Mobile App of the Week: Staying up to Date with your Business Contacts on Linkedin

For this week’s Mobile App of the Week our focus is on the LinkedIn iPhone app. This app version of the business social networking site gives users the ability to connect with their LinkedIn contacts and manage their profile on the go.

When users first click on the app and have signed on, they’re directed to the app’s home page where they can choose to go to their LinkedIn profile, groups, inbox or see updates. From there, users can browse their contacts, make new connections, update their status, edit their profile and see what they’re contacts are up to through the news feed.

Requirements

The LinkedIn app is a free download from iTunes. It's compatible with the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and has been optimized for iPhone 5. Users must have iOS of 4.5 or higher.

If you aren’t an iPhone user, there is also an Android and Windows Phone version. The Android version is available in the Google Play store for users with versions 2.1 or higher, while the Windows Phone version is available for those who have Windows Phone 7.5 or higher.

Pros

As was mentioned, users have access to all of the features they have on the web version of LinkedIn, as well as a few mobile only options. Some of these features include:

• Being able to view and recommend jobs.
• Updating and editing your profile.
• Read suggested industry news of the day.
• Users can search based on a job title or keyword to see all their contacts that relate to that search.
• Receive suggestions on who should be part of your LinkedIn network.
• Ability to enable and receive push notifications.

Users, upon their initial sign in with the app are promoted to sync their calendar with their account. If a user chooses this option, LinkedIn says that the information isn't stored within their server and notes that users have the ability to opt-out or eventually sync their calendar by changing their settings. 

Final Thoughts

As a basic app, the LinkedIn app is merely a mobile version of the LinkedIn website. With this in mind, there isn't much that sets it apart from the site, besides being more compact.

This app would be useful for those who need to have their LinkedIn profile and contacts on hand in meetings or when they’re away from the office. If you’re not someone who spends a lot of time away from the office or uses their LinkedIn profile as a essential business tool, than you shouldn't bother with it.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Eventbrite Isn’t Just Selling Tickets, It’s Building A New Kind Of Social Platform

What if partygoers could automatically share Instagram photos? Or conference attendees could exchange LinkedIn requests without collecting cards? With Eventbrite's API, we are about to find out.

Every time you invite people to an event, you create a mini social network. Startup ticketing platform Eventbrite aims to help put that physical network to use through online apps.

Think about automatically sending a tweet when you walk into an event to announce yourself, Eventbrite CEO and co-founder Kevin Hartz suggests. Hartz goes on: “Think about using Instagram at an event. That could be better shared among [attendees]…You can imagine on the professional side, what could happen with LinkedIn after an event.”

None of these hypothetical examples is a priority for Hartz himself. Eventbrite is pretty good at selling tickets and plans to stick to it. But the company recently gave other apps the opportunity to bring these use cases to life by opening up its API.

“There’s almost nothing as powerful as a live experience. People actually gathering offline--it’s something you don’t forget.”

For the last 18 months, developers have been able to easily add Eventbrite-powered capabilities to their apps. For many, this means simply using Eventbrite to sell tickets within their apps. But the API also presents an opportunity to integrate a new kind of social graph: one based on physical meetings rather than clicks.

Giving people the ability to share, mingle and keep in touch with the people who they attend events with is arguably more useful than offering new ways to interact with their 800 Facebook friends.

“There’s almost nothing as powerful as a live experience,” explains Hartz's wife and cofounder, Julie Hartz. “People actually gathering offline, it’s something you don’t forget.”

So far the implementations have been gingerly engaged. 5K races have used the Eventbrite API to send photos and race times to participants, Paperless Post uses it to link tickets with invitations, and services provided by MailChimp and Salesforce use it to help companies stay in touch with the people who attend their events.

Since it set up shop in 2006, Eventbrite has differentiated itself in the ticketing space by allowing anyone to sell tickets on its platform--whether they’re planning a cooking class for their friends or a . Throughout the last couple of years, however, it's been on a bit of a growth spurt. It has been quick to develop mobile opportunities like an iPad credit-card reader to help event coordinators working in non-tradition venues organize admissions and launched an aggressive international expansion. So far, it’s sold tickets in 174 countries.

Hitching a ride in other apps, whether as an enabler of online connection between eventgoers or a simple ticket seller, should further serve its growth.

“When you’re moving in to dominate a space, you can’t be everywhere at once,” Kevin Hartz says.

Apps with Eventbrite integrations, however, can be.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

LinkedIn Updates Tools for Homepage, Profile Editing

LinkedIn use is exploding, and all those millions of new users added over the last two years have some updated features to play with.

LinkedIn has updated the homepage by adding a larger profile image and redesigning the whole feel of its pages with a more refined look. The power to find new contacts and network effectively is still there — it's just under a less utilitarian design.

Status: Updated

Starting today, LinkedIn members can update their profile via an opt-in sample/invitation. Everyone else will see the updates roll out to their profiles over the next few months, the company said in blog post. Larger profile images, new inline editing and richer insights into people's networks are all part of the update. 

Larger images show off a profile's highlights right at the top of the page.

Additionally, the Activity Stream, People You May Know and Background sections all have a new look, with the people section having the most dramatic change. There's a new graphic stats display for network suggestions that adds some color and useful information on those you may want to connect with. 

For updating background information on your profile, there is a new menu of options that pops up on the right-hand side. 

Suggestions are still made about what updates to make, but now they are a bit more polished.

Simpler Editing

Once updates are made to the background section, each portion gets a new little icon instead of a solid horizontal line to separate them. For example, there's a little hand next to the Volunteer and Causes section, and a little compass above the Skills and Expertise section.

This is also where the inline editing feature comes in. Now, instead of changing those skills using a new edit page, the changes can be made right from the profile — no need to click over to the Edit Profile page. 

Simpler editing makes an already popular activity even easier.

Linkedin CEO Jeff Weiner gave a brief presentation on the updates, and said the company now has over 175 million users, with 50 million of those added in just the last two years. He also pointed out how popular the recent Company Pages release has been and how millions of people are updating their profiles even though they aren't necessarily looking for jobs. 

Tell us in the comments if you are a LinkedIn Pro user or if you are cross-posting things to LinkedIn and Facebook — and how you decide what goes where.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Bloomfire Releases Collaboration Tool for LinkedIn Groups

A more collaborative LinkedIn Group. That’s the intention of a new tool announced today by Bloomfire.

Bloomfire for LinkedIn Groups enables owners and members of LinkedIn Groups to create a media-capable collaborative community. Bloomfire CEO Craig Malloy said in a statement that the free app “expands how we communicate in LinkedIn so we can share knowledge by showing instead of just telling or linking to outside content.”

Integrating Collaboration

Functionalities in the tool include the ability to upload and share any file type, such as videos, screencasts, images or documents, and to record and upload videos. Group attendees can also record screencasts, share presentations with attached slide decks, package related content into a playlist-like series, and search and retrieve previously uploaded content.

Dave McAnn, the company’s CTO, told news media that, with the LinkedIn Groups app, a LinkedIn Group owner “continues to own content moderation in their Bloomfire as they have in their LinkedIn Group, making the integration and experience as seamless as possible.”

The new tool is the first that Bloomfire has in mind for integrating its collaborative software into popular professional and workplace applications. The aim is to allow users to share knowledge in applications where work already takes place, rather than have to switch into such apps as a centralized content management system or a learning management system.

Getting Knowledge, Giving Knowledge

Bloomfire’s app — a “Bloomfire,” as the company calls it — is designed to give “finger-tip access” to knowledge, and to facilitate sharing between those who have specific knowledge and those who need it.

The Bloomfire tool utilizes key features of the company’s core knowledge sharing app. The full app also provides peer-to-peer social learning, in which answers to questions can range from text to multimedia demos.

The main app also features the capability to print presentation-ready usage reports, browse one’s Bloomfire home page to identify the most recent and popular shared content, and organize content by topics and keyword tags. And there's the ability to join the company’s Membership Subscription and get access to its billing engine, so that clients could be charged to be share valuable content as part of a community.
 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com