Professional Networking News

Linkedin today published a post on it's blog describing changes they've begun to roll out to the overall layout of the homepage and navigation options.

1. A global navigation bar at the top of the page that provides convenient access to all LinkedIn services.
2. Simplified local navigation within each of the LinkedIn areas (Profile, Contacts, Groups, etc.).
3. More room available for page content. Less scrolling.
4. A cleaner, less-cluttered look.

LinkedIn added an upgraded "profile organizer" tool only available to premium members.

Read more about it on LinkedIn's Blog and on its description page.

Is anyone using it?

The consensus is that this feature alone is not worth the premium price of an account upgrade but LinkedIn may start to enhance these premium features in order to grow its base of paying members.

Would this feature encourage you to "go premium"?

Quick interview with Reid Hoffman at the TechCrunch 50 event (annual web startup conference) about speculation, rumors, and some of his predictions for what the future holds for some of the brightest online startups and social networking sites, including LinkedIn.

I had bookmarked a TechCrunch article last month about how LinkedIn has reached 45 million users, but never blogged it. Checking out the LinkedIn Press section this morning, it seems the site is now up to 47 million users.

Other stats include:

• LinkedIn has over 47 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the world.
• A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of our members are outside the U.S.
• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.

Is there a plateau around the corner or do you think they will continue growing at this speed for the next few years?

Recently, LinkedIn rolled out new features as part of its Advanced People Search. This TechCrunch article explains the change was brought on to get people to stick around the site longer, and pointed out one in three users of the site perform regular searches.

On every search results page, you can now dynamically filter the results with additional criteria. Changes you make by checking off the boxes do not require you to re-run the search -- they appear instantly.

However, only some of the functionality is of any use to sales and recruiting professionals.

TopLinked.com, a website and LinkedIn group which helps open networkers expand their networks and connect with other members, last week launched a related site: OpenNetworker.com. Up until now, TopLinked.com has listed the top 50 LinkedIn members sorted by connection count. Ron Bates, an executive recruiter and obvious LinkedIn addict, leads the tally with 44,000 connections. Anyone looking to quickly grow their network can send connection requests to the people listed.

OpenNetworker.com seems to be a paid version of TopLinked.com. The intention one might have of joining this private site, is to receive connection invites from other aspiring power networkers who receive the monthly newsletter. OpenNetworker.com also promises the ability for a user to list their contact details on other networking sites like Facebook, and 12 others you've never heard of like Ryze, Konnects, and UNYK.

In reviewing the email sent out by TopLinked, describing the new site launch, I noticed the conversation quickly veered from facts and content, to blinding rage. See the clip below:

"Our new service combines the huge network building reach of TopLinked.com (we have well over 38,000 active participants in just our TopLinked.com group on LinkedIn) PLUS the ability to grow your networks on the world's top twenty social networking sites PLUS an amazingly lucrative affiliate referral program.

And now for the disturbing news.

Just today someone launched a rip-off copycat of TopLinked.com."

Facebook changed their terms of service in order to get more legal ownership over user submitted content, only to fold under public pressure and reverse the changes.

This raises interesting questions especially on pro-networking sites like Linkedin and XING, do you own your content or does it become property of the network once it is submitted?

Do you own your connections?

An in-depth analysis of the most popular sites' Terms of Service:

Facebook terms of service compared with MySpace, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter

TechCrunch commented on the latest ComScore traffic ranking's for Linkedin.com for the month of January. Highlights include:

• 22% increase in unique visitors (up from 6.3M in Dec. to 7.7 in Jan.)
• 100% increase in time spent on site (up from 47.6M to 96.8M total minutes)