A couple of weeks ago I connected with Chris Rollyson who writes the Executives Guide to LinkedIn and we had a phone conversation about what we were both doing with LinkedIn. Chris then emailed me to introduce me to Vincent Wright, saying we had to connect. I sat on the email for about a week and then emailed Vincent who suggested that I call him.
Yesterday I finally called and what a great conversation. Vincent has created close to 100 different groups under the banner of www.mylinkingpowerforum.com. All of these groups are designed to get people connecting and interacting. Many of his groups are LinkedIn based but they are meant to go above and beyond LinkedIn.
Vincent has been a long time advocate for LinkedIn, but what he’s really doing is fostering communities. He has around 9,000 people in the various groups. Some groups have a lot of members (I am number 2,552 in one) and some have a few (2 members in one). There’s bound to be a group that you can join and find value. I recommend that you start with the main group www.mylinkingpowerforum.com and then check out what other groups might interest you.
I don’t know how he finds the time but he posts various article in a number of groups. They are always positive and uplifting. If you have the time, check out his site. If you don’t have the time, find it and check out his site.
It seems like only weeks ago (and it was) that I moved the blog to the gotlinkedin.com domain. Well it appears we will be moving once again. My original thought was that since this blog is about LinkedIn that it just made sense to include the word LinkedIn in the title. This site is designed to help people better utilize LinkedIn, so in essence it is advocating LinkedIn.
Now anyone reading this site would find it impossible to be confused and assume that it is sponsored by LinkedIn. They would be hard pressed to believe that it detracted from LinkedIn in any form. But the writing is in the air. There’s this thing called Trademark law.
In recent weeks a prominent LinkedIn blogger has thrown in the towel fed up with the adversarial stance LinkedIn has taken with some of it’s earliest proponents. Another has had to change the url’s of numerous groups that championed LinkedIn. These are some of the heavy weights that benefited LinkedIn in it’s early growth. Compared to these guys I’m a newbie.
So sometime in the next couple of weeks or months I expect that I will receive a notice to stop infringing upon LinkedIn’s trademark through the use of the url GotLinkedIn.com. This is what happens when a company goes from a communial driven entity into a corporate driven entity.
I completely disagree with the rationel and think it’s somewhat heavy handed to step on the hands of the people that nurtured you along in the early days. (I’m not including me in this) That being said, the idea of LinkedIn and what it can represent to the thousands of professionals that are members is powerful.
Asfor me I’m going to step off of their shadow and will move the blog to a new domain sometime in the next week or so. The content will remain the same, only the name will be changed to protect the innocent.
Keep connecting, recommending and answering.
PS…if you came to this site expecting to find the original LinkedIn site please go to www.linkedin.com.
Even though I’m about to release a book on LinkedIn, I still take time to read other blogs about LinkedIn. Why? Because even though I know more about LinkedIn than the average person, I don’t know it all.
I learned something new today. I constantly remind people to personalize their profile URL’s. Today Jason Alba taught me how to personalize my website links as well. If you want to learn how to do this, view Jason’s entire post.
Read Full Post.
While we’re at it here are some other blogs you should check out:
Scott Allen’s LinkedIntelligence
Chris Rollyson’s Executive Guide to LinkedIn
Peter Nguyen’s LinkedIn User Manual
You’ll find a wealth of information if you can find the time to read these blogs.
Jason Alba at “I’m on LinkedIn now what” has posted a great post on canned invitation requests. The invitation is hilarious because:
1. The person in their invitation seems to be trying to sell Jason on what a great tool LinkedIn
2. Jason has already released a book on LinkedIn
Talk about not even taking the time to read a profile before blasting off an invitation. The moral of the stroy is if you are going to invite somone to connect, especially if you don’t know them, take the time to learn enough to personalize the invitation.
Read Jason’s full post
I received the final edits today and am putting the finishing touches on the book, so I have not put the time in to add new written content. But, there’s always a comic to post. Today’s comic answers the question of what if Freddy and Jason Voorhies connected (Actually I think the character is Michael Myers but I could never keep them straight).
And here’s a second one on LinkedIn answers.
That’s it for now. Next post will be the book release.
