Friday, June 30, 2006

What's GoingOn at AlwaysOn?

See, that's what happens when you go on holiday. You come back and someone's moved your online network!

I logged on to AlwaysOn, only to find a holding page saying that the network had now moved to GoingOn, which is apparently the "network of networks".

My previous profile, connections, etc have been wiped (or at least I can't find them) and AlwaysOn is now a sub-network within GoingOn.

Having recovered from this, and explored the site a little, it looks an interesting development.

Essentially, GoingOn allows you to create your own branded online network community. It's allows you to search networks by tags, incorporates blogging (both internally and externally) and already has 33 networks and 40,000+ members in beta.

Looks like one to watch. I shall explore further!

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Friday, June 16, 2006

This Ecademy article is right on the money

This article was posted yesterday on Ecademy and it is so on the money: 17.5 Get Rich Quick Secrets Guaranteed proven to work by the ten biggest corporations in the Known Universe

It's really caught the mood of many of the members because it's basically taking the p*** out of a growing trend on Ecademy.

Anyone who's read a "how to make a million in six months" or "the secrets of becoming an Internet billionaire" advert or web-page will be familiar with this approach. And, in recent months, there's been a growing number of members who are using the same style with their Marketplace Adverts.

Some point the finger to Fraser Hay and the Red Hand Gang. They just seem to be everywhere on the site at the moment and have certainly changed the feel of Ecademy (check out this blog thread). In fact, Fraser's Book "How to Make Money on Ecademy" is heavily promoted & seemingly endorsed on Ecademy (it's also free for Blackstar's and Annual PowerNetworkers).

I think we'll be seeing more of this banter on Ecademy. Should be good for a laugh.

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Thursday, June 15, 2006

Could it soon be time to remove your email address?

It was interesting to read Konstantin's comments on a post recently that "if needed, we may suppress profiles from the search results where LinkedIn profile fileds (sic) are misused".

Although it's in the often quoted user agreement, a lot of people break the user conduct rule which states that you should not "Post content in fields that aren’t intended for that content. Example: Putting an address in a name or title field."

LinkedIn seem to turn a blind eye to this as Konstantin says, "this problem is not upsetting our members as much as unwelcome invitations".

But, at some point, this attitude may change and it's highly likely that LinkedIn will use a tactic like "profile suppression" for those who continue to break the rules.

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Monday, June 12, 2006

Ever wondered what happened at an Ecademy event?

Ecademy have started running live Skypecasts of their London events.

I think this is a great move. It allows global members of Ecademy to see what's happening at the official London event and if you log on to the live Skypecast you can "chat" with fellow Ecademists. What an excellent way to extend the online networking experience. I'm planning to join the next Skypecast on 18th July so if you're there, let me know and we can chat in the back row. Shush! :-)

They have also archived videos of the presentations made at the last event on 6th June. You can watch them here.

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Friday, June 09, 2006

6400+ contacts but only 3 friends

I've been playing around on MySpace, just trying to get the feel for it, get my profile up and running, etc.

Anyway, thought I'd search for some "friends" to add...and that's where I hit a problem.

For a start, hardly anyone uses their real name there so when you search...how do you know who they are?

So I thought I'd upload my contacts and search for them by email. I'm not expecting many of my LinkedIn contacts to be there, different set of demographics, but worth a try.

Trouble is...I couldn't upload them. There were too many and MySpace just kinda broke. Ooops

So here I am...6400+ contacts on LinkedIn and 3 friends out of 70 million on MySpace (and one of those is the guy who automatically joins you when you sign up). Sad.

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Thursday, June 08, 2006

Top Marks to Toplinked.com...just for fun ;-)

I recently added myself to Toplinked.com (you can do that by adding "toplinked.com" somewhere on your LinkedIn profile and then posting a comment to their site).

I've posted about the site many times before and, when I added myself, I mentioned why this blog is called Linked 'n' 37.

As a gesture, they've re-ranked me to #37 with a footnote that "* Note that David Regler being listed as #37 (instead of as #38 where he currently is actually) is not a typo" :-)

These guys have a sense of humour. Actually, I say guys because no-one actually knows who runs this site...but I did some sleuthing and I think I have a pretty good idea.

Also, they've awarded Marc Freedman the "TopLinked Liar Award" as they have him currently ranked at #119 with around 3,600. But his profile says "Proud 17,000+ connections".

Marc always makes me smile...still looking forward to his 11 Dirty Little LinkedIn Secrets :-)

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Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Eleven Dirty Little LinkedIn Secrets

Every now and then something comes along that just grabs you. When Marc Freedman started promoting this teleseminar I just had to register.

Now, I don't know just what those 11 Dirty Little LinkedIn Secrets are going to be, and maybe I already know them, but I'm guessing it'll be an amusing call at least. And it's only $15 US...got to be worth it.

For those who don't know, Marc's probably one of the most controversial characters on LinkedIn (see my post "How (Not) to Get Banned from LinkedIn" ) so this should be fun...as long as LinkedIn don't stop it ;-)

Marc's running the teleseminar on Fri July 7 1pm CT.

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Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Inviting under the radar

I'm not sure if it's anything to do with limits imposed on the number of invitations you can send, or maybe just because LinkedIn have started to come down on mass-invites, but I've noticed the following trend...

Rather than an invite being sent through LinkedIn, people have been sending me an email asking me to invite them or confirm I'm open to an invitation and then they'll invite me.

This is an interesting development as it gets around the accusation of using LinkedIn to SPAM, and therefore risking having your account suspended. Plus, you can't get declined or reported because you're not actually sending an invitation.

Using this method for blanket emails could still evoke LinkedIn's wrath if an accusation of SPAM gets back to them (I've noticed some people are doing this with emails taken from the LinkedIn LIONS group, all of whom are supposed to be "open" to receive unsolicited invitations) but, as a way of inviting people with their email address in their header it's a good strategy. Plus, it allows you to develop a dialogue outside of LinkedIn and, therefore, you're only inviting people that you already know.

Hey, we're getting close to LinkedIn's User Agreement here...careful now ;-)

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Friday, June 02, 2006

Up to your limit? Have you been a good boy?

Something that not many people have paid attention to is that, a while back, LinkedIn capped the number of invitations you can send for life at 3000.

Now, for most people, that's not an issue, particularly if you play by the rules. But for anyone who's been seriously inviting new contacts and taking full advantage of LinkedIn's own Outlook upload tools, then you've probably already exceeded this limit. (btw, those days are over!)

In that case, LinkedIn probably gave you 500 more to play with.

Want to check? Click on the big "add connections" button in the top right hand corner of the home page and then, on the next page, you'll see a note on the right hand side "Please note: You can send XXX more invitations." (the XXX being how many you have left).

But, fear not, if you run out of this final allotted amount you can apply for more.

In a recent Yahoo!Group post, Konstantin explained the procedure:

If feedback from invitees has been average or above from mass inviters, the limit gets raised 500 invitations at a time. You don't have to be a model citizen.

It's 200 if users are just below the average and 100 if they are way below--the 100 are there basically to demonstrate that users are willing to target invitees more carefully and write more compelling invitation messages (resulting in higher acceptance rates and fewer complaints/declines).

So there you have it. If you keep your nose clean, don't get too many complaints or declines, you can get another 500.

I like Konstantin's phrase "You don't have to be a model citizen." :-)

LinkedIn know they have a number of people on their network who, maybe in the early days, helped LinkedIn grow by inviting thousands. Now they've got the numbers, they need to reign these people in otherwise, in LinkedIn's view, this same element could drive away the people already there.

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