Now that we are all having second thoughts about Facebook, maybe it is time to start logging in to LinkedIn again. I did that for the first time in a few weeks and was surprised to find a new widget on the lower right hand side of my home page called “News for You (Beta).” It appears to be a news feed informed by my profile, perhaps by the companies I’ve worked for.
The LinkedIn news widget has four headlines that link out to the original stories, and the whole thing is “powered by Google.” (Not clear if it is Google News or something else.)
This really is a beta because there is no way to click for more headlines, and the stories seem to be associated with my former employer Business 2.0, even though I’ve updated my profile to list TechCrunch as my current employer. The four headlines LinkedIn picked are one about SAP (boring), one about Salesforce.com (newsy), one about tech conferences (got me pegged on that one), and one about Facebook (right company, wrong story—no mention of the Beacon controversy). The four stories are all from trade publications or newspapers. No blogs. I am not super-impressed.
But maybe you have to train it to make it relevant. Above the widget is another box that says “Help build “News for you”: Click here to help LinkedIn build a custom news feed for you and your colleagues at Business 2.0.” When I click on that, it takes me to another page where I can enter company names and topics that I want news about. I type in a few names and keywords, and go back to my home page. Still the same headlines. Maybe this thing really isn’t turned on yet.
But customized news feeds based on the company or industry you work for could help motivate business types to check in to LinkedIn more often. My suggestion: Give members the option to choose their favorite news sources (including blogs) when they are training the application. Then favor those sources in the feed, but still surface stories from elsewhere below. That way you’d get both self-directed targeting and serendipity.
I don’t see Reid Hoffman coming out and apologizing for not being clear with his users every 6 months. Zuckerberg needs to go.
Z’berg is a young kid. Don’t be jeolous people.
I think this is good.
Weirdly I don’t seem to have this News beta as part of my experience on LinkedIn. Either I just don’t see it or the companies I’ve worked for don’t have any news associated with them…
Eric,
Why is it that TechCrunch spins a Fortune blog post about how “No one who writes about Facebook likes it anymore” as “second thoughts?”
Wake up TechCrunch!! You need to stop treating Facebook with kid gloves on. Especially when you are often harsh with your words to so many other sites out there.
Say it with me now… “Facebook is being run poorly.”
I know it’s hard for TechCrunch to actually say that. So, maybe you could put it into a headline with a question mark. As in:
“Is Facebook being run poorly?”
Yes!!!!
Guy’s LinkedIn and Facebook are totaly oposite businesses , one is social networking that brings college,high school kids together and LinkedIn is business that brings employees and employers together. The idea is same “social networking” but the purpose is different.
So I really don’t know how can you compare LinkedIn with Facebook?
Yes Z’berg is kid but that kid has a lot of money and don’t have to work for somebody.
I am not saying FB is cool etc. it’s nice but has it’s own issues like any other social networking site. How many times MySpace had issues ?
N’ways good comments “me so laik it”
Do not see any news gadget. Are you logging in as a paid account?
Very cool, always wondered when this would finally launch
I don’t see the widget. I have a paid account. Maybe it’s limited beta.
Why are they using Google for this? Isn’t this (pulling contextually relevant news on the fly) what Sphere does better than anyone else?
Jah mon, it has been a while since you logged in *:-) On the first couple days I saw the widget it irritated me, like “Hey, WTF is this?, I didn’t order that!”. However, when I actually clicked through on the links and noticed that the widget may have more sense than I do for what I should be looking at, I began to like it *:-) I don’t love it yet, but I am going to participate in helping LinkedIn make it better, so there!
Lee Allan
I have a free account and can see the news feed. My current employer is a Fortune 500 company, and my previous employers were all small companies that either went under or were acquired by other firms. Therefore, my news feed is titled with the name of my current large employer.
The fact that I work for a smaller division of this Fortune 500 company, and 99% of the news is about one of the larger divisions, isn’t something that is LinkedIn’s fault…
“Yes Z’berg is kid but that kid has a lot of money and don’t have to work for somebody.”
Yeah, and his business decisions reflect it. He’s cavalier, the problems he causes aren’t his, and he could get fired and live the rest of his life as a rich McDonald’s employee. None of this makes him admirable.
a lot of people keep suggesting we should look at Facebook and LinkedIn as competitors. to me and all of my colleagues I’ve asked, this just ain’t the case. I have no intention EVER of using Facebook as a business networking tool. Friends and family - sure! Nor would I message my friends and family via LinkedIn. That’s for my business contacts only. Even if I have some of the same contacts in both places, for the most part I WANT these to be separate worlds.
News feeds on LinkedIn is meaningless to me. That’s what Google Home Page is for…
This feature, just like the one MySpace is working on, is a result of the OpenSocial spec; it’s being implemented so that they can build out the activities api portion of OpenSocial.
IMHO - achieving true serendipity by relying on the user alone to make relevant recommendations is limiting. We here at Outbrain are working on providing personal recommendations to people based on their rating habits of blog posts. We look at patterns in explicit rating behavior to make associations between raters and thus power individualized recommendations. That said I like what LinkedIn is doing. Could be cool for them to allow people to upload their OPML files.
Hi all,
Very cool, I’m glad that this was covered by TechCrunch. While this feature isn’t live on my LinkedIn account yet either, I believe that the news box on LinkedIn was built using the publicly available Google ajax-based search apis. Someone here could quickly add something similar to their site by using one of the pre-made news bar solutions available at:
http://www.google.com/uds/solutions/newsbar/
There are a number of other copy-and-paste wizards for other types here:
http://code.google.com/apis/aj.....zards.html
Or dig in and customize it further, as LinkedIn has done, by diving into the full docs here:
http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/
BTW, I’d love to see something like this up on TechCrunch. It’s a very easy, but very powerful, way of getting a bit of Google on your own site. Ping me if you want to bounce some ideas around.
-DeWitt
The widget looks like its based on Googles AJAX Search API. Something that has nothing to do with OpenSocial. I put something like this on my blogspot blog last week.
Here’s the secret to getting to see the beta LinkedIn:
Go to http://www.linkedin.com/home?beta=
It’s publicly visible, you just need to work out where to look.