Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Instead of flipping through a ponderously long alphabetical index, I get a Mac OS-like directory display with the ability to apply custom tags to each of my relationships. Once I assign a role or functional area I get a much more workable index of 10 or 20 names described by a given tag. Because I customize the tags and manage the master list, I can also apply subjective descriptions of contacts' performance. In the future I'll be more likely to recommend a former colleague who is tagged, "UX, Interaction Design, Awesomeness" than "UX, meh".

For LinkedIn's power users, this beta is an organizational godsend. The only downside is that people who are inclined to tag their contacts probably already have hundreds of contacts, requiring at least a couple of upfront hours revisiting each contact to apply some "pro-meta" love. Just as documents are less findable and less useful without meta data, so are people. I kind of wish I'd been able to do this a couple of years ago.

We've recently seen a lot of activity from LinkedIn, including add-on applications from partners like SlideShare, and Amazon as well as tools for file sharing collaboration, blogs, and Twitter feeds. These professional social tools add up to a more broad self-representation and collaboration platform. I hope that LinkedIn will extend this thinking to their Connections features.

Could interesting pro-social visualization add-ons be far behind? I've already created and applied a "weak connections" tag, just in case.

Michael Beavers