As I’ve learned more and more about LinkedIn, one question has remained: how do groups work on the site? If you’ve browsed profiles you’ve seen some that have nifty little graphical icons in their ‘groups’ section, icons for specific schools, professional groups, etc. But I haven’t been clear about how you join one of these mystery groups and how those icons show up.
I asked this very question about groups in My Linkedin Power Forum (see my earlier article on MLPF, Expanding the Limits of Social Networking with My LinkedIn Power Forum) and received a very informative note from Robert Leathern, the Director of Marketing at LinkedIn (and also author of the cool analystblog too).
Here’s what he explained to me…
There is a directory of recognized LinkedIn groups on the site at www.linkedin.com/groups, comprised of three different kind of groups, Basic, Premium and Partner. Basic groups are free, but don’t appear in the directory.
By default, Premium and Partner groups are included in the directory, while Basic (free) groups are allowed to appear in the directory for a small one-time listing fee of $200. As many LinkedIn enthusiasts ask, wanting us to continue to grow and thrive as a service, “how are you going to make money?” I can assure you that charging for group directory listings is not a major revenue stream, but it is a form of advertising for groups and helps to cover our costs in setting up groups at no charge :-).
One important thing to keep in mind is that “LinkedIn for Groups” is not really a set of interest groups aimed at ‘finding’ other LinkedIn users who share the same interests. i.e. we have groups for Real Estate Connect, the conference to be held here in SF this month, or for the Haas School of Business alumni, as opposed to a group for people who are wine lovers and live in the Bay Area.
We will certainly consider these type of ‘ad-hoc’ groups, but the current LinkedIn for Groups product is not aimed at those types of groups.
There are two steps to joining a group: invitation and approval. Many alumni organizations have pre-approved all their existing members to join, so that when someone with that particular email address clicks on the invitation link (which is distributed via email or on their website) they are let into the group. If the person is not preapproved the group administrator has to give them the thumbs up or thumbs down on joining the group.
We are trying to work to make sure that all groups are officially sanctioned by their parent organizations – in some cases we have volunteer efforts where an alumnus or association member has set up a group on behalf of this organization (e.g. XYZ University Class of 2002). We ask them to make sure they have permission to use the name/logo of the group and also try to get them to have their alumni relations or relevant people involved in this because a group for all of XYZ University will be much more valuable to the individual members than just a class-based one.
So there are some interesting issues around groups, and it has mainly been a grass roots effort to date with LinkedIn enthusiasts getting their groups into LinkedIn for Groups.
Robert talks more about groups on LinkedIn on his blog too. Check out his recent posting LinkedIn for Groups Group Directory for more information.
Me? I haven’t found any group where, as Groucho would say, I’d be welcome as a member and I’d want to be a member. But I’ll keep looking, and if there’s a directory of Basic (e.g., “free”) LinkedIn groups, that’s sure be nice to know about!
I presently remain somewhat loyal to LinkedIn, but they seem to be intent on destroying my loyalty.
Their whole business model has never been clear and their economic benefit (to me, at least) has always been rather murky and getting murkier by the month.
They’ve been arond for a while, so I would have expected that they would have matured and begun to automate even more steps of the business networking process. Instead, we see increment after increment of the service getting more complex and techniques for getting value out of the service become more complex and ever more unattainable.
I want a simpler service, not one that is more complex with all sorts of tricks and fee-based features.
I’ll continue to use the service and network with people who use it, as long as it is free, but I personally am unable to argue a persuasive case for newcomers.
In theory, membership in a group should come simply from authoring web content that is of interest to other members of the group. Locating other members of the group can be accomplished using the group’s keywords in a *standard* search engine.
Besides, technologically we should be able to deliver much of the value of LinkedIn and more simply using an XML-based profile on our own web sites coupled with the search power of any number of existing, general-purpose search engines.
As a final besides, many of us are less interested in exploiting our “old” networks than building new networks to reach over the horizon and open new frontiers.
LinkedIn should consider this a woke-up call. A year from now, I would expect that we can all get “Googled In”.
— Jack Krupansky
Hello – I just wanted to point out that I’ve put the analystblog name aside for now (though I still own it!) and have my blog at http://www.leathern.com… it should redirect though. I’m no longer with LinkedIn but enjoying life in the Valley as a consultant. Great blog!
Great blog Dave! I would be also interested to see a list of Basic (“free”) LinkedIn groups
Old hat Dave – and a very old photograph!!
Get up to date.
Cheers John
Hey y’all, here is a directory of at least some of the linkedin groups:
http://dallasblue.com/LinkedIn/groups.htm
couldn’t resist 🙂
I wonder why the LinkedIn groups have no functionality like a bulletin board, group search, group events or member lists and newsletter like XING has on https://www.xing.com/app/network
I am trying to find a mention of my company in the past month that someone said was mentioned in a group. When I typed in my company name using the Advanced Search, I did not find a mention in the past month. Is it possible that someone wrote about my company and yet I cannot see the post?
Yes, Susan, it’s possible that the mention wasn’t in a publicly visible spot and/or that it simply hasn’t been indexed by the LinkedIn search system yet.