LinkedIn Shows Some Love to Companies
(March 21, 2008)


It's really time for your marketing department to get on board!

Today, my favorite business networking site has launched LinkedIn profiles for Companies. For years now I've been touting the benefits for companies to have their employees join this social networking site with the initial reaction always being protectionist. My point of view was always that the benefits of visibility out-weighed the potential for employee poaching.

Now, LinkedIn is mining existing non-personally identifying profile data as well as pulling data from Capital IQ to build profiles for companies. For those companies too small to belong to Capital IQ, profile information will come directly from employee (past & present) profile information.

On these private pages - you have to be logging in to see them - LinkedIn uses this information to show recent hires, related companies, recent promotions, as well as locations for employees. You'll see where people have worked and where they go when they leave, top schools which have educated your employees and common job titles.

Other information that gets posted which perhaps means that companies will now need to take a serious look at LinkedIn includes median age, median tenure and gender. Perception of a company can now be swayed by this knowledge - erroneous as it may be due to incomplete company data. For example, if only the techie-inclined or those looking for another job sign up to LinkedIn, then this data will be swayed one way or another. Is turnaround at a given company really that high? Do I really want to work at a company which is so male dominate?

Companies which belong to Capital IQ perhaps have a bit of an edge here, at least for the moment, however we'll see what happens with future updates to this section. The wiki-fication of these company profiles (next month) will apparently allow employees to edit company overviews and add company logos. I'm looking forward to seeing other modules developed for this section.

Here's how LinkedIn sees the site's section.

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