LinkedIn Company
Saturday, March 22, 2008 by Tom Pionek
LinkedIn has announced the development of LinkedIn Company pages, which allow members of a given organization to create a page for that organization and link their profiles to it.
This development is encouraging because LinkedIn is the leading social network for professional networking. Company pages could be effective tool in helping people within an organization network both internally and externally. Internal networking can be facilitated by providing a map of the organziation's social network; externally networking can be helped by allow staff to see the backgrounds of their colleagues, whom they might contact in order to find resources outside the company.
For higher education (my field of marketing), LinkedIn may provide an especially valuable role. It already can serves as a recruiting platform for students, faculty and staff. If LinkedIn ever gets its API in place, tools and programs could be developed that allow an institution to create more connections among each group: students might be connected to alumni mentors and faculty advisors; alumni might be connected to other alumni in their professions; faculty with other faculty in their field of scholarship. Insitutions might be able to get more information about the career paths of their alumni, helping to round out research into the impact the education. New graduates might be able to use the network to find jobs through alumni. Internship searches might work the same way. Faculty might reach out to research subjects in particular professions.
LinkedIn appears to be trying to following the footsteps of Facebook, seeing the success that the Facebook's Pages application has brought to the network in terms of attracting advertisers to the network. Facebook Pages were announced in November 2007 and already there are ton of organizations using it (in higher education, there are 500+ Pages, which is the highest count Facebook will provide in their search results).
The only thing missing is LinkedIn's API, which they have said that they want roll out but there hasn't been much progress announced. Hopefully, they will get it going in 2008!
This development is encouraging because LinkedIn is the leading social network for professional networking. Company pages could be effective tool in helping people within an organization network both internally and externally. Internal networking can be facilitated by providing a map of the organziation's social network; externally networking can be helped by allow staff to see the backgrounds of their colleagues, whom they might contact in order to find resources outside the company.
For higher education (my field of marketing), LinkedIn may provide an especially valuable role. It already can serves as a recruiting platform for students, faculty and staff. If LinkedIn ever gets its API in place, tools and programs could be developed that allow an institution to create more connections among each group: students might be connected to alumni mentors and faculty advisors; alumni might be connected to other alumni in their professions; faculty with other faculty in their field of scholarship. Insitutions might be able to get more information about the career paths of their alumni, helping to round out research into the impact the education. New graduates might be able to use the network to find jobs through alumni. Internship searches might work the same way. Faculty might reach out to research subjects in particular professions.
LinkedIn appears to be trying to following the footsteps of Facebook, seeing the success that the Facebook's Pages application has brought to the network in terms of attracting advertisers to the network. Facebook Pages were announced in November 2007 and already there are ton of organizations using it (in higher education, there are 500+ Pages, which is the highest count Facebook will provide in their search results).
The only thing missing is LinkedIn's API, which they have said that they want roll out but there hasn't been much progress announced. Hopefully, they will get it going in 2008!
Labels: LinkedIn, social media, social networks.
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