LinkedIn Integrates Address Books and Profiles

By Chris Crum - Sun, 11/16/2008 - 03:40

Users Should Find This Convenient

LinkedIn is often cited as the preferred social network for business professionals. Of course like all opinions, this is not a unanimous position, but I think it's safe to say that it is one of the networks that business owners in general find most attractive for building relationships.

For those people already enjoying LinkedIn, they've added some integration between address books and profiles. "Starting today, you should be able to add and edit key information to your address book directly from your connections’ profiles," says Chris Richman on the LinkedIn blog. "Imagine the robust database of connections you’ll be building through this feature - one connection at a time."

You can find the widget that allows you to do this on your profile page right below the "How you're connected to me" widget in the right sidebar.

LinkedIn Address Book on LinkedIn Profiles

You can also bring up your address book from here by clicking "view/edit contact info."

Speaking of LinkedIn, Small Business Trends has a good video up showing something of a walkthrough for setting up a LinkedIn profile and using it for business purposes. Those of you who are already familiar with the service, probably won't gain much from it, but newbies might find it pretty interesting. The feedback they've received on it has been pretty positive.

News Tags: Social Media, LinkedIn, social networks

About the author:
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003.

9 Comments

By used alfa romeo brera (WPN reader) - Fri, 04/03/2009 - 18:05

I was looking for more info

I was looking for more info on that Widget as I am a small business owner and have found LinkedIn helpful for finding prospects and people in related businesses to network with. Like most networking opportunities it does take an effort to get it to work for you. I only started to use LinkedIn as it was integreated with an email plugin I use and it showed when a contact was a member. As a small business owner in a fairly remote location it has helped me make contacts in a fairly short amount of time that I may not have otherwise made.

By used alfa romeo brera (WPN reader) - Fri, 04/03/2009 - 18:04

I was looking for more info

By Affordable SEO Services (WPN reader) - Sat, 01/17/2009 - 20:44

Page Not Found!

I tried going to the blog you've linked to in your article but it comes up with the message "The content that you were looking for was not available." Anyone know where I can find that blog post?

By Lara Knoerr (WPN reader) - Tue, 11/18/2008 - 12:30

I'm OLD

I looked into linkedin long time ago and thought it was a waste of time. Well, what do you know, I will give them a shoot again and see if I can get any prospects.

By Ann Donnelly (WPN reader) - Tue, 11/18/2008 - 08:27

LinkedIn Good For Me

Before I get started on LinkedIn's benefits - the link to the blog comes up with Page Not Found.

I've also used LinkedIn to connect with people I used to work with, but am finding ways to make that work for my business as well. Thanks, Ann

By Debbie Morgan (WPN reader) - Sun, 11/16/2008 - 13:32

I agree..

Thanks, Chris, for this information. I'd have to agree with Ian. I'm on many social networks to socially market my safety and security web site as well as raise awareness for it's products and I've noticed the same thing as Ian. Connecting with people there isn't as easy as on other networks. My address book is very small.

By Hemang Doshi (WPN reader) - Sun, 11/16/2008 - 11:58

Great for Small Busines Owner

Yes, Linkedin is not having additional benefit but you can find good contacts as it becomes very popular in short time.

So i think it is better to use it once for getting new contacts.

Hemang Doshi

By Mark Schafer (WPN reader) - Sun, 11/16/2008 - 11:26

linkedin and small businesses

Ian - you just said it!

I lost count of SMB owners I spoke to about linkedin. I wanted to know how they use it - and moreover how linkedin benefits them. The answers are the same pretty much all over: A somewhat pretty stiff platform where people search for people and seem to compete on the number of contacts they made.

In our case linkedin does work as a resource. But not any better or worse than a few dozen other sites.

I wonder why linkedin has become so popular.

Mark Schafer

The Knowledge Brokers

www.the-knowledge-brokers.com

By Ian Hendry (WPN reader) - Sat, 11/15/2008 - 07:36

Not great for small businesses

I was fascinated to read you connecting LinkedIn with "small business" and "business owners" because I don't imagine there are many of either on LinkedIn. Given that the thing that fuelled its growth was corporate job-hoppers reconnecting with former work buddies, most of the connections there are non business owners but staff, and their connections other staff not customers or suppliers. For small business owners, there just isn't the righ quality of people there.

LinkedIn also offers very little for the small business owner to help grow their network to include valuable new connections with people who may want what they offer. The search tools are mainly people focused and LinkedIn actively discourages members from accepting connections from people they don't know. I've never seen a greater inhibitor to business networking.

And if I am right this feature seems to suggest that YOU somplete full contact details for each one of your connections, one at a time, before you then presumably export that to Outlook or your PDA/Blackberry/iPhone? Why not get your contacts doing that for you? That way you only need edit one profile rather than, in my case, 300.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz