TechGazing

LinkedIn has decided to make its Groups feature more useful and relevant for its users. Starting August 29, 2008 the following features will have been added:

• Discussion forums: Simple discussion spaces for group managers and its members. (One can turn discussions off in their management control panel if they like.)
• Enhanced roster: Searchable list of group members.
• Digest emails: Daily or weekly digests of new discussion topics which members may choose to receive. (LinkedIn will be turning digests on for all current group members soon, and prompting them to set to their own preference.)
• Group home page: A private space for a group’s members on LinkedIn.

A LinkedIn release says, “We’re confident that these new features will spur communication, promote collaboration, and make your group more valuable to you and your members. We hope you can come by LinkedIn on Friday morning to check out the new functionality and get a group discussion going by posting a welcome message.”

LinkedIn.com has emerged as the hottest professional networking site on the internet, with over 17 million members at last count and revenues in excess of $100 million annually. Interestingly, India boasts the third highest user base globally after the US and UK.

The LinkedIn community is now being tapped by users for accessing faraway markets, landing dream jobs, raising capital, attracting the best of talent, building corporate brands and more. In fact, it has emerged as the single most important introduction for its members, who use this site to boost their personal brand. Their profile on the site serves as a virtual business card, and a dynamic CV too.

I met the site’s founder and chairman REID HOFFMAN in the latter’s office in the Bay Area in San Francisco, USA recently for an interview. Mr. Hoffman is rated as one of the most influential players in the Silicon Valley, for his record of investing in and setting up companies. A prolific Angel investor, he has invested in over 60 companies including Facebook, Digg, Technorati, Friendster, Ning, Tagged, Flixster and Flickr. When, and if, LinkedIn is sold, it could well be one of the biggest stories of the year with some estimates already valuing it far in excess of a billion dollars. Continue to read the interview

Weather forecasting ceased to be the riskiest job in town a few years ago; it was replaced with reading the palm lines of the Internet. And yet there are enough people willing to wager their professional reputations with predictions of what the connected world holds in the future.

No one, however, predicted the emergence of new media where content, and by implication power, got democratized giving liberty and freedom of speech extended definitions. Blogs, user generated content, YouTube style videos, wikis, podcasts, social media and Internet radio and television have allowed individuals and start-ups to sidestep the Rupert Murdoch model of how media is owned and managed. The last half decade has seen consumers of news and entertainment getting a chance to play publisher, editor, journalist, entertainer and broadcaster themselves; some managed to find audiences of a size leaving the bigger corporations would give their left arm for.

For all the excitement so far, it is only the beginning; we have all tasted blood, it is time to go for the main course. The future is knocking on the doors; at the risk of playing soothsayer, here are some market, business and technology trends to watch out for. Continue reading »

Blogs, wikis and in-house social networks are the new ways companies are communicating internally. Interactivity and collaboration being the key to these forms of open conversations, the quarterly newsletter may just be passé.

Want to win five hundred rupees? Predict the television rating of the next test match between India and Australia. The qualifier: You need to be on the media planning team at Lintas to have access to the internal blog this contest is run on.

This is just one example of what you may call ‘Internal Communications 2.0’ – the tools of new media are now being employed by companies to enable its people to converse openly and freely. These work for start-ups and big companies alike and in situations where the workforce is under one roof or spread across many locations.

There are many platforms one can do these on, four of them being most commonplace for their respective advantages. Continue reading »