Continental Shelf

I recently wrote about the good and bad aspects of the LinkedIn professional networking site. Since then, I’ve discovered or explored some of the good features a bit more and I wanted to share the information.

Languages

Since last November 18, LinkedIn offers the option of saving your profile in 44 different languages. For example, I just created mine in French in addition to the basic English version. Fortunately, it’s a lot faster to create the additional versions after the first because LinkedIn obligingly displays what you wrote in English so you don’t have to go back and forth to gather your data.

Unfortunately, these multi-lingual alternate profiles are still only visible to your connections; your public profile remains in English. But my understanding is that this will change in the future.

But that’s not all! Since July 2008, the entire interface had been available in Spanish as a beta feature; and since November 25, it is also available in French. If you have international dealings with Latin America, Spain, France, Quebec, Belgium, and many more countries, this means you have a new reason to invite your international contacts to LinkedIn and expand your online network.

Edit: AND Questions are now available in Spanish, French, and Portuguese, so you can extend your visibility and show your expertise in these languages, even without creating an alternate profile.  w00t!

Using the apps for conversation

I talked in my previous post about the new applications that have been released for LinkedIn in the last two months. Although they are still few and still sometimes hiccupping, they offer great potential for really making LinkedIn more than an extension of your address book.

I have been particularly pleased with the WordPress application, which posts a feed of WordPress blogs to your profile and informs your contacts that you have a new entry; and with the Amazon reading list, which allows you to share notes and reviews about books that might be of interest to your contacts.

What I love about these is that they allow you to have more meaningful and varied exchanges with your contacts on topics that are both substantive and more personal than the basic feed about who is connected to who, and the questions and answers section that is broadcasted at large.

You may discover that you have a lot more in common with someone by reading their thoughts in a blog or from their book recommendations; hopefully, this may spark more conversation than learning that they now have X+1 connections in their network.

The new applications also give users a chance to send their contacts an unobtrusive yet visible reminder every few days. The Amazon reading list, in particular, is an indirect but excellent opportunity to do what Jason Alba calls blogging without blogging.

This version is a little different, because it’s not a case of leaving thoughtful comments on other people’s blogs; but it is your chance to leave some personal thoughts along with your book evaluations. I strongly recommend putting a little explanatory text, even a full-scale review, rather than just leaving a rating. Writing one or two sentences explaining your impression of the book gives your contacts some insight into your thoughts and your personality, a chance to know you a little better.