Hello and welcome to episode 105. It's great to finally be seeing signs that winter is behind us, I love the spring it's probably my favourite time of the year!

There have been quite a lot of interesting articles about LinkedIn this week so the news segment is somewhat longer than normal.

The articles I cover are;

The LinkedIn faith debate
Bikinigate and the profile of Candice Galek
Virgin flights will now have Lynda
This designer has come up with an interesting new design for the LinkedIn app

I also mentioned about the changes to LinkedIn contacts and how the "How are you met" feature has been moved into the notes section.

LinkedIn are about to release a completely new look design to their settings page, it's clearly taking its design from the mobile app.

LinkedIn’s to do list

This week linkedIn's most popular feature ‘who viewed my profile’ broke down and at the time of recording it hadn't been fixed. I'm sure this feature will be fixed very soon but it got me thinking about all those areas and features of LinkedIn that have been left broken.

It strikes me that LinkedIn are very keen to keep introducing lots of new shiny features but perhaps they ought to draw a line in the sand and fix or completely remove there broken features before adding anything new.

Here is my list of things that LinkedIn need to fix;

Remove the redundant ‘subject’ box in connection messages (when sent from their profile)
Followers should be listed separately to first tier connections
Followers need a label to show their level of connection (2nd, 3rd, group etc)
Add links to send InMail and follow to the brief ‘cards’ of followers
Display the customised message in received invitations on desktop when hovering over the invitations icon.
Display connection level for fellow group members.
Develop an algorithm to remove quiz like status updates
Allow keyword search of group members (in the group).
Remove fake profiles
Add a ‘select all’ function to messages
Improve the ‘Jobs that might interest you’ algorithm.
Add a link to the profile of the person being introduced in the introduction message
Fix ‘who’s viewed your profile’.
Fix the NOT command in advanced search
Phrases surrounded by “ “ in advanced search should give only results of that exact phrase, Not words within that phrase.
Show the chosen qualities is selected in recommendations
Synchronise notifications between the mobile app and desktop versions
Add a sent folder for messages.

Cool thing

This week's cool thing is a Gmail plug-in that is owned by LinkedIn called Rapportive.

This will show you information about the person who has emailed you from their LinkedIn profile and provides a link to view their profile.

Irrational Optimism and Chesterton’s Theology of the Ordinary - Lydia Webster