Congratulations on Microsoft's $26B bet that LinkedIn will help impact your cloud business, expand your total addressable market while expanding your social network effect. Its even comforting to hear that LinkedIn even "aligns with your core business and overall sense of purpose."
That's wonderful news, but what about the network itself?
What about those 433 Million users in the network who are currently frustrated using a broken platform that has less functionality than just a few months ago...What about us???
The truth is there are a few simple fixes you can complete 30 days after deal close that will immediately impress your new customers. Maybe you could divert a few million from your marketing budget into programming and actually demonstrate to your new network that Microsoft actually "gets it" and reflects your understanding of the true needs of a social network trying to use their connections for commerce. Deliver this and you will be loved and appreciated.
Here is a place to start:
1) Let me add notes, contact info and "Tag" people that are not yet a 1st connection. Eliminating this functionality is causing more people to "blind connect", a behavior you actually warn against.
2) Multiple messaging. Allow me to send multiple messages to my connections at once with a BCC function. This ability was also eliminated a few months ago.
3) Let me see a persons contact information if they choose to make it public. Again this was eliminated a few months ago (see the trend here).
4) As there is no easy way to toggle from a Tag list and back, why cant I have a simple message function directly from the tag file?
5) Allow me to edit my Tags. Yup, this has been broken for months.
So, these are easy wins for your 30 day plan. Here are a couple ideas for your future road map that will make LinkedIn even more valuable to users.
A) Allow me to search my notes. The search feature among the profile database is great, but why not include the notes I've added? Sounds like something Google would do...
B) Having 500 connections used to be a solid indicator of people who use LinkedIn regularly. No longer. Maybe consider indicators at 1500 and 2500? Everyone I know has at 500 users so the data point has minimal value.
D) Raise fees. I've been a member since July 2007 and have paid the same monthly fee for the past 9 years as Reid initially promised. My network is exponentially more valuable to me today and you can improve that even further by adding additional search & contact functionality. I'm willing to pay more if you will help me get more from my LinkedIn account. Lets do that, its win-win.
I use my account multiple hours every day and have a longer list of areas to improve both simple and complex. I'm happy to share any time you would like to spend an hour chatting with a disappointed and hopeful power user. For now, I'd be thrilled if you make these simple suggestions and the ones in the comment section below.
