Last week, we wrote about LinkedIn’s recent issues with its Groups – as part of a new platform rollout, a number of management features were apparently buggy, while others had been removed entirely.
Tonight sees the release of a number of new features on the platform that should quell some of these concerns. Among the new features are a centralized hub page for every group, where group members can come together and converse with each other in one place. The release also introduces enhanced group and user management features, including a searchable roster.
While it’s nice to see LinkedIn enhancing its groups functionality, its surprising to see that the company has taken this long to introduce them – most of them seem to be fairly basic. That said, the added community features should be a boon to the site’s professional user base as they look to enhance their connections with their peers.
B-o-o-o LinkedIn. First you force people out of our groups, THEN you roll out new ‘enhanced’ features? Still a customer, but a very unhappy one at the moment!
Thanks for trying to find the silver lining here Jason :)
We are going all-in on Groups at LinkedIn
Is it free for group? I hope everything is free. But job is not
http://www.cityquery.com
As a group manager, the new features are very disapointing. There are no ways for group managers to moderate the new discussions posted nor a way to display some basic guidelines for the discussions! the text in the hub page/ Description of the group is limited to 300 characters!
I welcome this long overdue update. But agree with Seb above regarding the limitations. I just did my first post and the character max was 200, slightly longer than a twitter post.
I hope this is just the beginning. I’m a LinkedIn fan and wish it was necessary to use other social networks to fill the gaps in LinkedIn’s offerings.
Patrick Byers
http://responsi...lemarketing.com
There are some other sites working to bring those sites together so the gaps are filled for you. We think we are onto something pretty cool, but we are in beta. We would love to have you check it out and give us your feedback… http://www.gruvie.com
I have been trying to access the site for the last 8 hours, I can’t see any page (except the sign in page) rendered correctly! There is a Javascript error, and, it is the same in every browser I tried (IE8 Beta 2, IE 7, FF 3, Safari, Opera, iPhone).
Anyone else with this issue?
indyfromoz
Next step to, …, where?
its a matter of time before the first spam will show up in the discussion forums. as a group manager you can moderate, delete or anything..
I’m fairly optimistic that this is going to work for those who are in groups that they really should be in…I manage a group for my company and welcome the chance to foster good conversation amongst my colleagues.
This is the first “shot across the bow” …LinkedIn (and all of the Internet) will continue to go more and more vertical. Soon you will have all sorts of Ning like networks within the LinkedIn family.
http://www.afpr...n-new-ning.html
This is really boring! LinkedIn is a great resume site but they have this strong desire to be so much more. I have serious doubts that they can pull this off. They should stick to what they’re good at — being a great site for recruiting talent.
I don’t get LinkedIn – why do I need to put my professional information on the their site? So I can get unsolicited offers? The people I want to connect with – I connect with. Not through a website.
Has anyone really benefited through LinkedIn?
http://afewtips.com
It’s a scramble.
Sales professionals are going to love the new groups features in LinkedIn, I think, because it will enable them to build their business networks more easily. I do wish they would provide more moderator control over discussions, however.
LinkedIn so far has been extremely useful as long as you connect to true contacts that you know. While I live in the bay area and work in the Internet (not a fair comparison for the rest of the world) LinkedIn is a great resource for finding contacts, employees, etc. Virtually every business person I come into contact with gets a quick look-up from me on LinkedIn.
I like to see that they are trying to expand into group functionality. It should be simple and easy-to-use. Other bells and whistles just aren’t that necessary.
TechCrunch, how much are you spending on SE)? That’s a sneaky trackback you have going on with this article.
SEO*
Nice move, but the features aren’t all that great. Better than nothing though.
Would have liked to see them partner with Ning to provide a more rich groups experience. Isn’t Reid a Ning investor?
good stuff… but more, faster please.
i’ll leave it at that.
Bout time. Now if only facebook would stop futzing with groups and allow their users to take full advantage of their power.
LinkedIn Rolls Out Enhanced Groups Features; Facebook adds Live Feed
Myspace, Facebook, and LinkedIn have taken dramatically different approaches to social networking, communications.
Myspace is a free-for-all with their founding as social circles for groupies to touch their favorite musicians. Unfortunately, this has expanded to include hookers and other undesirable audiences.
Facebook started with the top universities. Although, they have lost universities like Stanford, users prefer them over the new Affinity Circle. Facebook has grown to attract high school students and boomers. International growth makes them number one. The networking feature is primarily wall posts (quick comments) on news feed items like photos, videos, or status reports (i.e. what am I doing now) Today, Facebook released Live Feed, a tab from the home page that shows real changes without clicking. Cool.
LinkedIn has cleaned up their cluttered interface and added the discussion boards for groups. They recently opened groups for any user; and now adds the discussion board as a group feature. Structurally, it is similar to the question, answer feature. It is integrated into the newsfeed like feature on the home page. On it’s first day, the discussions have been immediately popular.
The pace of change is astounding. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo look like slow moving dinosaurs by comparison.
Can anyone tell me the differences with the “Groups” feature on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Ning? I would hate to spend a large amount of time getting a group going on one of these sites only to have to pull it later because of the issues group leaders face. Anyone have any recommendations which to use to grow a small community of business associates? Thanks!
Hi Mike, http://www.konnects.com allows you to create and administrate your own community. You can invite your business contacts and choose whether the community public or private. With http://www.konnects.com community you can create and join discussions, video conference, have a centralized repository for all your members and have a full analytic suite.
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Our goal was to make the interface easier to use, cleaner, provide more sports content and give the user more control over shaping the way they view the site. Fanzak is now built off of widgets, all of which can be moved around pages from group pages to your profile. You can play around with the widgets and create a page that fits your sports obsession.
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