LinkedIn Groups – A Positive (But Small) Step Forward

Maybe I’m just not a groupie, I’m not sure I “get it”…

So the fact that LinkedIn is working on group functionality is a great thing. Version 1.0 doesn’t seem to have a lot going for it…

Group messages

As an improvement, going from “no communications” to “some group messages” is huge thing. So yes – If you’d like to send a message that will be seen by the entire group, you can post such under the group page.

But it isn’t a very smooth interface, and you’ll have to contend with some oddities:

• It’s a FIFO queue, so if a group really had a lot of messages going, your note could be quickly dropped under the radar.
• If you comment on a subject, the blurb shows the original subject, not your comments, so someone has to click in to see your text.
• There’s no mechanism to see group messages unless you get into the group tab. It’s quite possible that your group has an interesting discussion going on that you miss completely. (They’ll need to add an RSS feed for the group)

My thought is that this will evolve and we can hope for some improvements – the current version may not find much success.

Group members

A nice improvement to the group area is the ability to see group members listed. While it is limited to 500, and you could get a similar effect by searching with just one group selected, it’s a useful improvement. (And perhaps paid members see more – can a reader with a paid account comment?-)

Group name search

Not part of this change, but one of the biggest recent changes to groups is the ability to search through them. If you haven’t searched for groups you’d be interested in yet, you should do so.

And have a peek at what’s happening on the group message forums…

To your continued success – and using LinkedIn to help you achieve it,

steve