LinkedIn just celebrated its 10th birthday and while co-founder Reid Hoffman chose to thank employees today for all they’ve done, last week CEO Jeff Weiner was talking about how he really wants the rest of us to stop thinking of it as just a digital resume.
I have to admit, that’s exactly what I thought of it as when I joined back in 2006. (To find out when you joined, just go to the Settings and it’s listed there under your name.) I initially resisted the invitations from colleagues to join in the same way today I resist all the My Calendar invites Facebook friends send.
It didn’t seem necessary since I wasn’t looking for a job at the time. (My Calendar really is unnecessary because Facebook will tell you when it’s my birthday if I want you to know it.) But, the invites kept coming and it began to make some sense to start creating an online network of professional associates.
Seven years later, I’ve got 500+ connections in that network and LinkedIn itself has over 225 million members, more than 3,700 employees and nearly $325 million in revenue according to The Next Web.
And LinkedIn has pretty consistently added new elements to their service over that time which have definitely taken it further than a basic online resume. There’s a visual timeline if you’d like to review their history.
Recently, they began rolling out “the ability to showcase your unique professional story using rich, visual content on your LinkedIn profile” to members in English speaking countries. Last year, I wrote about leveraging Pinterest to create something similar.
I haven’t had time yet to try adding the same visual elements to my LinkedIn profile, but here are some examples of how it could work:
Have you tried it yet? Any tips and tricks to share?
LPT 