Linkedin Changing its Tone

 We talked to them, considering it a means to better manage internal resources.  

How LinkedIn is changing and why some are not happy

By Michael Dempsey  the BBC

Technology of Business reporter

Social media is where we project a version of ourselves. And a pensive Dan Kelsall is nothing like his rowdy character on LinkedIn, the social media platform famously tagged "Facebook for suits".

In the online world the co-founder of Manchester marketing firm Offended makes sure his business lives up to its name. His posts stick out for the prevalence of profanity and no holds barred humour.

Offended specialises in guerrilla marketing, turning the world of corporate messaging and polished branding upside down. As the irreverent Mr Kelsall puts it: "We don't just get our own ads banned, we get ads banned for our clients too."

With 900 million of the world's professionals registering their personal CV and career attainments on the site, LinkedIn has become a valuable resource for head-hunters and human resources departments.

But over the last three years or so, this once staid community billboard of career updates and business launches has seen a change in tone.

Many posts have become more personal, featuring the emotional backstories of its members with accounts of childhood influences and admissions of failings and frailties.  This is a far cry from the hard-sell approach beloved of many corporate players and not everyone is happy. Critics murmur that these posts are more suited to the weekend musings of Facebook or the raucous tone of Twitter.

So what has triggered this change? According to Mr Kelsall, boredom with corporate marketing is one culprit.  It's hard to imagine, but Mr Kelsall once worked as a copywriter for a tax software firm, producing "some of the driest things I've written". He may not have enjoyed this time, but it did give him an insight into what pulls in readers.

"Consumers are less and less trusting of big brands. People are tired of boring marketing.

"The skill is to speak like your audience and be relatable to your audience. I've been on LinkedIn for seven years and I've got 66,000 followers. That's a really engaged audience."  ... ' 

Linkedin Leverages Data for Success Prediction

The Linkedin data begs for such studies to be done, should they be? 

LinkedIn ran undisclosed social experiments on 20 million users for years to study job success

By USA Today, September 28, 2022

A new study analyzing the data of over 20 million LinkedIn users over the timespan of five years reveals that our acquaintances may be more helpful in finding a new job than close friends.

Researchers behind the study say the findings will improve job mobility on the platform, but since users were unaware of their data being studied, some may find the lack of transparency concerning.  

Published this month in Science, the study was conducted by researchers from LinkedIn, Harvard Business School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology between 2015 and 2019. Researchers ran "multiple large-scale randomized experiments" on the platform's "People You May Know" algorithm, which suggests new connections to users. 

In a practice known as A/B testing, the experiments included giving certain users an algorithm that offered different (like close or not-so-close) contact recommendations and then analyzing the new jobs that came out of those two billion new connections....

Privacy advocates said some of the 20 million LinkedIn users may not be happy that their data was used without consent. .... 

Linkedin is Most Spoofed for Phishing

Not surprised, it has an element of respectability. 

Linkedin is most spoofed brand with Phishing  By Bill Toulas  in Bleeping Computer

Security researchers are warning that LinkedIn has become the most spoofed brand in phishing attacks, accounting for more than 52% of all such incidents at a global level.

The data comes from cybersecurity company Check Point, who recorded a dramatic uptick in LinkedIn brand abuse in phishing incidents in the first quarter of this year.

The second most mimicked brand is German package delivery DHL, which previously was at the top of the list. A contributing factor for this was the increased shopping during the holiday season. .... ' 

Linkedin Guide for Startups

Looks to be a good new guide from Linkedin: 

Franz, introducing our guide for startup founders.

At LinkedIn, we know that when leading the growth of a startup, founders often find themselves responsible for many goals-- building the product, attracting investors, growing a brand, and showing early revenue streams, to name a few.

That’s why we’re excited to share our latest guidebook,

From Concept to Revenue: A Founder’s Guide to LinkedIn, written to help founders:

Develop personal and professional brand

Rise above with thought leadership, Grow their LinkedIn following

Read Now

By tending to the details and following our best practices, we hope founders and their startups can maximize impact without compromising bandwidth or budget!  ..... 

Microsoft Plans a Re-Skilling with Linkedin

An interesting approach of Microsoft to use their data and marketing capabilities via Linkedin to target jobsand job markets.    Makes the assumption that Microsoft will be making the right calls with their forecasts.  

Microsoft Targets 50,000 Jobs with LinkedIn 'Re-skilling' Effort

In Reuters, Stephen Nellis,  March 30, 2021

Microsoft announced its intent to hire 50,000 people for jobs requiring technology skills over the next three years, as part of a broader campaign with professional networking site LinkedIn to re-skill workers affected by the pandemic for new fields. Microsoft said the placements will be within its "ecosystem" of companies that utilize or help sell its products. The push began late last year as pandemic-related business closures had a greater impact on service workers than on technology and other white-collar employees who could work from home. LinkedIn offered many paid digital skills training courses for free, ranging from software development to data analysis to financial analysis. The site said it will extend the free courses until year's end, while Microsoft and LinkedIn estimate that total enrollees have reached 30.7 million, up from an expected 25 million. ... ' 

Linkedin Plans to Lay off

Bell weather activity,especially when you would expect them to thrive in an era of increased job hunting and HR activity.

In A Scary Sign Of The Times, LinkedIn Plans To Lay Off 960 People    By Jack Kelly in Forbes

 In a sign of the times, with a little bit of irony, LinkedIn—the go-to social media site for white-collar professionals—announced that it is laying off 960 workers.

In an open memo from LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky to his employees, published on the platform, he wrote, “LinkedIn is not immune to the effects of the global pandemic. Our Talent Solutions business continues to be impacted as fewer companies, including ours, need to hire at the same volume they did previously.”    ... ' 

Microsoft Project Cortex: Optimizing the Enterprise ?

Was reminded of this, announced generally last year.    It actually has similarities to some things we discussed with Linkedin a number of years ago: To use a company's internal organization chart, enhanced by a 'knowledge graph', to provide more intelligent and efficient internal and external communications further driven by AI.   A more precisely semantic way to organize how cloud/data is linked to task/process?  To ultimately optimize how a company works?  Following.

Introducing Project Cortex

Project Cortex

Today, we’re pleased to introduce Project Cortex, the first new service in Microsoft 365 since the launch of Microsoft Teams. Project Cortex uses advanced AI to deliver insights and expertise in the apps you use every day, to harness collective knowledge and to empower people and teams to learn, upskill and innovate faster.

Project Cortex uses AI to reason over content across teams and systems, recognizing content types, extracting important information, and automatically organizing content into shared topics like projects, products, processes and customers. Cortex then creates a knowledge network based on relationships among topics, content, and people.

New topic pages and knowledge centers—created and updated by AI—enable experts to curate and share knowledge with wiki-like simplicity. And topic cards deliver knowledge just-in-time to people in Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and Office.  .... "

A Chatbot connected to Cryptocurrency Blockchain?

Very interesting idea of linking a chatbot with various cryptocurrency use possibilities.    A kind of assistant play.   Some suggested ideas about how this might be used.  Recall though that Facebook rumors don't often come true. 

Facebook has acquired Servicefriend, which builds ‘hybrid’ chatbots, for Calibra customer service

By Ingrid Lunden@ingridlunden in TechCrunch

As Facebook  prepares to launch its new cryptocurrency Libra in 2020, it’s putting the pieces in place to help it run. In one of the latest developments, it has acquired Servicefriend, a startup that built bots — chat clients for messaging apps based on artificial intelligence — to help customer service teams, TechCrunch has confirmed.

The news was first reported in Israel, where Servicefriend is based, after one of its investors, Roberto Singler, alerted local publication The Marker about the deal. We reached out to Ido Arad, one of the co-founders of the company, who referred our questions to a team at Facebook. Facebook then confirmed the acquisition with an Apple-like non-specific statement:

“We acquire smaller tech companies from time to time. We don’t always discuss our plans,” a Facebook spokesperson said.

Several people, including Arad, his co-founder Shahar Ben Ami, and at least one other indicate that they now work at Facebook within the Calibra digital wallet group on their LinkedIn profiles. Their jobs at the social network started this month, meaning this acquisition closed in recent weeks. (Several others indicate that they are still at Servicefriend, meaning they too may have likely made the move as well.)  .... "

Linkedin Recruiting Spies

As might be expected, as a vast public collection of detailed HR data, with the ability to follow through with extended communication, it could be used to recruit anyone for anything.

LinkedIn reportedly used by some nations to recruit spies   By Trevor Mogg in DigitalTrends

LinkedIn isn’t only an excellent way to find new business opportunities and network with others who work in the same field. It’s also a great way for foreign powers to recruit spies, according to a New York Times report published on Tuesday, August 28.

The practice has been going on for a number of years, the report claims, with Western counterintelligence officials from several nations warning some individuals to be wary of foreign agents using the social networking site for recruitment purposes. Officials speaking to the Times described Chinese spies as “the most active” on LinkedIn.  .... " 

Whats Your Data Worth?

Further look at the value of data in context.

What’s Your Data Worth?
James E. Short and Steve Todd   in SloanReview

Many businesses don’t yet know the answer to that question. But going forward, companies will need to develop greater expertise at valuing their data assets.

In 2016, Microsoft Corp. acquired the online professional network LinkedIn Corp. for $26.2 billion. Why did Microsoft consider LinkedIn to be so valuable? And how much of the price paid was for LinkedIn’s user data — as opposed to its other assets? Globally, LinkedIn had 433 million registered users and approximately 100 million active users per month prior to the acquisition. Simple arithmetic tells us that Microsoft paid about $260 per monthly active user.

Did Microsoft pay a reasonable price for the LinkedIn user data? Microsoft must have thought so — and LinkedIn agreed. But the deal generated scrutiny from the rating agency Moody’s Investors Service Inc., which conducted a review of Microsoft’s credit rating after the deal was announced. What can be learned from the Microsoft–LinkedIn transaction about the valuation of user data? How can we determine if Microsoft — or any acquirer — paid a reasonable price?  ... "

Linkedin Adds Glint

Nice to see additions added to the capabilities of Linkedin.   Have long thought there were lots of useful enterprise resources that could leveraged by the quantity and specifics of data here. What will Glint add?

LinkedIn acquires employee engagement platform Glint
By Ingrid Lunden @ingridlunden in TechCrunch

LinkedIn, the social network for the working world with close to 600 million users and now under the wing of Microsoft, has announced an acquisition as it continues to work on expanding the ways that people already on the platform use it. It has acquired Glint, a startup that provides employment engagement services for businesses and other organizations.

Terms of the deal are not being disclosed. For some context, Glint had raised nearly $80 million — including these rounds for $27 million and and $20 million in the last two years — was valued at around $220 million in its last round according to PitchBook. Investors included Bessemer Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Shasta Ventures and Meritech Capital Partners.

The news was announced both by LinkedIn and Glint itself in blog posts.

Daniel Shapero, VP of Talent Solutions at LinkedIn, said that the team from Glint will join LinkedIn and continue to work as a salient entity within it under current Glint CEO and founder Jim Barnett. ... " 

Linkedin Does Company Resource Intelligence: Talent Insights

Been waiting for this for some time, based on conversations with Linkedin long ago.  The data and architecture is there.  Analyzing any company, your competitors, your clients, even your own company to determine what disruption it is ready, or not ready for.   What are the resources costing?  Cost effective?  Where are they lacking?  What kind of resources could be augmented with AI?   And lots, lots more.  Your company is defined by its resources, so shouldn't you analyze them?  What resources do you specifically have for a given project.  Get them together!  How does your data link to people resources?  Lots more to consider about how this could be used.

LinkedIn steps into business intelligence with the launch of Talent Insights   By Ingrid Lunden  @ingridlunden  in TechCrunch

LinkedIn  may be best known as a place where people and organizations keep public pages of their professional profiles, using that as a starting point for networking, recruitment and more — a service that today that has racked up more than 575 million users, 20 million companies and 15 million active job listings. But now under the ownership of Microsoft, the company has increasingly started to build a number of other services; today sees the latest of these, the launch of a new feature called Talent Insights.

Talent Insights is significant in part because it is LinkedIn’s first foray into business intelligence, that branch of enterprise analytics aimed at helping execs and other corporate end users make more informed business decisions.

Talent Insights is also notable because it’s part of a trend, where LinkedIn has been launching a number of other services that take it beyond being a straight social network, and more of an IT productivity tool. They have included a way for users to look at and plan commutes to potential jobs (or other businesses); several integrations with Microsoft software including resume building in Word and Outlook integrations; and adding in more CRM tools to its Sales Navigator product.   ... "

Robots in Skype Need to Augment Meetings

Not normally a user of Skype, but I have some correspondents who use it.   So I revisited the current Skype system as I needed it.    There has been some controversy about recent re-design.   I loaded it up on an older i-Pad and saw they had added a column of available 'robots' you could interact with.  This option did not show up on i-Phone or Windows versions of Skype.

The robots appear to be skills that can be talked to,  perform various actions. I like the general idea, I may want intelligent support for things I do on Skype.   Even participants in conversations I am having on Skype.  I need a meeting set up with Skype.  Say add a particular kind of expert agent, human or AI, to support a domain I am not up to date in.   Perhaps they could solicit those resources from Linkedin?   Office could take notes.  Azure AI could cross reference them.  Perhaps Cortana could act as a go between in negotiating setting it up?

So now that MSFT has Linkedin, Skype, Teams, Office and Cortana, why not integrate the capabilities with these robots.  Based on my quick look at what was being offered the robots were not doing the right level of skill integration.  All the components are there, so why not?    Microsoft, if you want help with designing this, contact me.

Hands Free Skype Calling via Cortana, and Beyond?

I see you can now do Skype calling hands-free.   A use of Cortana that is fairly obvious.  And one of the few assistant-type serious interactions from Microsoft. I am waiting for.  Would also like some real intelligent integration with their Linkedin acquisition.   Say a search of Linkedin using pattern recognition to extract particular kinds and depth of expertise, and then engaging these people to filter into a team.  And further into an application. And ...   From in our outside your company?

Chaos Engineering at Linkedin

Have only interacted with 'Chaos engineering' once.   In particular to look at the broader idea of maintaining process models.  Here a technical view of it used with a popular service. 

Chaos Engineering at LinkedIn: The “LinkedOut” Failure Injection Testing FrameworkLike  | by Daniel Bryant in Infoq

The LinkedIn Engineering team have recently discussed their "LinkedOut" failure injection testing framework in more detail. This framework supports the generation of hypotheses about application and service resilience, and enables failure to be injected to a specific request via the LinkedIn LiX A/B testing framework or via data in a cookie. Failure scenarios that can be tested include errors, delays and timeouts. The LinkedOut project is part of the larger "Waterbear" initiative to encourage every team at LinkedIn to contribute to resilience engineering efforts.   ... " 

Microsoft Responds: AI in Office Apps

I complained just the other day about Microsoft not doing enough in leveraging intelligence for the office.   Colleague Walter Riker sends along a 17 minute Youtube briefing about what they are doing, and it is impressive.  Especially interesting what they are doing with new, big acquisitions like Linkedin.  Also deeper connections with Cortana.   Make our business process easier.   Always looking for more.

Microsoft Mechanics
AI in Microsoft Office apps,   17 minute briefing
  
Microsoft Office is infused with artificial intelligence (AI) throughout app experiences to save you time and help you do your best work; from authoring in Word to designing slides in PowerPoint, automatically analyzing data in Excel (with the Excel Insights preview) and more. In this episode of Microsoft Mechanics, Jeremy Chapman is joined by Jack Elmore to take a hands-on demo tour of updated AI-driven capabilities across core Office apps, Office 365 services and other infused AI capabilities in the context of Office. .... " 

Microsoft Teams vs Slack

Almost everyone I now talk to now is setting up a Slack channel.  Microsoft Teams is now happening, but still don't see it mentioned by clients.   Has to be a viable, free and easy to use option to compete.   Better links to Microsoft's Linkedin would also be appealing idea to recognize resources, internal and external.

Microsoft turns up heat on Slack with Teams group chat update
A Teams app directory is among the new features added to the company’s Office 365 group chat tool. Analysts say Microsoft is looking to match rivals like Slack in functionality.
               
 By Matthew Finnegan ... in Computerworld

Alexa and Cortana not in Partnership yet

Noted this with interest last year.  I did test it later last year and got a recognition of Alexa from within Cortana,  but nothing more.  It would be interesting to see a significant partnership occur between assistant systems, knowledge, architecture and data.   In some areas, like in Linkedin,  Microsoft already has a massive architecture and database of jobs, people and companies.  Could that be a place where a real collaboration could start?   That would be a novel collaboration between people and assistant systems.

Amazon and Microsoft have yet to roll out their smart assistant partnership    By Ashley Carman  @ashleyrcarman  in TheVerge.    ..... 

This was also noted in Thurott:

" ....  For those that have been looking forward to this announcement, the delay is not good news and is likely disappointing. But, based on the responses from both companies, hopefully, we will hear something soon, possibly at CES next week. .... " 

Thinking Forward about Enterprise Collaboration

Have followed the question of efficieint collaboration, and finding the resources to collaborate for some time.  We even discussed it with Bill Gates during the announcements of the earliest versions of Windows.   Now with Microsoft's acquiring Linkedin, there is even more opportunity to think about an architecture of collaboration.  And AI points us to some means of improving the process and measurement of collaboration.  Some good opinion thoughts below, but does it have to be won by a vendor, or is that inevitable?

How Microsoft can win the upcoming collaboration wars
Its product lineup is confusing at best, but it could still come to dominate this emerging market.       By Preston Gralla in ComputerWorld

 It’s the perennial question: What’s the next big thing in the enterprise? Plenty of people and companies are betting that it’s collaboration tools that improve workers’ productivity by letting them easily work together, whether they’re across the hall or around the world from each other. The research firm Market and Markets, for example, estimates that the enterprise collaboration market will grow from $26.69 billion in 2016 to $49.51 billion by 2021 — a compound annual growth rate of 13.2%.  .... " 

Resume Assistant for Linkedin

Always thought there was good opportunity here.  More still exists by linking capabilities to needs, and in meetings to tasks to be done.   And how about linking to dialog in email streams?

"Resume Assistant” uses LinkedIn’s data to make Word a better résumé builder
One of the first fruits of the LinkedIn purchase should make an unpopular task easier.  By Peter Bright

 Writing and updating your résumé is a task that few of us enjoy. Microsoft is hoping to make it a little less painful with a new feature coming to Word called Resume Assistant.

Resume Assistant will detect that you're writing a résumé and offer insights and suggestions culled from LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a vast repository of both résumés and job openings and lets you see how other people describe their skillsets and which skills employers are looking for.

The feature will also show job openings that are suitable for your résumé directly within Word, putting résumé writers directly in contact with recruiters.

Matching up job applicants with recruiters is LinkedIn's biggest revenue generator, and integrating Word into this business was one of the immediate priorities that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described when explaining the purchase. In addition to bolstering that recruiting business, the integration is monetized more directly, too, as Resume Assistant has some connections to paid services. Specifically, it can promote online training through LinkedIn Learning to help shore up any gaps. If you want more help than the automated suggestions can offer, LinkedIn can connect you to professional résumé writing services through its freelance marketplace. ..... "