LinkedIn Skills

Still new on the scene, the Linkedin Skills Endorsement feature is becoming VERY popular. It's a quick way to validate the experience and positive attributes of your connectons on this popular social site. What I'm seeing through daily use is that the skills garnering the most "endorsements" from others are being suggested most frequently to your connections upon their login to LinkedIn. That's skewing the value of counting the number of endorsements a person receives. Overall, the endorsements feature is a good idea but it's being implemented in a sideways manner. Its purpose is to gain more endorsements and credibility vouching from your connections. What's happening however, is the popularity of one skill over another has LinkedIn warping the accuracy of each person's job functions by "stacking" the number of endorsements to favor the ones currently with the most votes or endorsements. This endorsement "gathering strategy" should be altered by LinkedIn.  It's misrepresenting what you may really be good at, and doing so with help from your connections! They have to adjust the formula that recommends your skills at login ~ or be prepared for LinkedIn to "feed" your already fat skills and leave potentially more valuable and pertinent choices at bay.

Watch for more on this, I cannot be the only person watching this happen...

The Collection

Who believes I have a Hello Kitty collection? Good.It's Thanksgiving time in the USA. People eat, travel, visit, eat again, make bizarre purchases because things are on sale, vacation, dip into last minute projects to complete at work before year end - it is a pulsing atmosphere. I have chosen to move at this busy time, not all my doing, you tend to move when your "House for Sale" becomes sold. I'm going through things for an impending move next week and finding out just how much stuff a person can gather as you travel through a life. Something has to be done about this!

I have things in an attic, these are easily sorted and either kept or disposed of. I have things in closets. There are old Christmas cards from 15 years ago that will meet the recycle bin. I see stacks of VHS tapes and Iomega ZIP disks, remember those? I have race bibs and awards from events I don't remember entering. Clothes that since I haven't changed sizes, still fit. Fortunately styles have changed and that makes for a wonderful pile of Goodwill boxes and bags. Old board games, money in the form of rolled coins, tools, cleaning and home maintenance supplies, sporting goods, volumes of paperwork from old receipts to warranties for things I don't own anymore. Have you any idea how this happened? I am not a habitual pack rat, but I do have too many things. Moving clears the slate and allows for a new beginning.

Maybe it's age, maturity, exposure to yoga principles that seem to "simplify" how I think, but I have changed with regards to possessions. I have so many things, but what do I want and what do I need? I am believing now that my collection should consist of experiences more than things I can hold, plug in, move, dust or bring to a consignment shop. That's what the move is about. I no longer want a plot of Florida land that would label me as a farmer in some countries. I don't need a big home with all the trimmings. I need a comfortable and safe place to sleep and eat, a place to do family things but not too many, most of what we do is outdoors anyway! So I'll use this next few days off to adjust my collection. Some of it is coming to a new home with me. Some of it will find a new home with someone else. I'll have more time to chase experiences and travel and become closer to friends and family. That's the collection I'm concentrating on heading forward with.

Header and background graphics for Twitter

Twitter has added a new feature which "brightens up" the appearance of your Twitter profile. It is a large graphic that you can upload similar to Facebook's Cover Page. This graphic is large in size, 1252 pixels wide by 626 pixels tall with a max filesize of 5Mb. Twitter's new layout puts your existing Profile Photo smack in the middle of the new Header Image. See this example of mine...

 

You do not have to use a photo of yourself, some choose to use a company symbol or logo as their Profile picture. This new feature makes a Twitter business page more professional and attractive to potential followers. You can embed a phone number, website or blog or any other info you'd like in your Header Image graphic. Also popular and still available for your customization is the Background image. This is a smaller file, 800Kb that can be used behind your Twitter feed. Some choose to tile the image, or you have the option of leaving it as a single image and LEFT, RIGHT or CENTER justifying it. A teeny bit of creativity allows you to get a nice complimentary message across to viewers of your Twitter Profile through the use of the Background Image graphic. See this example from cNet below...   

Some niceties from the team at Twitter... wouldn't you agree?

Motivational Glimpses

Have you seen these yet? They are bits & pieces I find all over the web that resonate well with me - have a look! Just click on the link below, then click on any of the images, it will run like a slide show. You control left and right arrows to view the images.

http://davemasterson.com/glimpses/motivational/

I didn't make them, but I am responsible for finding them and sharing them with you! Enjoy

-dm

LinkedIn Skill endorsements

"Solve it with the click of a mouse." This should be the mantra of most software companies. To make something easier by automating the process or having it whittled down to simple computing steps is nirvana to us, the users. Of course with today's mobile devices and touchpads, the clicking of a mouse is getting to be old-fashioned. The folks at LinkedIn have added a new feature to each member's Profile. It allows your connections on LinkedIn to "vouch" for your proficiency in the Skills section of your Profile. As easy as selecting a person's stated skills and clicking on one or several of them, you can endorse that what they're claiming about themselves is true. Here's how it works...

In each LinkedIn member Profile, there is a section you can activate called SKILLS. Each member can designate up to 40+ skills they feel they bring to the party. That's been in place for nearly two years. What has been added is the ability for your connections to say, "Yes you do" have those skills. They do this by endorsing your skills one at a time.

This is what your Skills section of the LinkedIn profile looks like with a few endorsements...

It

What LinkedIn has done with this is made a significant "shortcut" to their Recommendations feature. People like getting LinkedIn recommendations, but it's a bit much asking your connections to write them. This new endorsement approach for the Skills section is just like a recommendation ~ with one click of the mouse, as shown below...

Just click that "+" graphic and your LinkedIn Profile picture will appear next to that person's skill, in this case Advertising. The connection you have endorsed can be notified via email and LinkedIn Inbox message that they have received an endorsement. As of now there is no "ask your connections to endorse you" feature. I kinda hope one doesn't appear. I believe the recoomendations and endorsements should come naturally. And they should come often, if you're good at what you do!

Well done, LinkedIn - let the frezied endorsing begin!