, last week before I went to see the movie, I visited the official simpsons movie site which also had some great viral marketing elements built in. For example, you can create your very own Simpsons character. Here’s my Simpsonized family:
They made it really easy to create avatars, jpgs, video and other web elements that you could add to your blog or social networking profile. I love it when movies go beyond creating a site that only contains a movie trailer and a couple stills. Allowing your fans to promote their love for your movie is a smart marketing tactic. Massive marketing still works for Hollywood, but it seems like the movies that are most successful rely mostly on Word-of-Mouth. Why not use the web to promote word-of-mouth activity?
The movie was also enjoyable. As a filmmaker, I loved the beginning. Television actors & movies are often considered undesirable for feature films because the audience is used to seeing them for free. In true Simpson’s style, they actually poke fun at the audience for paying for the movie during the first 30 seconds of the film.
Danny Sullivan just launched a cool social networking site for search marketers called Sphinn. I decided to take Sphinn for a spin and must say it looks promising. It has Digg-like search news voting features, profiles that allow lots of great links to other social sites & personal blog RSS pulls, a shared events calendar, and some cool networking components.
The service just launched, so expect lots of bugs and some spam at first, but from what I can tell, Sphinn will be a great place to keep up on search news that matters and a place to connect and keep track of your fellow search peers.
SEOmoz released the results of the 2nd Annual Web 2.0 Awards yesterday. I’m happy to announce that I was one of the 25 judges. I’ve judged the Webby Awards for a number of years and even judged an online Miss World competition a few years ago, but I must admit that judging the Web 2.0 Awards was a refreshing change. It’s fun to see how people are changing the web in exciting ways.
I highly recommend you take a look at the 2007 Web 2.0 Award Winners, especially if you are still unsure what a “Web 2.0 site” is. I think every company with an online presence could benefit from paying attention to sites that are leading the movement towards Web 2.0 experiences.
Think about how you might be able to integrate elements of what these other sites are doing into your site, especially if it adds value to your existing user base.
Yahoo Answers has been one of the most successful launches at Yahoo (and one of Google’s rare failures). Starting this morning, you can find “Answers” at the popular business networking site, LinkedIn. Take a look for yourself: LinkedIn Answers
Considering the quality of the business-minded network, LinkedIn Answers has the potential to do really well. However, the early questions could use some self-promotion spam filtering. I’d also like to see a search feature installed so you could search for specific questions or answers instead of browsing them.
Answering questions may be an excellent opportunity for some people to boost their career or “expert status,” but I urge LinkedIn users to be cautious with their answers. Much like other things on the web, one little slip up could hurt your reputation down the road. LinkedIn Answers would not a good place to get involved in a flame thread. For those looking to boost their connection count, chiming in on a few question & answer sessions could help increase your exposure to new people.
If Google buys Digg, it will become Gigg. 
If Microsoft buys Digg, it will quickly become Dugg. 
Ask will build a competing product to Microsoft Dugg called “Doug” to add a human element to the archive, but you will have to search news stories with questions like, “What male celebrity is a little bitch?”
