I am just about sold on doing an about.me profile.  I wanted to do a critique to follow up from Tuesday’s LinkedIn Profile Critique on Jeff Dibble. This is on his About.Me page:

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Here’s my critique: I LOVE THE WHOLE THING.

The picture (you can’t see the whole thing in this snapshot… to the right is a golfer) is peaceful and non-distracting (not too busy).

The text is awesome.  The only thing I’d love to see is the “let’s talk” show his email or phone number or something like that (you can click on an email button below, but you have to scroll down (I missed it the first couple of times).

I don’t have anything bad to say… the whole thing is awesome.

Great use of About.me!

Have you ever gotten a weird request to “recommend” someone on LinkedIn?  I have a fairly large network with people I don’t know (usually they have read my stuff, or heard me speak), and every once in a while I get an email with this:

So, what do you do?

My first inclination was to feel like this person was spamming me, OR that they were asking for something that they shouldn’t have (“no, I can’t recommend you – we never worked together, and I’m not going to make something up!”).

Then I realized that this happened because there are a few places on LinkedIn that make it easy for you to blanket-request your network to give you a Recommendation.

In other words, this person probably just hit a button that said “ask people for a Recommendation”…

Therefore, I figure, he doesn’t even know he asked me.  It might have been a mistake, or he might be uncomfortable knowing he asked me (since we don’t know one another)…

I figure it was an honest, easy-to-make mistake, and I do one thing:

I delete his message.

I don’t write back and lecture him, or ask him for more information… I simply delete it.

And, because they don’t know they even sent me the request, they don’t miss anything from me.  It goes away.

So, my advice is to just delete the request (if you don’t know the person) and just move on

I went to a third degree contact’s profile to critique it and I saw very little of the profile.  In fact, in the search results I saw the picture of the person, and I didn’t see that in the profile.  I see a few things, and then this:

I miss how it used to be, when I could see a third degree contact’s profile

The internet is abuzz with the news that LinkedIn now has more than 150 million people signed up on their site.  Congrats, LinkedIn – that is cool!  Here’s their unique visitors from Compete (a third party – who knows how accurate this is):

What does it mean that they are getting 2 signups per second, have 150 million signups, but only get about 25M unique visitors in a month?  You tell me.

Also, did you know LinkedIn has been acquiring companies?  Here are two I found interesting:

Announced this week: Rapportive, which I heard about from a friend in NYC a few weeks ago.  Very cool application that makes your inbox a lot smarter (and tied to social tools). More info here.

Announced in October (anyone hear of this?): Connectedhq.com.  Dubbed “contact management without the work.” More here.

Finally, all the big social news this week has been about Pinterest…. one day, all three News spots at the top of LinkedIn’s page were about Pinterest, how it was changing the face of web design, how it is the FASTEST growing website in history, etc.  Cool stuff.

Excellent article on the WSJ FINS site titled Has LinkedIn Killed the Rolodex?

I thought it was going to be an article showing that yes, indeed, LinkedIn makes a rolodex obsolete.

It wasn’t.

It talked about LinkedIn as the tool that it is, but not as a real relationship tool.  Some points of differentiation:

LinkedIn is not a customer relationship manager (CRM) or personal relationship manager (PRM).

I’ve argued in the past that I hope then don’t become one.  Why?

First, because they should just buy JibberJobber and integrate it (while allowing people to use either OR both) :p  Yes, I’m biased

Second, because they have enough product issues that they need to resolve before they jump into trying to do CRM.  Based on what they’ve done with their system so far, I’m not convinced they, as a company “get” what relationship management is all about.

LinkedIn does not, cannot and should not replace real networking.

In the article it is referred to belly-to-belly relationships.  You get in front of your contact, and actually have a real face-t0-face conversation.  They say the new belly-to-belly might be email, phone, etc., but it’s more than just connecting on a social network and then not doing anything with the connection.

Read the article, it’s short, and excellent.  And then, if you are hiding behind ANY technology, get out and meet and talk to real people.

Viva real human interaction!

Wait… what then is LinkedIn?

It’s an amazing, powerful tool that helps you (DO A LOT OF STUFF — how would you fill in this blank?)

Check out this post on Recruiting Blogs by Jim Stroud on how to post to multiple LinkedIn Groups at the same time. (watch on YouTube here)

Can you do this?  Youbetcha.

Should you do this? Um…. well… um… what do you think?

Deb Dib, a JibberJobber Partner, pointed me to this post on Mashable about the importance of social tools…

Wondering about the importance of LinkedIn, and other social tools, for your business, career management or job search?  Read this article: What Job Seekers Need to Know in Today’s Digital Market

Some highlights:

“36% of companies surveyed are using social media for recruiting. In today’s competitive market, recruiters look for the most current information on candidates, which is readily and easily available on social networks.”

Are you making this information readily and easily available?

“Social media enables us to stand out, to be more noticeable, to differentiate ourselves from the masses and to tell the whole story behind and beyond a one-page resume.”

If everyone does it, how is it differentiating?  I’ll tell you: not many do it well  I’ve done enough LinkedIn Critiques to know that there is a lot of room for improvement!

“Additionally, every field has its own industry thought leaders broadcasting on Twitter.”

I wouldn’t say every industry, but you can certainly find people to connect with and follow and network with in many industries… probably even your industry!

“More companies than ever are cutting their job advertising budgets, opting to channel their recruiting efforts through referral hiring.”

Is the hidden job market becoming less hidden?  Interesting…

This is GREAT! Click on the image to see full-size…

This is really, really funny.  But in my experience, so true!

I first looked at it from the top down, but let’s look at it from the bottom up:

Google+ … “Do you want anyone to actually see it?”  If NO, use Google+  Ouch.

Foursquare… “Are you in a bar?”  if YES, use Foursquare Ouch.

LinkedIn… “Is it boring?” If yes, post on LinkedIn.  Ouch.

Facebook and Twitter… “Are you addicted to ‘Likes’?”  Ouch.

I like it… sums it up really well.  Thanks to my buddy Steve for sharing on Facebook…

Check out this quote, from a TechCrunch article:

“I don’t think you can take for granted that any social network is going to be here 10 years from now.”

Who said that? Read the short TechCrunch article here.

A guy who had a very successful site in 2002, that was made irrelevent by another site (not myspace):

Heiferman started the photo sharing site in 2002 and says “it (Fotolog) became the number one social network” in several countries. It eventually sold for millions of dollars. However, Heiferman notes Fotolog’s top status eroded when Flickr hit the web and it made Heiferman realize that no company is totally secure against competition.

Will “the big three” be around in 10 years?  5 years?

Tools are tools.

I’ve received emails from my first degree connections for a while. I am always curious to know how people do this.  In the early days I had a note in my Summary that said something like “If you connect with me, I’m going to put you on my newsletter.” I’d then export my contacts and import to iContact or ConstantContact.

Then, I got smart and changed it to say “click here to sign up for my newsletter,” which made it “opt-in.”

Then, I got tired of paying for the newsletter services, and changed it again to say “join my LinkedIn Group, and I’ll send you periodic newsletter-like emails.”  This is where I’m at now.

But you can do something more direct to your first degree Contacts.  Check out this post: How to Use LinkedIn Mail to Connect With Your Contacts. Linda Coles breaks down the process, and some pros/cons, of using this tool.  The biggest con is that you can only do 50 at a time.  If you have 1,000 contacts, you will have to do this 20 times to reach all of them.  Yuck.

At the same time, if that limit wasn’t in place, your contacts might be overly eager to spam you all the time.

The easier it is, the more it might be abused.

So it’s not easy, but it works.

Have you ever tried it?