LinkedIn Adds New Tool "How You Rank"

Here is the press release from LinkedIn on their new How You Rank tool.


Today we’re introducing a new feature as part of Who’s Viewed Your Profile to help you see where you stack up relative to those in your network. With the new “How You Rank” tool, you can now see where you stack up to others in your network with profile views. Take a look at the top profiles in your network to gain inspiration for changes you can make to your own profile, or content you can share to increase views to your profile and drive opportunities for advancement. Or, take a look at the suggestions LinkedIn offers on the right-hand side of the page for ways you can begin increasing views to your profile immediately. You can click here to see your rank and get personalized recommendations on how to lift your visibility.

Whether you’re a job seeker or a student, there are many ways to take advantage of the insights available through Who’s Viewed Your Profile, here are some tips to get you started:

For job seekers: Recruiters at some companies receive hundreds of applicants for a single position. If you’ve submitted a resume or LinkedIn Profile already, try taking a look at the profile of the recruiter managing the position. If they see you’ve looked at their profile, they’re more likely to look at yours. Nearly 80% of candidates today are found through networking – so if you notice a recruiter at a company you’re interested in has viewed your profile, don’t be afraid to reach out to them.

For consultants and business owners: Professionals come to your LinkedIn profile from all over the web, but rich data insights such as the keywords that led people to your profile, can help you determine how to effectively position yourself to attract new business and make valuable new connections. You can now also use the “How You Rank” tab to better understand who in your network can help increase visibility for your business.

For students and new graduates: Students in search of their first job or trying to thoughtfully build their network can use Who’s Viewed Your Profile to attract the attention of recruiters or connect with potential mentors. Find alumni that have graduated from your school, view their profile or reach out and say hello. If you notice someone viewed your profile from an industry you’re interested in joining, don’t be afraid to reach out, introduce yourself and see what words of wisdom they may have for someone just starting out. Learn the best practices for crafting a rich Profile by browsing the most-viewed Members in your network in the “How You Rank” tab.

For sales professionals: Curiosity leads many of us to view the profiles of those professionals that have viewed us. Sales professionals that use that knowledge to their advantage treat Who’s Viewed Your Profile as a way to generate warm leads. If someone has viewed your profile, and you share commonalities – it’s a great icebreaker for a potential new business opportunity.

We know that no two professionals are alike and by seeing how you rank relative to your professional peers, we believe you’ll have the added information and incentive to help you put your best foot forward on LinkedIn.

Evernote And LinkedIn

LinkedIn and Evernote combination is a nice add on for LinkedIn profiles. Here is the press release.

Business cards are one of the many ways people initiate professional relationships, so it is important to us that our members can quickly and easily bring these connections to LinkedIn. CardMunch, which LinkedIn acquired in January 2011, is one way to do this, but we know our members want more capability and functionality.

So today LinkedIn is deepening our partnership with Evernote. LinkedIn members can scan a business card using Evernote’s mobile app and then directly connect with this contact on LinkedIn to maintain the new relationship. Evernote’s card scanning service is fast, reliable, and literally world-class, with support for seven languages.

In Evernote, our members will be able to view profile photos, job titles and company information from LinkedIn right in the notes created when they scan business cards. LinkedIn members will now also be able to enter comments related to the scanned card and geo-tag the location where the card was scanned.

We will discontinue the CardMunch app on July 11, 2014. All LinkedIn members who use CardMunch and choose to transfer their existing scanned cards into Evernote will receive two free years of Evernote’s premium business card scanning service. Members will be able to quickly and easily migrate their CardMunch data to Evernote. Details can be found here.

CardMunch data is also available in LinkedIn Contacts on LinkedIn.com on the desktop, and in the LinkedIn Contacts app. We recognize that some members may not want to transfer their data to Evernote, so we are also giving all CardMunch users the option to download their CardMunch data (including their business card images).

In addition, LinkedIn members who do not use CardMunch will receive free Evernote business card scanning for one year if they connect their LinkedIn account with Evernote.

A couple of weeks ago when we announced LinkedIn surpassed 300 million members, we noted that strategic partnerships (with companies like Apple, Nokia, Samsung and now Evernote) are a core part of our plan to reach the next three billion LinkedIn members. We’re excited to expand our partnership with Evernote and to bring LinkedIn to their users around the world.

LinkedIn is committed to doing fewer things better and by expanding our partnership with Evernote we can ensure that our members have the best card scanning experience possible while staying focused on what we do best.

LinkedIn Q1 Earnings

Revenue for the first quarter was $473.2 million, an increase of 46% compared to $324.7 million in the first quarter of 2013.

Net loss attributable to common stockholders for the first quarter was $13.4 million, compared to net income of $22.6 million for the first quarter of 2013. Non-GAAP net income for the first quarter was $47.3 million, compared to $52.4 million for the first quarter of 2013. Non-GAAP measures exclude tax-affected stock-based compensation expense and tax-affected amortization of acquired intangible assets.

Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $116.7 million, or 25% of revenue, compared to $83.4 million for the first quarter of 2013, or 26% of revenue.

GAAP diluted EPS for the first quarter was $(0.11), compared to GAAP diluted EPS of $0.20 for the first quarter 2013; non-GAAP diluted EPS for the first quarter was $0.38, compared to non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.45 for the first quarter of 2013.

LinkedIn Reaches 300 Million Users

LinkedIn reached a milestone this month hitting a massive 300 million users.

Here is their press release.


We are excited to announce that we reached a big milestone today: there are now more than 300 million LinkedIn members in the world! More than half of these members come from outside of the U.S., while there are 100 million members in the U.S. While this is an exciting moment, we still have a long way to go to realize our vision of creating economic opportunity for every one of the 3.3 billion people in the global workforce.

To get there, we are delivering personalized experiences built around members and their identity, network and knowledge. We believe this focus will give us the ability to better help each of our members achieve their professional goals. This strategic shift has already come to life through our content products. To give our members access to all business knowledge they need to be great at what they do, we have brought together content from millions of publishers through Pulse, Influencer posts from approximately 500 of the leading minds in business, and most recently, our millions of members, as we continue to roll out our publishing platform and expand LinkedIn Groups and SlideShare.

We know mobile is critical. Later this year, we are going to hit our mobile moment, where mobile accounts for more than 50 percent of all global traffic. Already, our members in dozens of locations including Costa Rica, Malaysia, Singapore, Sweden, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom, use LinkedIn more on their mobile devices than on their desktop computers. Every day we see an average of 15 million profile views, 1.45 million job views and 44,000 job applications in over 200 countries through mobile.

In anticipation of the mobile moment, two years ago, we started developing multiple LinkedIn mobile apps to fit the different needs of our diverse members. Each of these apps is customized and tailored to a member-specific use case. As we expand our mobile app portfolio,such as our new SlideShare app, we’re also focused on bringing on top-notch partnerships with companies like Apple, Nokia, Samsung and others. You’ll see more strategic pairings throughout the course of this year.

We already have a strong presence around the world and will continue to invest in building out the experiences we offer to our members in key countries. Earlier this year, we expanded our presence in China with the launch of a beta version of our new Simplified Chinese site. Our goal is to connect the more than 140 million Chinese professionals with each other and the global workforce.

Our global footprint gives us the necessary elements to build the world’s first Economic Graph. As we continue to grow, we’ll be able to keep improving this valuable map of the connections between people, companies, jobs, skills, educational institutions and professional knowledge in the global economy.

As we’ve grown the value we deliver to our members has increased, the way they use our products has changed and our membership has become more diverse. The below infographic gives you a visual picture of how our network of professionals has grown and evolved over the last five years.

LinkedIn's New Mobile App

Kurt Wagner reports this is the first mobile app for SlideShare; it allows users to scroll through a feed of slideshows and presentations uploaded by those they follow and connect with.

The feed on the Android app is personalized, meaning users can subscribe to certain categories like tech, finance, or news and politics. To view a slideshow, a user can swipe left or right to move between slides without ever leaving the feed. Users can also save or like slideshows, then come back to them later.

Almost half of LinkedIn's traffic comes via mobile (41%), and the company expects that number to reach 50% sometime in 2014. SlideShare is contributing to this figure; the company says that mobile views on SlideShare increased 223% last year.

The SlideShare app is LinkedIn's fifth app, and operates along the lines of LinkedIn's news reader app, Pulse, which also surfaces content based on categories and publications that users subscribe to. On SlideShare, selecting categories to follow is the first thing users do when opening the app.






SlideShare released its first app on Wednesday, which allows users to view slideshows and presentations on their phones.


Mashable reported that a new app was in the works from LinkedIn last week, but executives at the company were not specific on details. LinkedIn has adopted a "multi-app strategy," similar to Facebook's; the company plans to release a suite of standalone applications in hopes of capturing the attention of an users who are rapidly moving to mobile


LinkedIn's strategy around standalone apps focuses on one word: simplicity. The company tries to take its popular, existing services and build them out into mobile experiences, explained Parker Barrile, LinkedIn's VP of product for LinkedIn Talent Solutions, last week.


“Mobile apps work best when they are very focused on one specific use case or value proposition," Barrile added. "So whenever we see a use case among our members that we believe is meaningful enough or broadly based enough to merit its own app, we’ll build that app.”

For now, SlideShare is only available on Android, which you can download here. iOS users can sign up to be a beta tester for an iOS app, which is also in the works. Along with the app, SlideShare updated its mobile web version, allowing users to swipe between presentation slides. SlideShare users can also view their presentation looks on mobile before they upload it.

LinkedIn is creeping toward the moment when half its users visit via mobile, and standalone apps like SlideShare are expected to help carry them there.

LinkedIn Updates Again With A New Feature

LinkedIn is continuing their update spree. Here is the latest change to their platform.
This must be a gradual roll-out because I do not see it on mine yet.

Here is their blog on the new feature.

One of the easiest ways to boost your professional brand on LinkedIn is to find other like-minded professionals to connect and exchange ideas with in LinkedIn Groups. But with so many great conversations, up-to-date news and valuable information available, people often ask, “Where do I begin?”  Today, we’re pleased to introduce a new destination designed to help you manage your participation in and discover LinkedIn Groups more efficiently and effectively.

To get started, simply select “Interests” from the menu at the top of your LinkedIn Homepage, then “Groups.” This new Groups landing page makes it easier to stay up-to-date on what’s happening in groups you manage or are a member of  — making your time spent on LinkedIn and in LinkedIn Groups, more productive.

At the top of the page, you’ll see all of your current groups in one place. If the group has new activity, you’ll instantly see the number of updates, new discussions or job postings within that group when you hover over it. We’ve also made it possible to start or join a conversation in any of your groups directly from this page. New to groups?  We’ll help you get started by suggesting relevant groups you can join today.

We’ve also added a new conversation feed to give you a quick peek at conversations that took place since your last visit, making it easy for you to quickly jump in.

LinkedIn New Feature Content Marketing Score

LinkedIn keeps pounding out the new features with a Trending Content Marketing Score.
With their stock price taking a hit they have been putting out new features to help show their value.
This update is a really nice feature for businesses
LNKD is currently trading at 190.67 a share.

We know that for brands, building relationships through a content strategy is a marathon, not a sprint; it’s a fact of content marketing. You need a long-term view that requires you to be truly helpful to your customers in order to be relevant to them.

But wouldn’t it be great to know how effective your content marketing efforts are?

Well, you’re not alone. The Content Marketing Institute recently surveyed B2B marketers and found that while 93% use content marketing, only 42% consider themselves effective at it.

We saw a challenge to meet: one that may be a tall order, but one that we address for content marketers using LinkedIn with the launch of the Content Marketing Score, an analytics resource that gives you insight into the impact of your paid and organic content on LinkedIn. It’s a simple score calculated by measuring unique engagement (gauged through social actions), divided by your total target audience.

Here’s how the Content Marketing Score works. It measures member engagement with your Sponsored Updates, Company Pages, LinkedIn Groups, employee updates, and Influencer posts (if applicable). It then gives you a single score, ranked against your competitive set. You will also get recommendations about how to improve your score based on different levers you can pull to give you more reach, frequency and engagement.  You can filter your score by region, seniority, company size, job function, and industry.

By tracking performance on a monthly basis, you get a powerful snapshot on how well you are engaging with your audience over time. With this knowledge, you’ll be empowered to upgrade your strategy to optimize engagement within your target.

Today we’re also introducing Trending Content, a ranking of topics that resonate with LinkedIn members. Whether it’s topics about leadership or entrepreneurship, cloud computing, or mobile devices, you can see which topics matter to your target audience, and which members are engaging with the most content on any given subject.

We created these resources with our customers in mind, who we know are looking for ever more actionable insights into their performance. They want to understand how the reach, frequency, and engagement of their content performs with their desired audience, how it compares with their competitors, and how it’s changing over time.

Together these resources will not only quantify your content influence on LinkedIn, but they’ll also enhance your relevance. We’re thrilled to make both Content Marketing Score and Trending Content available upon request so that you’re able to approach your content marketing efforts strategically.

LinkedIn Updates TOS

Here is the release from LinkedIn on the newly updated Terms Of Service.

At LinkedIn, we’re committed to putting our members first. We believe it’s essential for you to always feel informed and empowered when it comes to your information on LinkedIn. With this in mind, we wanted to highlight some upcoming changes to our Terms of Service (which includes our User Agreement and Privacy Policy).

Over the past two years, we welcomed SlideShare and Pulse to the LinkedIn platform, and we’ve done a lot to make them a core part of what LinkedIn is today. To further simplify the member experience, we will integrate SlideShare and Pulse’s Terms of Service into LinkedIn’s, so you’ll only have one set of terms to agree to when interacting with LinkedIn properties.

Additionally, we will enable you to discover opportunities and share content across our services. For example, your SlideShare experience can be personalized based on your LinkedIn profile, your network, and your engagement with content from both services. Or with Pulse, we’ll be able to deliver the most relevant personalized professional content to help you stay informed.

Here are some other changes you’ll see in our Terms of Service:

Updates to Our Privacy Policy

Member data. We’ve always had a high bar when it comes to responding to government requests for member data and that hasn’t changed. In Section 2.14, we clarify that we will take steps to let members know about demands for their data unless we’re legally prohibited from doing so or the request is deemed an emergency. We also specify that we may dispute such demands if we believe they are too broad, too vague, or lack proper authority.

Premium services. While it is not new that LinkedIn offers premium services that give our customers access to members’ profiles to generate career and business opportunities, we’ve rewritten Section 2.12 to clarify that our corporate offerings include Talent Solutions, Marketing Solutions and Sales Solutions.

Mobile numbers. As LinkedIn expands our services globally, we recognize that the mobile phone has become a ubiquitous communications tool. We’ve updated Section 1.2 to include the forthcoming option to use your mobile number to sign in to LinkedIn.

Update to Our User Agreement

Content Availability. LinkedIn has always operated within the laws and frameworks of the countries in which we operate. We recently launched a LinkedIn site in Simplified Chinese, and as we said at the time of our launch, we may be required by local regulations to remove certain content, which means this content may not be available on LinkedIn in China. While LinkedIn has always reserved the right to remove content (e.g. when it’s hurtful or infringing on others’ rights), we believe it’s important to be transparent that sometimes laws may require us to remove certain content, and we make that clear in Section 4.1.

These changes will take effect on March 26, 2014. See what the new Terms of Service will look like here: User Agreement and Privacy Policy.

LinkedIn And People You May Know

Yet another new feature from LinkedIn. They have been extremely busy rolling out new feature after new feature and it seems to have worked for the moment. Their stock price has rebounded nicely.

Strong professional relationships can be the lifeblood of a successful career. But building a healthy, thriving professional network takes time, experience, and even a little know-how. Beginning today, LinkedIn’s all-new People You May Know page is taking some of the mystery out of building that network.


The new People You May Know simplifies the experience of growing your network. It does that by bringing all your pending invitations and suggestions to connect together in one place. The sleek new design features beautiful cards with larger photos for an easier to read, streamlined experience. Valuable insights are also at your fingertips. 

You’ll be able to clearly see if we’re suggesting a connection based on your previous address book import, or if we’re suggesting a LinkedIn member we think you might know. Find this information by hovering over the bottom right of a suggested member’s photo so that you can quickly and easily decide if you want to connect. See someone you don’t want to connect to? You can still remove the suggestion to connect to that person by clicking the “x” icon at the top right of each card.

You’ll be able to reach this new experience from the People You May Know modules on the right hand side of your LinkedIn Homepage, LinkedIn Profile, and LinkedIn Inbox, and whenever you send or receive an invitation.

This is just our first step in reimagining the way you discover and connect with professionals across LinkedIn. We’re looking forward to making People You May Know even more valuable over the next few months. To help you get started today, here are a few tips to making more powerful connections on LinkedIn.

Focus on quality: When it comes to your professional network, the quality of your connections is more important than quantity. Connect with people you’ve done business with, who can vouch for you, and who you’d feel comfortable vouching for yourself.

Personalize your invites: Customize your invitations from the new People You May know page by hovering over the person you want to connect with and clicking the “envelope” icon at the bottom right of each card. Writing a personal note goes a long way in strengthening the relationships that make up your network.

Stay on top of your invitations: Invitations sent to you will now appear at the top of the People You May Know page, so they won’t get lost in your inbox. Want to respond, see what you have in common, or review the messages sent between you? Just hover over the person’s card.

Request introductions: Introductions help you connect with members in your extended network through the people you both know. The recently introduced How You’re Connected tool on LinkedIn profiles makes it easier to find the best path to getting introduced.

We’re excited to announce that the new People You May Know is now being rolled out to English speaking members.

LinkedIn Adds Blocking Feature

As the features keep rolling out for LinkedIn here is the latest one that should have been added years ago. The ability to block. Here is how you block someone.

To block a member from viewing your profile:

Go to the profile of the person you'd like to block.

Note: After you finish blocking someone, you will disappear from the Who's Viewed Your Profile section of the person you blocked.

Move your cursor over the down arrow next to the button in the top section of the member's profile. Button name may vary.

Select Block or Report next to the member's name.
Click Continue.

On the next screen, click Agree to confirm your action.

Once you've blocked a member, they'll appear on your blocked list. The blocked member won't receive any notification of this action. You may block up to 50 members on LinkedIn. Learn more about what blocking does and doesn't do.

More Changes From LinkedIn

As I stated in another blog, LinkedIn is continuing to turn out new features to their platform amiss the on going drop in their stock. The newest feature is "Who viewed your Profile?"

Here is what LinkedIn had to say about this newest feature.

Wouldn't it be great if someone could tell you that just by adding a photo to your profile or sharing a specific article with your LinkedIn network, your LinkedIn Profile would be 11x more likely to be viewed and potentially attract more professional opportunities your way? Well, I’m happy to say that starting today, it will be available to you – on LinkedIn.

We’re pleased to introduce the new Who’s Viewed Your Profile – packed with new visual analytics and actionable insights designed to give you more ways to manage your professional identity and increase your visibility across LinkedIn.



As one of the most popular destinations on LinkedIn, Who’s Viewed Your Profile has always given members a way to discover new opportunities and be discovered by others – but we knew the full potential hadn't been unlocked. Today we’re giving you the key with access to more data driven insights such as the industry your viewers work in, the keyword searches that led to your profile, how they found you and new insights including what regions they live in, what profession they are in and what company they work for. This will help you quickly identify trends and enable you to align your professional brand with your professional goals.

Facebook Taking A Shot At LinkedIn Adds Job Title Add Targeting

Beware LinkedIn. Facebook is coming after you. This newest add-on for business is a smack in the face or the proverbial shot across the bow.


Facebook’s targeting features are becoming simpler and even more powerful. In the coming weeks, our improved Core Audiences targeting options — the targeting features built into all of our ad buying interfaces — will begin rolling out, allowing advertisers around the world to reach precise audiences based on four main targeting types: location, demographic, interests and behaviors. And in the US, we’re also adding Partner Categories to the Ads Create Tool so that every marketer — from brands to local businesses — can use this targeting option.


Location

Say you’re a retailer that wants to show ads to people that live near your brick-and-mortar locations. With flexible location targeting, you can build campaigns around any combination of geographies: country and city (France and London), country and state (Canada and New York), state and city (California and Las Vegas), state and ZIP code (US only), etc. It's also easier to exclude certain areas — i.e., New York City, except 11211, or the UK, excluding Cambridge.

Demographic

Trying to boost sales at your flower shop? It’s now easier to reach people who have recently declared their love for someone on Facebook. Core Audiences features more values for relationship status (like civil unions and domestic partnerships) as well as timely changes in life events, like getting engaged or married. We've also added a level of flexibility long requested by marketers, which allow targeting for people that have gotten engaged or married in the past year, or the last 3 or 6 months.
Or, maybe you're a recruiter for a law firm and want to specifically advertise to associate attorneys at law firms in New York. Now you can. Core Audiences now covers information like workplace and job title, and offers expanded information about education.


Interests

We know that people have a ton of interests, and that marketers want to reach people specifically based on them. So we simplified how you can do this on Facebook by redefining our interest-based targeting segments so each has one simple meaning. Rather than having multiple targeting options like broad categories and keywords, we developed a new methodology that increases the precision of interest-based targeting by allowing advertisers to simply choose one segment. Now, if you want to reach baseball fans, just choose "baseball" as your targeting segment — it'll pull in all the people that have liked or expressed interest in baseball-related topics on Facebook.

Behaviors

We're including in Core Audiences a new targeting option, behaviors, which includes Partner Categories. This gives marketers the ability to target campaigns to people based on things they purchase and what devices they use. For instance, if you want to reach people interested in music that use iPhones, you'll use behaviors as part of creating your target audience.
Expanded availability of Partner Categories

Previously available only in Power Editor, Partner Categories will soon roll out to the Ads Create Tool for US advertisers, offering more marketers the ability to build audiences around offline actions.

Post Platform Changes From LinkedIn

New blog from LinkedIn. Talks about some changes made to the post/profile platform.
Desperation may be setting in from the drop in stock price. Changing the platform to a more Facebook style seems like a stop the bleeding type move.

We believe in giving our members access to the business knowledge they need to be great at what they do. To put that simply, we are making a commitment to our members: the time you spend on LinkedIn will make you better at your job today.

The valuable Influencer posts and the wide range of professional content from millions of publishers that we currently aggregate on LinkedIn are powerful, but only the tip of the iceberg. Combined, our members have extremely valuable and varied experiences; however, their knowledge and expertise has not yet been captured and shared.

Starting today, LinkedIn is opening up our publishing platform to our members, giving them a powerful new way to build their professional brand. When a member publishes a post on LinkedIn, their original content becomes part of their professional profile, is shared with their trusted network and has the ability to reach the largest group of professionals ever assembled. Now members have the ability to follow other members that are not in their network and build their own group of followers. Members can continue to share their expertise by posting photos, images, videos and their original presentations on SlideShare.

Every professional has valuable experience to share. Trying to grow your business by reducing customer attrition? Read the post from Monica Adractas, head of customer retention at Box, on churning out churn. Just starting a career in sales? Read the post from Brent Beshore, the founder/CEO at adventur.es, on how to sell anything. Need a science-based planning tool for river restoration? Read the post from Glen Leverich, senior geomorphologist at Stillwater Sciences, on A Science-based Planning Approach for Riparian Restoration.

LinkedIn Influencer started in fall of 2012 and features top voices in business like Richard Branson, Martha Stewart and Bill Gates. The expertise they have shared through their Influencer posts has resonated in a meaningful way with LinkedIn members and is fueling business conversations. The average Influencer post drives more an 31,000 views and receives more than 250 likes and 80 comments. By any measure, this is a remarkably high level of engagement for digital content.

We are adding new Influencers who are excited to share their insights and experiences directly with LinkedIn members. They include Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, CEO of AOL Brand Group Susan Lyne, and Financial Expert and CNBC host Suze Orman. We will regularly evaluate who we have as Influencers to include only the most engaged, prolific and thoughtful contributors and to ensure that their expertise matches up with our members’ interests.

Starting today, 25,000 members will have the ability to publish content on LinkedIn. We’ll be steadily expanding the capability to all members in multiple languages over the next few weeks and months to come. Check out our member help center for more information.

LinkedIn passes 50 million Asia Pacific Users

LinkedIn announced that they crossed the 50 million member mark in the Asia Pacific region. Here is their blog about it.

As we celebrate this milestone, I am humbled by the success of our members who are using LinkedIn to build their professional identities, networks and knowledge, and whom we proudly serve.

It’s remarkable that our member base across the region has nearly tripled in a span of less than three years. Last year, we welcomed 7+ million new members in India, while 2+ million new members joined our network in Australia and New Zealand. In Southeast Asia, our member base jumped more than 50% to reach 9+ million.

Today, nine countries in the region have more than a million members each – India (24+ million), Australia (5+ million), China (4+ million), Indonesia and the Philippines (2+ million each), Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, and New Zealand (1+ million each).

Our members represent a broad cross-section of industries across the Asia Pacific region. In particular, the top five industries on LinkedIn are IT & Services, Telecommunications, Oil & Energy, Banking & Financial Services, and Hospitality. As the region increasingly consolidates its position as a key driver in the global economy, our aim is to help professionals and businesses here become even more successful at what they do. Whether it’s expanding professional connections, tapping critical talent or marketing their brands and winning new businesses, we are excited to be able to help connect the dots and create economic opportunities for everyone.

Diversity is a defining characteristic of this region, and it’s something we continue to address. For example, members can now choose between six Asian languages when engaging in professional conversations on LinkedIn, in addition to English. To enrich the professional knowledge available to our members, we also recently added to the growing list of Asia-based influencers. These influencers include Tony Fernandes (Group CEO, AirAsia), David Thodey(CEO & Executive Director, Telstra), Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (Chairman & Managing Director, Biocon) and Nobuyuki Idei (Founder & CEO, Quantum Leaps, and Former Chairman & CEO, Sony).

I would like to thank our members, clients, partners and employees for making LinkedIn a part of your daily professional lives. This milestone was only achieved because of your support. I am looking forward to growing with you as we introduce more exciting features on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Acquires Bright

Parker Barille talks about the acquisition of Bright.

We recognized instantly that LinkedIn and Bright have a lot in common. For example, we’re both passionate about connecting talent with opportunity at massive scale and obsessed with increasing the effectiveness of the job seeking and recruiting processes.

At LinkedIn, we’ve invested a lot of time and energy into developing products like “Jobs You May Be Interested In” and LinkedIn Recruiter that use data to match members with the right opportunities and employers with the right prospects at scale. And that’s why Bright is such a great fit. Its incredibly talented team takes the same data-driven approach to connecting people and employers, and has built a powerful matching technology that will help accelerate our efforts on multiple fronts.

Ultimately though, our vision is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce — all three billion of them. Doing so will require increasing the volume of job opportunities available on LinkedIn. As we add more job listings over the next several years, Bright’s powerful matching technology will be integral to ensuring that the prospects we suggest to employers and opportunities we surface for prospects are increasingly relevant.

LinkedIn Removes Intro

Aimee Chanthadavong reports that LinkedIn continues to fine tune its services, and has announced on its blog that it will shut down three services it currently provides.

The professional social networking company said it aims to concentrate on doing "fewer things, but better".

As of March 7, 2014, LinkedIn Intro, which was initially launched last year to bring LinkedIn to the email inbox of iPhone users, will no longer be available. Users of Intro will be able to uninstall it between now and March 7, and switch back to their previous mail accounts. Members with Gmail accounts can continue to use Rapportive.

The decision to shut down Intro, a proxy service for emails that injects LinkedIn information for contacts, follows controversy upon the launch of the service that it was breaching privacy rights, such as making changes to users' security profiles on their devices. However, the company's senior manager for information security, Cory Scott, at the time, defended the service and said Intro was rather a potential remedy to the standard inbox.

Slidecast, a service that enables SlideShare members to upload presentations with audio, will also be shutting down on April 30, 2014. Slidecast users will be able to download their Slidecasts until then, and can continue to share the non-audio portions of their presentations with their network on SlideShare.net.

The company also plans to eliminate the support for the LinkedIn iPad app on iOS versions older than 6.0 as of February 18, 2014, to encourage members to have the latest version of its app. This decision follows LinkedIn's decision to stop supporting the LinkedIn mobile app for iOS versions older than 6.0 and Android versions older than 3.0 late last year.

Despite these decisions, LinkedIn reinforced that it is committed to looking at new ways to improve its members' existing experiences. Back in November, the company introduced Showcase Pages, a new scheme for major brands that breaks down their product portfolios and puts the spotlight on more brands.

LinkedIn also recently recorded that government requests of members' data has doubled.

LinkedIn Plunged 11%

CNN reports that shares of the professional networking site plunged 11% in after-hours trading Thursday after the company posted solid fourth-quarter earnings and sales but offered a disappointing outlook.

LinkedIn (LNKD) said it expects sales to rise only slightly in the current quarter, to between $455 million and $460 million. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected sales of $470 million this quarter.

The rest of 2014 won't be too much stronger, with LinkedIn predicting total sales of between $2.02 billion and $2.05 billion for 2014. That's far below analysts' forecast of $2.2 billion.

LinkedIn's sales are also growing at a slower clip than its competitors. The company reported fourth-quarter sales of $447 million, up just 13.8% versus the quarter prior.

Facebook (FB, Fortune 500), by contrast, posted strong fourth-quarter sales of $2.6 billion, driven by its success on mobile devices. Facebook's revenue rose 28% versus the third quarter. Twitter (TWTR) brought in a solid $243 million in fourth-quarter sales, up 44% versus the third quarter.

But LinkedIn's membership is growing faster than its rivals. In the fourth quarter, LinkedIn said membership rose to 277 million, up 6.9% from the prior quarter.

Investors punished Twitter earlier this week following its first quarterly report as a public company, after its monthly user base grew just 3.9% quarter-over-quarter to 241 million. Facebook also reported tepid fourth-quarter user growth, with its monthly user base rising 3.4% versus the quarter prior to 1.2 billion.

Of course, the comparisons between the three companies aren't exact.

LinkedIn relies less on advertising than Twitter and Facebook, for example, and earns a significant portion of its revenue from premium subscriptions -- 20% in the fourth quarter, to be exact. That equated to $88.1 million, up 10% versus the three months prior.

The company also relies heavily on its "talent solutions" business, which provides corporate recruiters with tools to promote jobs and search for candidates. That unit generated $245.6 million in fourth-quarter sales, more than half of LinkedIn's overall revenue and a gain of 9% versus the quarter prior.

LinkedIn And China

The one major U.S. social network not blocked in China is starting to expand its presence in the world's most populous nation reports CNBC.

LinkedIn, unlike Facebook, Twitter and Google, is not banned by state censors, but only recently appointed its first president for China, George Shen. Shortly thereafter, LinkedIn started to integrate its accounts with users' profiles on the Chinese chat app WeChat, which has around 300 million monthly users.

Internet analysts and recruiters say that LinkedIn has a better chance of catching on in China than many other US tech groups.

Other groups, if they were unblocked, would need to compete directly with China's established tech giants. Tencent, whose HK$991.6 billion (US$127.7 billion) market cap is less than $5 billion behind Facebook's, runs WeChat, which is increasingly popular as a social network and marketing platform. Sina dominates blogging with its Twitter-like Weibo microblog, which is partially backed by ecommerce giant Alibaba. Baidu and Youku Tudou, meanwhile, lead in search and online video.

The online job hunting market, however, is fragmented between local groups such as Zhaopin and 51job, and a very high turnover rate among employees means high demand for recruiting services.

"The quality of companies that hire through Zhaopin or 51job varies greatly," said one young Chinese office worker now at a multinational group. "LinkedIn is more international and higher end."

Why China does not block LinkedIn along with other foreign social networks is unclear, but users of the site do not typically use it to debate politics or organize protests, areas that will draw the censors' attention.

Despite not offering a complete Chinese version of its desktop site, LinkedIn says it has more than 4 million users in China. Globally, it has 260 million members, 54 million of whom are in Asia. However, its membership growth rate in the US is starting to slow as LinkedIn has already covered much of its potential userbase.


"They need new markets to keep the whole thing going," said Michael Graham, an analyst at Canaccord Genuity.

China could be that market. With rising salaries and stiff competition among companies for trained staff, recruiters say it is not uncommon for employees to change jobs after just two to three years, faster than in the US or Europe. A recent survey by headhunter Aon Hewitt in China found that nearly 15 per cent of employees changed jobs last year. Turnover rate among workers in fast-growing sectors such as technology was even higher.

LinkedIn declined to elaborate on what its new China president Mr Shen, a former Google executive, plans to do for the site.

One potential way to grow would be to offer a desktop site in Chinese, as it already does in languages including Bahasa Indonesia and Turkish. Currently, its Chinese-language functionality is limited to its mobile app.

Yet recruiters and users cautioned that localizing the site too much could dilute one of its strengths - the fact its users are multilingual and generally highly skilled.


"The professionals who can compete on the international level all speak English, [and] that is also the area of highest demand," said Chun Liew, founder of Direct HR, a recruiting firm based in China.

Next week, LinkedIn is expected to report earnings of $2.22 a share for 2013, according to the average analyst estimate, a 38 per cent increase from 2012.

In the U.S. and Europe, LinkedIn profits by selling subscriptions to recruiters who want access to the millions of résumés that members have posted on the site. Revenues in its recruitment service division, which account for more than half of overall sales, were up 62 per cent year on year last quarter.

New Tool From LinkedIn

Most of us are familiar with “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” – the idea that every person in Hollywood is separated by six acquaintances or less from the famous actor. Most people think of this in terms of celebrity, but imagine how powerful this idea could be in the professional context of your own life.

Professional goals become more attainable when you’re able to connect and collaborate with others who can help you achieve them. Finding the best path to meeting these key contacts can be daunting though.

Today, we’re introducing a new “How You’re Connected” tool on LinkedIn profiles that aims to make that process much easier by helping you find the best path or strongest commonalities shared between you and the individual that could be the key to obtaining your next success.

When looking for an introduction to someone you may not know yet, you will now not only see “who” in your network knows them on their Profile, but also “how” they know each other to help you decide the best contact to request an introduction from.



So let’s say you’re an advertising professional looking for an introduction to the CMO of a company you’d love to do business with. You might find one mutual connection attended school with her before she kick started her career but another worked with her recently on a very high-profile campaign. Chances are, the connection that worked with her recently is more likely to have a stronger, more relevant connection and therefore be the best source for an introduction.

This feature will begin rolling out to English members around the world beginning today. In the months to come, we’ll look to continue to expand on the types of insights we provide so that you can make informed decisions around building and expanding your professional network on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn adds feature volunteer matching

LinkedIn, the social network for job hunters and professionals, is expanding once more in the nonprofit space says Vanessa Small.

She goes on to write the site recently added a “volunteer marketplace” where members can search posted opportunities to volunteer in their communities. LinkedIn will also suggest volunteer matches in members’ “Jobs You May Be Interested In” e-mails.

Some recent postings sought a human relations strategist for a group working with low-­income youths, a grant writer for an organization that provides support services to people in Haiti and a board member for a group that helps single mothers.

LinkedIn, which has 250 million members, usually charges companies a fee to post job opportunities, costing up to $400 for 30 days.

But nonprofit organizations posting opportunities through the new marketplace will receive a 90 percent discount, the company said. LinkedIn officials say the company will use those proceeds to give grants to its nonprofit partners. Organizations have to be registered as a 501(c)(3) in the United States to post because the new platform is first being tested domestically.

LinkedIn says it hopes to capitalize on the growing interest that people in the workplace have for causes.

“The number of professionals interested in using their skills to change the world outweighs the skills and opportunities available on the nonprofit side,” said Meg Garlinghouse, head of the company’s LinkedIn for Good foundation. “There hasn’t been a very efficient platform to do that. We feel like we are well-positioned to do that.”

Several nonprofits in the Washington region are using the new feature, including housing advocacy groups such as Rebuilding Together and Arlington Home Ownership Made Easier, the abortion-rights group Choice USA, the veterans organization Hire Our Heroes, the job skills group America’s Future Workforce and Atlas Corps, an international leadership group.

“We are looking for some help in creating press material for our Web site, and we haven’t had the expertise or time to do it,” said Kate Londen, communications manager at Choice USA. “The outside expertise is something we’ve always wanted to have.”

LinkedIn’s new do-good platform has been years in the making. The social networking site started its charitable arm, Linked­In for Good, in 2010.

In 2011, it added a volunteer and causes section to member profile pages, which 3 million members have utilized. Noting the interest, the company introduced Board Member Connect, a program that allows nonprofits to search for professionals who indicated they wanted to serve on a board. For the past six months, the company has piloted the volunteer matching concept and found what it considered to be notable success stories of perfect matches.

The concept of connecting business professionals to causes is not a new one.

Taproot Foundation of San Francisco brokers partnerships and pro bono projects between companies and nonprofits. Catchafire is a New York group that helps people design projects for charity. BoardSource, of the District, focuses on building nonprofit boards. Compass, another organization in the District, connects MBA graduates with nonprofit pro bono opportunities. And VolunteerMatch, also of the District, helps people find local causes.

Each acts as a third party to match professional skills with community groups. LinkedIn has partnered and consulted with some of these organizations to design the new platform and help nonprofits post opportunities.

Taproot knows the new Linked­In feature might replace some of its services, but it hopes the matching program will stir a wave of volunteerism in all workplaces.

“A mission-focused organization like ours, our hope is that more nonprofits have access to the pro bono they need,” said Lindsay Firestone, director of advisory services for Taproot. “Whether through our program or elsewhere, it’s a win.”