Towards the end of last year, my colleague Esteban announced the full roll out of our latest people search tool – “Faceted Search”. I’d like to give you an inside look at the process, principles, and decisions that went into designing that feature. Our overall goal was to create an inspiring and engaging experience on LinkedIn for finding people you already know, as well as discovering others you may find helpful.

I’d like to talk about a couple of key philosophies that drove our design approach on Faceted Search.

Data-driven approach

We strive to design based on a strong understanding of how people use the site. For example, we found that the average number of results per search on LinkedIn was well over 10,000, and a large portion of our searches were refinements on existing, broader searches. Looking at this data, we saw a huge opportunity to assist people in finding who they’re looking for, faster.

User-centered approach

We also conducted user interviews, lab tests, focus groups, and surveys to provide a strong picture of our users’ search habits and pain points when trying to find people on LinkedIn and elsewhere on the web.

These were a few of the initial observations we gleaned from those conversations. For e.g:

• People skip past navigation at the top of their page, in search of their results. Once they pass it, they don’t usually come back. Therefore we placed our refinements down the side of the page.
• Check boxes are more discoverable and easy to understand than links or other user interface selection elements because they provide a clear call to action, and enable easy and intuitive experimentation (including undo).
• Unchecked boxes better met peoples’ expectations of selecting what they want, as opposed to deselecting what they don’t.
• Users had a more intuitive and enjoyable experience when the results updated on the fly with each click, instead of being forced to click a submit button or wait for a page refresh.

This feedback then drove some core design principles for the project:

• Need for speed: The default experience now minimizes search calls, brings back facets faster
• A seamless user experience: We also don’t refresh a facet the user is currently interacting with, nor do we disable the in-use facet while refreshing results.
• Subtle user delight: Make sure the tool is discoverable, but not overwhelming (show a sample of functionality, with easy access to see more).
• Enable recognition instead of forcing recall: We introduced the ability to quickly create advanced searches directly from your search page last November. But we know it’s much easier for people to recognize what they’re looking for when it’s shown to them.

Facets not only help you filter your search results, but also create interesting “results” in themselves. They provide a summary of the search results, and bring forward the top ranking values for each facet, guiding further investigation and giving strong cues for further refinement. As you can see, we approached Faceted Search as an opportunity to enable a much more inspired and serendipitous exploration.

And finally, the value of people search lies in relationships that matter. So, we made “relationship” a prominent facet, allowing people to easily refine along many dimensions such as company, school or location, but then further narrow that down to people you know or could be easily introduced to (from your second degree of connections).

The response to faceted search has been tremendous, and we’ve seen significant increases in the number of searches by members since the release. We truly appreciate all the feedback we’re received from you both while testing faceted search as well as the user feedback you’ve provided after launch.

And we’re not done iterating. Please continue to send us your ideas and suggestions. There are three ways to do that: either as a comment on this post, through the feedback links at the bottom of the people search page, or @linkedin us on Twitter.

Filed under: New Features, Product Features, Work at LinkedIn

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Inside Look: Designing LinkedIn Faceted Search

Ed. note: This belongs to a series of posts on how web sites and services are integrating LinkedIn functionality using the LinkedIn API. Thanks to Marc Gingras, CEO and Founder at Tungle Corporation for his thoughts on the added value this integration brings to both Tungle and LinkedIn users.

Wouldn’t you love to know, each time you are invited to a meeting, the title, role and background of the people attending the meeting? Imagine if you had access to the power of a network of over 60 million business professionals – like LinkedIn – inside a calendaring application like Tungle.me.

Think about it… one-click access to a network of business professionals from across the globe, directly from a Tungle.me meeting invitation. Here’s a quick demo. More details after the jump.

How cool is that?

Now, when you access a meeting invitation that you’ve organized or been invited to through Tungle.me, you’ll see LinkedIn icons next to each attendee with a LinkedIn profile.

These icons give you one-click access to all the pertinent business information you want prior to the meeting (in this case the participants’ LinkedIn profile).

That’s pretty powerful, and that’s what comes when you combine the scheduling power of an application like Tungle.me with the world’s largest business professional network – LinkedIn.

This integration was really straight forward thanks to the thoughtful engineering of the LinkedIn team and their API.  The amount of time it took to add this capability to our services, is dwarfed by the benefit it will bring to busy professionals using Tungle.me’s easy scheduling service.

Sign up for Tungle.me here. You’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Filed under: api, Guest Authors

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Tungle.me integrates with LinkedIn to make scheduling meetings even easier

As Data Scientists we are regularly asked about interesting trends taking place on LinkedIn. One of the biggest trends in the professional space last year was the economic collapse. Reports from numerous sources all tell a similar story — the economic downturn has affected thousands of companies with millions of workers laid off.

At LinkedIn we have a unique view into the ebbs and flows of labor markets and one trend we noticed was there were beneficiaries of these large-scale upheavals.  In particular, we saw substantial spikes in user activity for the following 5 companies during major financial events:

• Barclays
• Credit Suisse
• Citigroup
• Bank Of America
• JP Morgan Chase

Each of these firms saw an increase in the LinkedIn activity of their employees, measured by member registrations or updates to the individual’s company title on LinkedIn. This activity coincided with key corporate announcements such as the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank Of America, or the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy announcement.

Talent flow during the financial collapse (Source: LinkedIn Data)

Where did all these employees go?  One hypothesis is that many of the employees left the financial industry.  According to the LinkedIn data set, that just isn’t true. There are a handful of people that did transition to other industries and start new careers, but most stayed in the financial space. To be specific, other than two acquiring companies (Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch and Nomura acquired Lehman Brothers’ franchise in the Asia Pacific region), Barclays was by far the biggest beneficiary, scooping up 10% of the laid off talent, followed by Credit Suisse at 1.5% and Citigroup at 1.1 %.

Have you noticed an interesting trend? Do you have a trend or data question you’d like us to answer? Please post them here and we’ll feature them in a future blog post.

Filed under: LinkedIn Analytics

See more here: 
Where did all the people go from the collapsed financial institutions?

This past November, we announced a partnership between Microsoft and LinkedIn to bring your LinkedIn Professional Network right within your Microsoft Outlook Inbox.

I’m happy to say that a Beta version of this functionality is now available.

Here’s what you can do today to start leveraging your professional network within Outlook:

1. Download the latest version of the Outlook Social Connector from Microsoft (Outlook 2003, 2007, or 2010 is required)
2. Once that is installed, download the LinkedIn Outlook Connector
3. Restart your Outlook and follow the instructions to connect your LinkedIn account to Outlook

As soon as LinkedIn and Outlook are connected, Outlook will start bringing in information about your LinkedIn network.  You should then start seeing profile photos and LinkedIn activity for any connection that e-mails you.

Here’s a quick one-minute demo (key benefits after the jump):

At LinkedIn, we believe every professional is more productive when their professional network is close at hand and available wherever they spend their professional time. Bringing this network into your inbox is thus an obvious extension to what LinkedIn does today and helps unlock several benefits:

• Keep track of what your LinkedIn connections are working on and thinking about – See the latest activity for any LinkedIn connection who e-mails you right at the bottom of that e-mail. See who they are connecting with, the articles they are reading and sharing, and the questions they are asking and answering. If they have a Profile Photo, you’ll see that too.
• Get the latest contact information for your professional connections – E-mail addresses, profile details, and photos from your LinkedIn connections will start appearing in an Outlook Contacts folder named “LinkedIn” – so now you’ll always have the latest contact information from LinkedIn close at hand. You’ll also be able to e-mail your LinkedIn connections by just typing their name into the Outlook “To:” box and letting Outlook fill-in the rest.
• Grow your LinkedIn network with ease – Click the green “Add” icon next to any email sender to easily invite them to join your professional network on LinkedIn.

We hope that this functionality starts bringing some of the benefits of LinkedIn to where you spend a majority of your professional time – your Microsoft Outlook inbox. This functionality is still in Beta, however, so any feedback on issues, problems, or features is very welcome. Feel free to leave this feedback using the comments below.

Learn more. Download. http://www.linkedin.com/outlook

Filed under: api, Applications, New Features, Product Features

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Now Available: Your Professional Network within Microsoft Outlook

Starting today, we bring you the ability to reorder the sections on your LinkedIn profile via drag-and-drop. This enhancement, one of the most highly-requested profile features from our users, gives you the ability to highlight the skills, expertise, and/or experiences that make you stand out.

Your profile is an important part of your online professional identity. At LinkedIn we’d like to provide you with all the tools you need to build and maintain a profile that can showcase your unique professional value. Now you’re in complete control over your professional brand. Given below is a quick demo of how it works:

Want to showcase your work experience or education above everything else? Do you want testimonials from your references to be the first thing people see when they find your profile? Have you synced your WordPress blog with your profile or built a great presentation with SlideShare that you want to feature? Now your LinkedIn profile offers the flexibility you need to put your best foot forward.

Customizing your profile’s section ordering is quick and easy. You will notice that the headers of each of the sections on your “Edit Profile” page now have handles that can be dragged. To reorder a section, all you need to do is click and drag one of these section headers up or down the body of your profile. When you release the mouse, the section will drop into place where you dragged it, and your adjustment will take effect immediately.

The ability to reorder the sections on your profile is just the first of a huge number of enhancements that are coming to your LinkedIn profile in the upcoming months. And, as always, we’d love to hear your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions about how LinkedIn can help you to represent, manage, and share your professional identity.

Filed under: New Features, Product Features, Tips & Tricks

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Reorder the Sections on Your LinkedIn Profile: Now You’re in Control

The past months have been enormously difficult for the global economy. The U.S. job market, in particular, has been hit hard with millions of lost jobs and an unemployment rate in the double digits. Economists claim the recession is over, but for many without a job – or sometimes in a job that does not inspire them – this sounds cruelly abstract. Landing a job, and ideally one they’re passionate about, is still a primary concern.

LinkedIn is in a unique position to connect millions of professionals with the best career opportunities from all types of employers – small and medium businesses and larger corporations.

The LinkedIn incentives available during the next two days (Jan 28^th and 29^th) are designed to:

• help job seekers reach out to hiring managers directly and be better prepared for interviews
• help employers post more of the positions they’re hiring for on LinkedIn

Our Jobs Stimulus site can tell you more.

Forward this offer to both job seekers and hiring managers and help your connections find their dream job, even in this economy.

Posted in In the News, Jobs, small-business

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LinkedIn Jobs Stimulus: Connecting Professionals with Job Opportunities

Ed. note: This belongs to a series of posts on how web sites and services are integrating LinkedIn functionality using the recently launched LinkedIn API. Thanks to Marcy Shinder, Vice President at American Express OPEN, for this week’s post.

We created OPEN Forum, American Express OPEN’s online community for business owners, to provide them with a place to connect and exchange insights that could help them build their businesses. We initially designed the site just for our business Cardmembers because we felt this “credentialization” as a business owner could help minimize the clutter that befalls some other networking sites. But, when we learned that LinkedIn was looking to open up its platform, it gave us an opportunity to extend the platform for many more business professionals while still maintaining the standards that our members are accustomed to.

With the LinkedIn API, millions of entrepreneurs and other business professionals on LinkedIn will now be able to actively participate in discussions on OPEN Forum by using their LinkedIn credentials – regardless of whether they are card members or not. Also, via the oAuth login, LinkedIn members can now engage with our industry experts and business owners on the Idea Hub, which features a wide array of videos and articles from business and social media thought-leaders like Guy Kawasaki (Alltop), Henry Blodget (The Business Insider), and Adam Ostrow (Mashable) among others.

Enabling more than 55 million business-minded members of LinkedIn to join the conversation on OPEN Forum provides more opportunities for our members to make those connections that can help them grow their businesses. I’m also excited about the possibilities for LinkedIn members to participate in the exchange of ideas that can help them in their own business endeavors.

I look forward to seeing you on OPEN Forum

Posted in api, Applications

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OPEN Forum, American Express’ community for small business owners is now OPEN for LinkedIn members

As a company that’s based on the mantra “Relationships Matter”; we want to make it easier than ever for you to find, organize and stay in touch with your business connections. Over the next few weeks, you will start seeing improvements to your LinkedIn address book that will help you be more productive. Feature details after the jump.

Browse and find your connections more easily

The most noticeable update is a new browse panel that allows you to browse your connections by their current companies, locations and industries. In addition, you can search your connections by entering their first name, last name or current company in the search box above the browse panel.

You can also browse your new connections and your connections who may have recently added a new connection by using the Recent Activity filter in the browse panel.

Mini-profiles and up-to-date contact information

View mini-profiles of your connections to see if they have changed their current positions, added any new connections or send them a message through a third column on the right.

You can look up contact information like phone numbers, email addresses and physical mailing addresses. You can also add this information yourself by editing the contact information of connections in your address book.

This new look offers the following additional features:

• Connections automatically tagged with keywords such as “colleagues”, “friends”, “partners” and “group members” based on information you provide when inviting them to connect with you
• Organize your connections into different groups via tags
• Send a message to multiple connections at once based on how you’ve organized them by tags

We look forward to hearing your feedback on these enhancements as we optimize their user experience. Note that these enhancements are currently in beta and you can opt-out of them during the trial period. Check out LinkedIn’s newly redesigned address book here.

Posted in New Features, Product Features, Using LinkedIn

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A better way to browse your LinkedIn connections

Ed. note. This belongs to a series of posts on how web sites and services are integrating LinkedIn functionality using the recently launched LinkedIn API. Thanks to Dan Seyer, VP Product Management at Ribbit for kicking off this series in 2010! And, wish you a very Happy New Year!

Ribbit Mobile provides a brand new way to manage your calls, messages, and phones. To get started, link your mobile phone to Ribbit – a simple process that takes less than a minute.  Once setup is complete, Ribbit transcribes your voicemail to text and sends it to you via text message and email. When online, you can make browser-based calls using your mobile caller ID. Ribbit also provides you with an unlimited message inbox, where you can read, listen to, and even share copies of your voicemail, and much more.

To enhance your experience of making and receiving calls online, Ribbit offers a powerful feature called Caller ID 2.0.  We designed Caller ID 2.0 so that you would know not only who is calling but also what the caller has been sharing online.  Many Ribbit Mobile customers are mobile professionals who are active on LinkedIn, so our team jumped at the chance to get access to the LinkedIn API.

As we participated in the early LinkedIn beta process, we discovered that LinkedIn was a perfect API partner. Once we had our developer API and secret key, we quickly built our first prototype. LinkedIn is now a key part of CallerID 2.0.

Today, when a call comes in or when you make a call, Ribbit Mobile reaches into the social web and finds the recent LinkedIn updates, Facebook updates, Tweets, and Flickr photos of the person calling you. If more than one match is found, Ribbit Mobile will ask you to select the right person.

How does it work?

To use Caller ID 2.0 with Ribbit Mobile, simply enter your credentials for your social feeds during setup.

Entering your LinkedIn credentials allows Ribbit to search your professional network and provide real-time updates.

Developing with the LinkedIn API was very straightforward.  OAuth allowed us to securely connect with LinkedIn and also present a “trusted” login interface that was familiar to LinkedIn users.  This is the same approach we are taking to allow developers to create Ribbit Mobile apps with the Ribbit API.  We’re looking forward to adding additional LinkedIn capabilities to Ribbit Mobile.

If you’d like to join our beta, you can sign up for Ribbit Mobile here.  Enter the invite code “LinkedIn” and we’ll send you an invite as fast as we can.

Posted in api

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LinkedIn powers Ribbit Mobile Caller ID 2.0