Microsoft has unveiled “Viva,” a new employee experience platform (EXP) designed to integrate with Teams and Microsoft 365.
EXP is a $300 billion a year industry and is more important than ever during the pandemic. While an unprecedented number of employees are working from home, the response to remote work has been a mixed bag. The majority of employees want it to continue indefinitely, but many still struggle to feel connected with their coworkers or access the same resources available in the office.
Microsoft is looking to address these issues with Viva, while simultaneously disrupting the EXP industry.
Today we’re introducing Microsoft Viva, the first EXP built for the digital era. Microsoft Viva brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights into an integrated experience that empowers people and teams to be their best, from anywhere. Powered by the full breadth and depth of Microsoft 365, it is experienced through Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft 365 apps that people use every day.
Viva will be rolled out in four modules: Viva Connections, Viva Insights, Viva Learning, and Viva Topics.
Viva Connections
Viva Connections is designed to help employees connect with each other, serving as the central point for employee interaction. This is especially useful for new hires who may never have been to the office or met their coworkers face-to-face. Leaders can host company town halls, while employees can access company news, policies, benefits and more, as well as join employee community groups.
Viva Insights
Viva Insights is designed to help employees, managers and leaders make better use of their time and prevent burnout. The module helps individuals maintain a healthy work balance, protecting time for breaks, focused work and learning. Managers can use the module to monitor the health of their team and see who is at risk of burnout, while company leaders can see overall trends impacting the entire organization.
Viva Learning
Viva Learning helps make learning a part of the everyday corporate culture. According to Microsoft’s LinkedIn, 94% of people would stay at a company longer if it invested in ongoing learning, making Viva Learning an important part of the platform.
Viva Topics
Microsoft describes Viva Topics as “a Wikipedia with AI superpowers for your organization.” It’s designed to save employees the estimated seven weeks a year spent searching for or re-creating information, putting all the company’s relevant knowledge and resources in a centralized place.
“There is no question that, over the last year, we have seen lasting structural change across ever aspect of our society and economy,” CEO Satya Nadella said when introducing Viva. “No area has undergone more rapid transformation than the way we work.”
“As the world recovers, there is no going back. Flexibility in when, where and how we work will be key,” Nadella added. “Today, we want to talk about what this means and how we’re ensuring every organization will have the technology required to support their employees and help them thrive in this new era of flexible work.”
The Biden transition team has selected David Recordon as the next White House Director of Technology.
Recordon is well-known in the open source community. He is one of the developers behind OpenId and oAuth, he has served as Engineering Director at Facebook and even served as the first Director of White House Information Technology under President Obama.
Recordon made the announcement of his appointment on LinkedIn:
I’m honored to have the opportunity to join the Biden-Harris administration’s White House senior team and am excited to both rebuild past and create new relationships with the incredible teams of career civil servants, active duty military members, and intelligence professionals who make technology work day in and day out for such an important set of missions. The pandemic and ongoing cyber security attacks present new challenges for the entire Executive Office of the President, but ones I know that these teams can conquer in a safe and secure manner together.
Give his vast, and prior, experience, it’s a safe bet Recordon will be well-equipped for his new role.
iOS 14 has a number of significant privacy improvements, one of which has been a source of embarrassment for several high-profile apps.
Privacy was one of the highlights of Apple’s WWDC 2020 Keynote, with the company outlining the steps it is taking to improve the level of privacy it offers customers. One such feature is clipboard monitoring. In short, iOS 14 will alert a user when an app accesses the data currently held in the clipboard. Given that users often copy and paste bank account numbers, credit card numbers, passwords and other sensitive data, this is an excellent new feature.
Unfortunately for a number of apps, however, they don’t seem to have gotten the memo. In short order, TikTok, LinkedIn and Reddit and several others have all been called out for reading the contents of the iOS clipboard. These apps were all caught accessing the clipboard even when they were not the app involved in the copy and paste function. Basically, once they were opened, they started reading the clipboard’s contents. In the case of TikTok, it appears to have been accessing the clipboard every 1 to 3 keystrokes.
All three companies have pledged to release an update that will resolve the issue. LinkedIn and Reddit blamed the behavior on bugs, while TikTok said it was a measure designed “to identify repetitive, spammy behavior.” While some users may be willing to give LinkedIn and Reddit a pass, TikTok’s intentional use of the feature does not bode well for a company that is already accused of gross privacy violations.
Either way, kudos to Apple for helping put an end to this practice. iOS 14 can’t arrive soon enough.
According to Business Insider (BI), Piper Sandler analyst Brent Bracelin is predicting Microsoft could buy Salesforce if it became available.
Earlier reports by RBC Capital Markets predicted that Google may buy Salesforce in an effort to leapfrog Microsoft in the cloud market. Google is a distant third among U.S. cloud providers, and RBC did not see an organic way for the company to meet CEO Thomas Kurian’s goal of becoming the No. 2 provider within five years.
Bracelin, however, believes Microsoft would be the buyer, not Google. Specifically, the purchase could help Microsoft gain market share in the front-office application space, “the market term for software that helps salespeople and service reps keep track of their customers, which is an area where Salesforce specializes,” according to BI.
At this time, there is no evidence Salesforce is interested in selling. Even if it were, RBC believes a Salesforce acquisition could be valued as high as $250 billion, almost 10 times what Microsoft paid for LinkedIn, its largest acquisition to date.
One thing is certain: If Salesforce ever does go up for sale, there could be a major bidding war for the company.
According to Windows Latest, a recent LinkedIn job posting would seem to indicate that Microsoft is working on a version of Windows 10X for Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
Windows 10X is a version of Windows designed specifically for multi-screen hardware. The operating system (OS) will power the Surface Neo, expected in 2020, and is based on Windows Core OS. Windows Core OS is Microsoft’s effort to unify the different versions of Windows, running on different hardware. By having a single, core OS, it’s much easier for the company to then make minor adjustments to specific implementations to accommodate different hardware profiles.
According to the job posting, the successful candidate “will build the next generation IoT operating system based on Windows 10X.”
Not surprisingly, the job will be part of the Azure team, as Microsoft continues to make headway against Amazon’s AWS.
“Do you want to participate in enabling the intelligent edge vision with the Azure Core OS IoT team? The IoT team is on an exciting journey to enable industry platforms with a highly secure and supported OS that enables intelligent computing on diverse silicon at the edge….The team owns software stack both on the edge and complimentary services on the cloud that power innovative secure offerings like the recently announced ROS on Windows and Trusted Cyber Physical Systems. Our team is right at the forefront of defining and implementing what edge intelligence and computing looks like on IoT devices.”
A version of Windows 10X for IoT devices could be a big help to Microsoft’s Azure efforts, by giving administrators a common platform to work with.
Just a few years ago, most people barely acknowledged LinkedIn as a social network. “Oh, LinkedIn? I never really pay attention to that.” was a popular refrain. While most people were snoozing, LinkedIn was growing, and a combination of LinkedIn influencers and back-to-back rollouts of new features made LinkedIn the place for businesspeople to network online — and now offline, as well.
LinkedIn Influencers Are a Thing
The people who blazed the trail in the early days of LinkedIn’s expansion did so because they saw an opportunity to leverage this vast network where most people were completely asleep at the wheel. Influencers like Michaela Alexis, String Nguyen, Kerri Twigg, Tim Salau and more began to advise others how to optimize their profiles and make the most of the preferred social network of the big leagues. It was a global grassroots movement that achieved what it set out to do — get people to take LinkedIn more seriously. Now, LinkedIn can be used for everything from influencer marketing to reputation management for insurance agents.
Then Came LinkedIn Local
Once people began to take LinkedIn more seriously, networks began to grow to include more than just the 17 people in your office and one person you knew in college. It turns out you can actually connect with people you don’t know at all and get to know each other over LinkedIn, growing your network far beyond your physical barriers — sort of like thinking globally for networking.
As LinkedIn has grown, the network has developed new features to accommodate this new level of interest. You can turn on Find Nearby to find people you might already be connected to in a crowded conference, and you can generate a QR code to help people find your profile.
LinkedIn Live: The Next Big Thing From LinkedIn
One thing that has been consistently missing from the LinkedIn experience has been a true live streaming video. LinkedIn has had video capability for a while, but it has not been something that is interactive where you can see audience questions in real time and respond right there in the video.
Now LinkedIn Live is in beta. A few people across the world have access to it, and I am one of them. You can choose your video streaming service from an approved list, which includes Switcher Studio and others, to produce high-quality, engaging content.
The holdup has likely been related to figuring out how exactly to roll out a live video streaming feature that is going to uphold the professional feel of LinkedIn — we don’t really need another Facebook Live where people can make videos about their lunch on a whim.
My initial impressions are that this is going to be a great way to deepen professional relationships through the open sharing of information, and the biggest difference is that this sharing of information will now be collaborative thanks to real-time feedback and commentary.
If you want to prepare for the rollout of LinkedIn Live, polish up your profile and show that you can create high-quality, meaningful, and relevant content. It’s a great way to deepen your professional connections and grow your career.
SXSW Interactive has evolved over the past decade that I have been going. For starters, I’ve watched ridesharing services come, go, and come back again, but it doesn’t seem to help the traffic situation either way. This year there were scooters on top of everything, which come with their own set of issues. It was bigger and more crowded than ever this year, but SXSW is still the best place to learn about the cutting edge of business and technology as well as the latest trends.
Of particular note this year was the first ever tracks for blockchain and cryptocurrency as well as one for the business of cannabis. Both sectors are red hot right now, and while cryptocurrency isn’t always at the forefront of the news cycle these days, blockchain is more popular than ever.
The great thing about SXSW is that you get to peer into the future of technologies and businesses that most people don’t yet know exist, or in some cases that we often just take for granted. Here are the 5 biggest takeaways from SXSW 2019:
1 – LinkedIn went way bigger than last year.
From a tradeshow booth at the SXSW trade show to an entire creator lounge at Brazos Hall, LinkedIn was all in for SXSW 2019. There were multiple stations for a series of creator speeches that included Brian Solis and his new book, Lifescale, Goldie Chan on brand reputation, and Rosanna Durruthy, LinkedIn’s Head of Diversity. Numerous LinkedIn creators were filming live content, which is only available to a very small test group at this time. There was even a fireside chat with Mindy Kaling about how to live your best work life, which included tips like owning who you are and focusing on focusing.
This was my 10th SXSW over the last 11 years, and I’ve watched the city grow and get significantly more and more crowded during that time. Popular ridesharing services entered the city, got kicked out and made way for new local ridesharing services, and then the original ridesharing services finally returned. What I wasn’t expecting this year was to see an onslaught of scooters and the dangers that they entailed. According to CNBC, the number of scooters in Austin during SXSW from five different companies was around 9000, solidifying the trend of ‘micro mobility’. It was concerning to see so many scooters and so few people wearing helmets or obeying traffic laws, but as with any new technology there’s always going to be a learning curve.
3 – Crypto/Blockchain and the Cannabiz were the new kids on the block.
This marked the first year that SXSW had official tracks for cryptocurrency / blockchain and cannabusiness. Unfortunately, they were mainly happening after the SXSW Interactive days, so many of the business and marketing folk didn’t get the opportunity to learn more about these growing industries. This year at SXSW was the second annual Just HODL It event, which featured speakers from multiple blockchain and cryptocurrency startups. Among them was my friend Adryenn Ashley from Loly.io, who is using blockchain to develop a revolutionary dating app. The main crypto and blockchain track focused on the future of these technologies, how policy will affect their use and implementation, and what the future might hold.
4 – The Mercedes TechSet Lounge is SXSW’s best kept secret.
The TechSet lounge, hosted by Mercedes this year, has been the best place to grab some downtime for the last 12 years at SXSW. The lounge’s co-hosts were Brian Solis and Stephanie Agresta. It’s one of the best kept secrets for a solid place to work, meet, network, get great coffee, recharge, and watch a full plate of speakers. Mercedes did a fabulous job with the lounge this year!
5 – Mental health tech like calm.com is the next big tech frontier.
By some estimates, one in four people worldwide will be affected by a mental health problem at some point in their lives. The tech folks, entrepreneurs, political enthusiasts, and the rest of the people who end up at a place like SXSW are often driven to their breaking point at times. It was great to see a number of SXSW panels dedicated to mental health themes this year, most notably Calm.com. Calm.com, which produced an app to help folks with mindfulness, meditation, sleeping, and more, is the first mental health unicorn company. Their booth at the trade show was all about relaxation — and it even featured a sloth!
LinkedIn has launched live video on their business professional platform and according to marketing experts Neil Patel and Eric Siu, it’s a great new way to get traffic from LinkedIn. “If you go live on LinkedIn they’re pushing it harder than anything else because they have to catch up,” says Patel and Siu. “When someone has to catch up, what does that mean? It means they are going to pull out all the stops to get however much engagement they can. If you want more traffic and it may sound simple, but really, just go live.”
Neil Patel & Eric Siu, discuss LinkedIn Live and how being a first mover on this new platform can drive huge traffic to your videos and related internet properties on their Marketing School podcast (listen below):
If You Want Traffic Go Live On LinkedIn
Let’s talk about a new way to get traffic from LinkedIn called LinkedIn Live. You are familiar with Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Twitter, Instagram, and all those other networks, LinkedIn now has Live. If you go live on LinkedIn they’re pushing it harder than anything else because they have to catch up. When someone has to catch up, what does that mean? It means they are going to pull out all the stops to get however much engagement they can. If you want more traffic and it may sound simple, but really, just go live.
Your LinkedIn Live can be crappy quality. It doesn’t have to be anything amazing. You will get more traffic if you just go live. LinkedIn is a little late to the game but they are blooming right now after the Microsoft acquisition. I do believe they are getting better. Now you are able to take LinkedIn data and combine it with Bing too. There is cool stuff going on there. But they need people to stay on the platform because they are an advertising-based platform. They do sell services and products as well. However, look at it this way, Instagram has Live, Twitch has Live, Twitter has Live, and Facebook has Live. They all have Live. They know numbers wise that Live is the thing that works in keeping people on the platform.
Invite Only Now, But Time to Start Preparing
It’s invite only right now, but it’s time to start preparing for it. We don’t know the way in, but you should start preparing for it, and start going live right now even on the other channels. Even if you suck it doesn’t matter. It’s going to work out for you in the long-term because it’s the first mover advantage here. Try to do anything you can to go live on LinkedIn. You will notice a leaps and bounds increase in your traffic.
There are also tools and integration platforms where you can go live all at once. (These companies include Wirecast, Switcher Studio, Wowza Media Systems, Socialive and Brandlive.) You can actually simulcast across all live platforms with these tools. If you are going to go live on LinkedIn, do it on all of the social platforms because it just gives you more traffic without any extra work on your end. So see if you can find a way to get into LinkedIn Live.
Dr. Rand Hindi says that without emotional intelligence machines will never be able to obtain human-like artificial intelligence. Reminiscent of Data on Star Trek Next Generation, Hindi says that despite the impressive ability of machines to learn from other machines and to solve logic problems better than humans, most decisions humans make are actually emotionally driven and machines simply don’t have an emotional IQ.
I want to talk to you about the reason why I believe that human-like artificial intelligence is never going to exist and what that means for the future of work. Artificial intelligence is the ability to reproduce human behavior in a machine. That’s it. Take what a human can do intelligently, put it in a machine and you’ve got artificial intelligence.
Within AI you’ve got one type of way to achieve this which is called machine learning. The idea of machine learning is that you’re effectively teaching machines to reproduce the behavior by giving it examples. It’s a little bit like a kids book where you have pictures of animals and the name of the animal is written and then after seeing a few pictures of horses your kids know how to recognize horses. It’s exactly the same thing in machines.
Machine Learning is a Very Big Deal
Machine learning is a very big deal because up until now when you wanted to automate something a human had to first understand what was going on, then sit down and program a machine to do that. Automation was limited to what humans were able to understand. With machine learning all you need is data collected from what you’re trying to automate and the machine does everything else. You no longer need a human expert in the loop.
Within machine learning there is one type of algorithm that’s called deep learning. Deep learning is a branch of machine learning which is a branch of artificial intelligence and you could consider all three to be interchangeable today, but that’s going to change in the future. I don’t believe that word artificial intelligence is actually going to be used in marketing in the next few years.
Deep Learning Has Been a Huge Revolution
How have we been using deep learning? Deep learning has been a huge revolution. We see it happening for self-driving cars. We see it happening for medicine. Medicine is a very important use case for artificial intelligence because we have today AI that can diagnose x-rays or MRIs better than humans can.
You’ve probably heard about Alexa, the voice assistant from Amazon. This is one of the fastest growing consumer products ever. Rumors are that one in six Americans uses that. This was not possible before because deep learning was not enabling us to talk to machines as naturally speaking.
Is AI Getting Out of Control?
Let me tell you about the world champion playing against Google’s artificial intelligence at the game of Go. The game of Go was considered to be extremely complicated for an AI to beat because the number of different combinations meant that the only way for a machine to beat a human is to actually learn how to play the game. We thought this was still ten years in the future. The way that they made this work was really interesting.
They took one artificial intelligence and they made it play against another one. So one was playing the white side, one was playing the black side, but the trick is that every time one of the AI played a move the other one gave it feedback on that move. By mutually reinforcing each other by playing millions and millions of games, eventually they learned how to play the game better than any human.
At the time, when they played against a world champion the world champion won one out of five games so this was amazing. But people felt a little bit reassured, they were like a 20 percent chance of surviving AI that’s still not bad! However, the same AI kept on learning. Today, not a single human can beat that AI at a single game. But there is more, there is a new version of this AI that beats that AI that beats every human at every game.
When I saw that I was like, oh my god, this is just getting out of control, this is getting out of our hands. But what you need to understand is that everything I just talked about, however impressive it is, is still something that is called narrow artificial intelligence. Effectively, those machines are able to do one thing, perhaps do it better than a human, but they’re only doing this one specific thing. The AI that played the game of Go that was a breakthrough, but it doesn’t know how to do anything but play the game of Go.
Machines Will Never Have Emotional Intelligence
Now people are working on something that’s called general artificial intelligence. This idea that a machine could solve any logical task, that it could reason, that it could transfer the learning it had from something to something else. This is major because if you can have a general form of intelligence and reasoning then potentially machines could do anything that seems like intelligence.
But this is still not what you see in movies. What you see in movies is a very human-like artificial intelligence. It’s not just reasoning and logic, it also includes the ability to emotionally connect with humans. So artificial human intelligence is really this combination of logical intelligence and emotional intelligence. It’s IQ plus EQ. If you only take IQ into the equation you don’t end up having human intelligence.
Why is emotional intelligence important? It’s a way that as humans we can solve paradoxes. A paradox is a mathematical problem for which there is no logical solution. If a machine is not able to have emotional intelligence it will never be able to solve logical traps, which means as humans we can use our EQ to find traps for machines that have very high IQ.
You might be thinking that machines are building emotional intelligence as well. We see all those amazing robots, people develop feelings for those robots as well. However, I believe that you will never have true emotional intelligence in machines.
EQ First Requires Artificial Consciousness.
Emotional intelligence first requires artificial consciousness. They will also need to feel emotions. This is very different than pretending to have emotions. It’s very easy for me to learn that when someone is smiling that person is probably happy and it’s very easy for me to smile back. But hey, I can be smiling but it doesn’t mean I feel happy right now. There’s a big difference between perception of emotion, between display of emotion and feeling emotions.
We know that humans who don’t feel emotions are incapable of making decisions on a daily basis. They can do math, they can solve mathematical puzzles, so they have very high IQ potentially. But if you ask them what they would like for lunch they cannot answer because there is no algorithm to answer that question. Given that as humans most of our decisions are emotionally driven. Let’s be honest, we use the data to back it up but we make emotional decisions mostly. A machine that doesn’t have an emotional intelligence will never be seen as a human-like type of intelligence.
What I’m trying to get to here is that yes, you will have an AI that has an IQ of five billion and yes every logical task is potentially doable by a machine, but humans will have the monopoly on emotional intelligence. Humans alone will be able to do emotionally driven tasks and so rather than think about machines replacing humans we really have to start thinking about humans and machines working together.
How can we leverage the horizontal emotional intelligence of humans with the powerful mechanical logical intelligence of machines? Rather than try to build an AI that replaces humans completely, why don’t we start building an AI that actually works with a human in a very natural and very intuitive way.
One of the more interesting reveals that Dan Francis, Senior Product Manager for LinkedIn Talent Insights, provided in a recent talk about the Talent Insights tool is how LinkedIn is using machine learning to determine skills of people. He says that there are now over 575 million members in the LinkedIn database and there are 35,000 standardized skills in LinkedIn’s skills taxonomy. The way LinkedIn is figuring out what skills a member has is via machine learning technology.
LinkedIn Using Machine Learning to Determine Skills
The skills data in Talent Insights comes from a variety of sources, mainly from a member’s profile. There are over 35,000 standardized skills that we have in LinkedIn’s skills taxonomy, and the way we’re figuring out what skills a member has is using machine learning. We can identify skills that a member has that’s based on things that they explicitly added to their profile.
The other thing that we’ll do is look at the text of the profile. There’s a field of machine learning called natural language processing and we’re basically using that. It’s scanning through all the words that are on a member’s profile, and when we can determine that it’s pertaining to the member, as oppose the company or another subject, we’ll say okay, we think that this member has this skill. We also look at other attributes, like their title or the company, to make sure they actually are very likely to have that skill.
The last thing that we’ll do is look at the skills a member has and figure out what are skill relationships. So as an example, let’s say that a member has Ember, which is a type of JavaScript framework, since we know that they know Ember, they also know JavaScript. So if somebody’s running a search like that, we’ll surface them in the results. I think that the most important reason why this is helpful and the real benefit to users of the platform is when you’re searching, you want to get as accurate a view of the population as possible. What we’re trying to do is look at all the different signals that we possibly have to represent that view.
575 Million People on LinkedIn Globally and Adding 2 Per Second
Today, LinkedIn has over 575 million members that are on the platform globally. This is actually growing at a pretty rapid clip, so we’re adding about two members per second. One of the great things about LinkedIn is that we’re actually very well represented in terms of the professional workforce globally. If you look at the top 30 economies around the world, we actually have the majority of professionals in all of those economies.
LinkedIn is the World’s Largest Aggregator of Jobs
I think there’s often a perception that most of the data’s directly from LinkedIn, stuff that’s posted on LinkedIn and job status is one notable exception to that. Plenty of companies and people will post jobs on LinkedIn, and that’s information that does get surfaced. However, we’re also the world’s largest aggregator of jobs. At this point there are over 20 million jobs that are on LinkedIn.
The way that we’re getting that information is we’re working with over 40,000 partners. These are job boards, ATS’s, and direct customer relationships. We’re collecting all of those jobs, standardizing them, and showing them on our platform. The benefit is not just for displaying the data in Talent Insights, the benefit is also when members are searching on LinkedIn.com, we’re giving them as representative a view of the job market as possible.
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder, says regarding embattled Tesla founder Elon Musk, “Part of his grit, part of his determination to get to that long future is to push back against these obstacles. I just think it needs to be a different pattern than those tweets.”
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman discussed how the rules need be redefined and that Elon Musk should tweet differently, but it’s all part of his determination to build something new:
A Proposal for SEC Rule Changing
I don’t actually look at it as breaking the rules, I look at it as trying to redefine the rules. As opposed to saying, let’s have decades of committee process trying to argue a different rule, let’s try to demonstrate how if we changed the rules the world would be a better place.
You still have to be controlled about which risks you’re taking and what damage to society you may do. But I actually don’t look at it as rule breaking, I look at it as a proposal for rule changing.
Risktaking is Classic for People Trying to Create Something From Nothing
I think it’s classic for the people who say, look we’re going to try to create something from nothing. We’re going to try to do this big thing that hasn’t been done before. I have a willingness to take risks, and so I will learn, oops, that risk I shouldn’t take.
I think we’re in a process of seeing both with Elon and other folks, oh yeah, we shouldn’t do that kind of tweet, that’s not actually in fact constructive.
Part of Elon Musk’s Grit is to Push Back Against Obstacles
I think what he’s focused on is saying look, I am trying to build something that’s three, five, ten years in the future and I don’t want to be like, what does this month look like or this quarter look like? So he’s interpreting it that way.
Part of his grit, part of his determination to get to that long future is to push back against these obstacles. I just think it needs to be a different pattern than those tweets.
LinkedIn should probably worry now that Facebook has apparently decided to copy a key element of the business website – its resume and CV feature.
Facebook is notorious for blatantly copying services and apps made popular by other social media competitors, most notably Snapchat. The social networking site has already cloned Snapchat’s Lens filters and Story format.
Now the social media titan is testing a new Resume/ CV feature that allows users to share their work history and experience with friends. The new feature builds on the typical “Work and Education” page. However, the user’s credentials and work information are not displayed publicly. This could be an indication that Facebook is thinking of making this feature available only to headhunters.
The new anddedicated CV field lets users list their educational background and professional data in more detail. Users can also select the exact dates they started and left specific companies.
The trial feature was first noticed by Jane Manchun Wong of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. The computer science undergrad shared screenshots of the resume feature with The Next Web’s (TNW) social media director Matt Navarra. He subsequently shared the screenshots on Twitter.
Wow, I really didn’t expect it to blow up like that. This is like the Ripple Effect in action https://t.co/PY5ZwtoniU
A spokesperson from Facebook had already confirmed that the social networking site is indeedtesting out a new feature. According to the spokesperson, Facebook is “always building and testing new products and services” and that they’re “currently testing a work histories feature to continue to help people find and businesses hire for jobs on Facebook.”
The Resume/ CV feature appears to be limited to a select group of users. TNW staffers in Amsterdam have no access to the feature but some users in the United States reportedly do. However, it’s not uncommon for Facebook to do a trial run on a small demographic first before rolling it out to more users.
It’s also unclear how Facebook users will take to this new feature. After all, most would rather keep their social media profiles away from potential employers. If that’s the case, LinkedIn might not have to worry about Facebook encroaching on its territory.
LinkedIn is best known as the social media platform specifically targeting the job market. It’s a place where job seekers can look for work and for recruiters to source their manpower requirements. Lately, however, the Microsoft subsidiary is polishing the networking experience for its users by allowing them to post videos into the platform, a move that mimics YouTube and Facebook Live.
Among the various social media platforms, LinkedIn is a bit late at offering a native video feature. The company has been testing native videos since last month and is now rolling out the feature gradually, which means that it might take some time to reach to all its users.
The new feature is available to both the iOs and Android versions of the LinkedIn mobile app. For the Android version, the video icon can be accessed via the post button while on iOs devices, the video icon is located at the top of the feed. Pressing the icon allows a user to record or post previously recording videos to the platform.
Videos posted on the LinkedIn platform may significantly differ from those found on YouTube. Since the network is basically a business networking tool, users’ video recordings are expected to highlight their professional credentials such as completed and current projects, skills or product demos. While the maximum video length allowed is 10 minutes, LinkedIn recommends that users keep their video recordings between 30 seconds to five minutes in length.
Did you know that video has 6x more engagement than other content such as images, articles etc.? https://t.co/hTEPEphHJU
In case you are wondering why LinkedIn would want to introduce a native video feature to its platform, it has been shown that video content generates better user engagement. For instance, Snapchat, Facebook, and YouTube collectively generate around 22 billion views per day.
The trend seems to be working on LinkedIn as well. Last month, data analysis showed that its videos were shared 20 times more than any other content. Now the next order of business is how to harness ad dollars sometime into the future.
With the backing of Microsoft, LinkedIn has big plans to increase its effectiveness for marketers in 2017. Russ Glass, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions’ Head of Products, was interviewed by LinkedIn Account Executive at Vivek Venugopal:
Venugopal: What about LinkedIn has kept you excited about being here? What gets you up in the morning and into work everyday?
Glass: I think LinkedIn Marketing Solutions specifically. It’s also very exciting because our mission is to be the most effective platform for marketers to reach professionals. It’s one of those issues you can actually accomplish. We’ve got this global network of professionals, this incredible platform that they come to on a frequent basis, that has great content and great information.
We have an opportunity now to take all of those assets and put great capabilities around it for marketers to be successful. Every day we are a little better than we were the day before and I think we are going to continue to see that kind of growth.
Venugopal: Can you tell us a little bit about what marketers can expect to see out of the LMS platform in 2017 and talk a little bit about the Microsoft acquisition and how that might impact the roadmap?
Glass: I could talk a long time about what we’re doing next year and all the opportunities with Microsoft, but maybe I’ll focus on the most important stuff, the stuff I’m most excited about. The first half of 2017 we will launch more product than the entirety of 2016.
We’re focused on a couple of key areas, the first of which is data. How do we allow marketers to bring their own data to LinkedIn so that they are targeting audiences more effectively and then combine that with LinkedIn datasets in order to do things you just can’t do on any other platform? Such as bring their own email data, bring their own account lists, connect with their CRM systems, connect with their marketing automation systems and use website pixels so they can retarget visitors on the LinkedIn platform. Then layer LinkedIn’s unique understanding of a professional and who they are in their business life so that you can get in front of exactly the right audiences and you can put content in front of exactly right audiences.
The second big area is reporting and analytics. We have a ton of analytics and reporting efforts that we’re going to start rolling out early next year including website audience analytics and conversion tracking, which we started to roll out and will continue to iterate on.
The third big area is return on investment. How do we help marketers, particularly lead-gen marketers, that are trying to convert our members into the buyer’s or download case studies or register for events. How do we let them do that more effectively? We’re launching products like our lead-gen form product where without leaving LinkedIn and without having to go to a landing page a user can submit their LinkedIn profile information to a marketer. It goes right into their CRM system and right into their marketing automation system. It’s an incredible product particularly for the B2B marketer.
LinkedIn surveyed over 1,000 US professionals to determine their level of job satisfaction and found some interesting results. Apparently, Charlotte has the most satisfied white collar workers with 65% of them feeling fulfilled at work.
Charlotte is followed in the most satisfied list by Boston, Indianapolis, New York City and Denver.
Career Fulfillment
Chefs apparently are the most fulfilled professionals, with 84% saying so in the survey:
Chef – 84% fulfilled
Real Estate Agent – 75% fulfilled
Doctor – 68% fulfilled
IT Consultant & Support – 59% fulfilled
Architect – 58% fulfilled
Fulfillment Factors
Not surprisingly, a persons salary ranks as the number one factor in job satisfaction:
Salary
Positive relationships with colleagues
Doing work that has a positive impact
Work-life balance
Feeling challenged at work
The survey also looked at age ranges and didn’t find much of a difference in fulfillment between age groups. Interestingly, young people age 16 – 24 were the most fulfilled (58%). Perhaps that’s because the full brunt of life and all of its bills hasn’t caught up with many of those in this group just yet.
LinkedIn added Conversation Starters to their messaging platform, making contacting people you never speak to so easy, even a fifth grader can do it! Let’s get started:
Let’s say you’re a salesman and you want to contact someone you have never talked to before about buying your product. This is always a dilemma, right? Hmm… what should be my opening line? Well, LinkedIn has now made this easy by giving me handy conversation starters.
All I have to do is click the lightbulb. Great!! 🙂 And it’s not creepy or spammy at all! Every executive will love getting tons of these kinds of messages:
Click… Hi Suzi, I’ve noticed you’ve also connected with Mike Manuel. How did you…
Click… Hi Suzi, I noticed you have 7 connections at Edelman. Have you heard…
Click… Hi Suzi, I noticed you have 5 connections at Bateman Group. Have you heard…
Click… Hi Suzi, I noticed you have 6 connections at Intelligent Energy. Have you heard…
Click… Hi Suzi, I noticed you have 10 connections at Google. Have you heard…
“With conversation starters, you can spend less time figuring out what to say, and more time having conversations that help you get ahead and reach your professional goals,” says Sammy Shreibati, LinkedIn Product Manager.
Sheesh… give me a break! Helpful. No. Spammy. Yes. Seriously, this is not an authentic way for salespeople to contact prospects, especially because it is built-in to LinkedIn messaging where decision makers can be guaranteed to receive multiple versions of these in their in-box.
All sales messages should be authentic, personalized to the prospect and provide some specific solution the marketer knows that the receiver of the message will relate to.
LinkedIn Influencers provided some advice on the future impact of artificial intelligence in the workplace. “The first thing that artificial intelligence will take over is the microphone on your laptop or computer,” said Reid Hoffman, Executive Chairman and co-Founder of LinkedIn in a new 30 second Influencer video.. “What will happen is, it will start listening to your meetings, when you are talking and other things. It will record you in order to help take notes, suggest action items, and suggest other people to communicate with.”
“I wrote about this in a recent article in the MIT Sloan Management Review“, said Hoffman. In the article, Using Artificial Intelligence to Humanize Management and Set Information Free he says that “we are on the cusp of a major breakthrough in how organizations collect, analyze, and act on knowledge” and he thinks this will bring important changes to business decisions.
“Artificial Intelligence is about to transform management from an art into a combination of art and science,” he says. “Not because we’ll be taking commands from science fiction’s robot overlords, but because specialized AI will allow us to apply data science to our human interactions at work in a way that earlier theorists like Peter Drucker could only imagine.”
“Artificial intelligence, machine learning, chat box, guided conversations are coming at us faster than ever,” notes Steve Anderson, President of The Anderson Network and an expert on insurance technology, productivity and innovation. “I think the first functions that will be taken over in an organization is augmenting existing employees and helping them enhance their ability to create a great customer experience. Getting those routine questions answered automatically to free up their time to deal with customers more detailed questions.”
“I pray anyhow that it will be in every aspect of my schedule and every aspect of meetings and all the notes taken in meetings and all the followup that can be executed from them, cutting meetings massively and making much more efficiency,” says Christopher Schroeder, CEO-in-waiting, Advisor and Venture Investor and Author. “I can only hope that the robots are as kind to me as the executive assistants that I’ve been blessed to have over the last decade, but we’ll see.”
“The first thing that artificial intelligence is going to take over in my office is scheduling meetings,” says Nicholas Thompson, Editor of NewYorker.com, the website of The NewYorker Magazine. “It’s going to take over lots of stuff in the long run, but the first stuff that it’s going to get is stuff where the language inputs are relatively simple and relatively contained. That’s true of meetings, where you say I’m going to meet with you Wednesday and Friday. That’s a complex sentence, but it’s something we’re close to figuring out. The companies trying to do this, I’ve used one called x.ai, there not totally there but they will get there. I’ll be grateful when they do because scheduling meetings stinks!”
“The first thing that my office AI will take over is customer service,” said Leila Janah, CEO of Sama Group, Co-Founder and CEO of Laxmi, and an award-winning social entrepreneur. “It’s already taken over things like security, and probably some texting with customer service via bots. I think bots are impacting so many different businesses. I already have a bot that replies to most of my messages. We already have an auto-reply on Facebook to my company page, I’m sure it’s going to take over more.”
“First thing in my office AI will take over is probably the social media feed,” says Ian Bremmer, President of the Eurasia Group. “Let’s face it, we spend too much time on it and they will be better at it. They’re going to make us look shinier and even more attractive than we already are. They’ll optimize for it and we will be able to do other things with our lives. How awesome! That’s great… before they take over.”
“Let’s face it, we are already seeing AI systems improve text entry, thinking about Google’s Inbox app where it can predict likely response,” commented Azeem Azhar, who is Vice President, Venture & Foresight for the Schibsted Media Group. “I think we will be seeing more of that coming into Gmail and word indexing software. These machines are going to help us compose our messages, either to automate replies or help us to be better writers.”
“Email. That’s the first thing that artificial intelligence is going to take over in the office,” replied Tomasz Tunguz, Venture Capitalist at Redpoint. “I already dictate most of the email I send everyday, and because we can speak about 3 times faster than we can type, it’s far more efficient.”
“One of the ways artificial intelligence is going to take over my office, is that it’s going to replace in some situations coaches, if you can believe that,” says J.T. O’Donnell, CEO of CAREEREALISM & CareerHMO. “In career coaching there are a lot of typical situations that people will encounter where they need to have an interaction with a coach and get the information and the feedback they need in that moment. But believe me or not, there are so many of those that are similar that we could use artificial intelligence to engage people through those conversations. I expect to see us use that a lot in the future.”
“The first thing I would like it to take over is the sales cycle,” said Sramana Mitra, Founder at One Million by One Million (1M/1M). “A lot of people come to our website to find out about us and then contact us whether it’s by email or phone or whatever. I think the most productive thing would be to really automate and personalize in a meaningful way, using AI and the application of AI to meaningfully impact the sales cycle.”
“I have to believe that the first thing in my office that AI will take over is making phone calls,” says Jon Steinberg, Founder and CEO of Cheddar. “Making phone calls is actually the only thing that has gotten worse over the past ten years, whether it’s the signal, the process for dialing, everything. I have to think that soon when we want to get in touch with people you will be able to just express a desire or it will look at the documents or processes you are working on and the voice call or video call will be automatically initiated.”
LinkedIn has added a video option for LinkedIn Influencers in varied professions to offer advice. It appears that the video are spawned from questions created by LinkedIn, with many Influencers creating a video to a question. I imagine that the questions will eventually be opened up to others on the platform.
This is a continuation of its strategy of being the world’s business platform and professional portal. “Over the past few months, we’ve worked hard to make your feed a valuable resource for dynamic conversations, professional news and stories,” commentedJonathan (Jasper) Sherman-Presser, who’s a Senior Product Manager at LinkedIn. “Today your LinkedIn Feed will come to life in a whole new way with the introduction of 30-second videos from LinkedIn Influencers.”
LinkedIn invited 500 Influencers to start adding 30 second videos on topics that they typically write about, speak about and are leading experts on. The videos become sort of mini tutorials on business and professional strategy on hundreds of topics ranging from education, diversity, leadership, marketing, sales, personal growth and much more. It’s likely that LinkedIn will open this up to many others over time.
All of the videos from LinkedIn Influencer’s that you follow will show up in your feed. The videos are designed to spark a conversation with other Influencers weighing in with comments and allowing you to comment as well. You can also share the video with your LinkedIn network or on Facebook and Twitter. At launch, videos cannot be shared on YouTube or embedded into articles on the web. Hopefully, the embedding feature will be added soon so that sites like WebProNews can embed videos into related articles.
I envision that these videos will also be used to comment on current news related to an Influencer’s area of interest. For instance, Google launches a new feature and Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand could create a 30 second video on its impact on SEO. “We encourage you to share your thoughts by commenting on videos and inviting others to join the conversation by sharing the videos with your network.” says Sherman-Presser. “By doing so, you have the opportunity to engage more deeply with the people and topics that matter in your industry.”
New Economy Editor at LinkedIn, Caroline Fairchild, asked: What’s the #1 thing founders should avoid doing in a pitch meeting? You can view the answers to that question on LinkedIn from business guru Guy Kawasaki, Homebrew VC Partner Hunter Walk, venture investor Christopher Schroeder and many others.
Although we can’t embed the videos responses to the question. The answers were generally very good and because of the 30 second requirement they were succinct. In just a few minutes you could easily listen to all of the video responses from a particular question.
KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg and others – How should colleges be kept accountable for the success of their students?
A LinkedIn study recently took a look a Millennials in an attempt to erase the stereotype that they are lazy, entitled and unemployed. “Given the massive amounts of news coverage (44,000 articles and counting), it seems like everyone is desperate to understand my generation,” said Alexandra Rynne who contributed to LinkedIn’s Millennial Playbook (PDF). “Thankfully, we don’t have to rely on stereotypes or sensationalism to find out.”
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions looked at the data of the 87 million millennials found on LinkedIn to gain some very interesting insights on who Millennials really are and whether they are still living in their parents basement or not. 🙂 There are over 2 billion Millennials on Earth, 85 million of those in the U.S., and worldwide have $1 trillion in purchasing power according a LinkedIn post. The Millennial Generation is roughly defined as people reaching young adulthood around the year 2000.
Michelle Lynn, EVP, Managing Director, Carat Consumer Insights, and Doug Ray, Carat’s US CEO & Global President offered new research illustrating that Millennials are not a homogenous group. Marketers should not be targeting Millennials as a whole, since they’re only reaching 42% of their total.
TrendNetters have a median age of 27 and make up 42% of all Millennials and align most closely to the general stereotype of Millenials: Digital extroverts who are easy to find and market to because they live their lives online
AlterNatives have a median age of 24 and make up 23% of all Millennials (consisting mostly of males), are introverts and extremely elusive
LYFPreneurs have a median age of 28 and make up 19% of all Millennials, consisting mostly of females who are extremely ambitious.
BetaBlazers have a median age of 25 and make up 16% of Millennials and are an extremely forward-thinking group.
“I was pleasantly surprised to see how many of my generation are investing time on LinkedIn,” said Rynne. “There are 87 million millennials on LinkedIn worldwide, and 11 million are classified as “decision makers.” Not only that, millennials represent 30% of long-form publishers on LinkedIn, even though we’re less than 25% of total members.” In other words, millennials are already making an impact on society.
“There’s no denying millennials are chasing great,” Rynne added while coining a new term. “Some of us want the thrill of recognition. Some just want to make the world a better place. Some just can’t resist pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.”
Marketers are confused on how to “advertise” to Millennials because the generation is not like their parents. They grew up with the internet, free content, social media, ad blockers and fast forwarding through commercials. “How do we help a struggling brand that was born before the internet existed, adapt to this new economy?”, asked Sanjay Nazerali in a blog post. Nazerali is the London based Global Chief Strategy Officer of the Dentsu Aegis Network. “One answer is to make marketing useful. Endless studies of so-called Millennials show that consumers expect brands to make a contribution to their lives. In this context, a brand could try to create a useful service, rather than an ad, to drive its marketing. In doing so, trust becomes less elusive: we’re not asking consumers to have faith in us, we’re asking them simply to experience our utility.”
Millennials see themselves as very different from previous generations, with many thinking they can change the world, and marketers should pay attention to this perception. “We are not a generation of suits and ties, but rather creators and entrepreneurs,” said Page Williams, who is a Senior Manager of Member Marketing & Communications, Social Media at LinkedIn. When asked which brand is killing it with Millennials she noted that Nike is “coming out strong with their women’s apparel line and global strategy and with the launch of their first YouTube series, they are reimagining how to reach this audience in a way that aligns with the audience’s lifestyle.”
According to the Millennial Playbook study, by 2020, Millennials (18-34) will make up 50% of the workforce… and they are working now too. Over 2.7 million are working in sales, 2 million are software developers, and over 800,000 are entrepreneurs owning their own businesses.
Millennials switch jobs more than any previous generation. LinkedIn surveyed 5,000+ Millennials across the world to find out how and why Millennials switch jobs and the number one reason Millennials change jobs “is to advance their careers (67%), followed by compensation (60%) and the desire for more challenging work and roles that are a better fit for their skills and interests (51%).”
“Pick a fast-growing market that you’re excited about and go work for the smartest people that you can find in that market,” said Jon Lombardo, Agency Team, Creative and Brand Strategy Lead at LinkedIn. “You will benefit by learning from leading thinkers, you will build a valuable long-term network, and you will be positioned for a career of growth in a strong market.”
The study concludes that the top-performing Millennials are Social Millennials. “Your personal brand is your responsibility,” noted Mel Carson, CEO & Principal Strategy Consultant at Delightful Communications, who was interviewed for the study. “Never before has there been more of an opportunity to use technology, social media, and common sense to tell your professional story, stand up, and stand out in an increasingly crowded digital space.”
Alex Mann, Digital Strategist at Tweak, advises Millennials to be authentic, helpful and relevant when posting on social media as a personal growth and career advancement strategy. “That can be said for a soda as much as it can be for a human being,” he says.
Sharon Gillenwater, Founder of Boardroom Insiders and their CXO Engagement Strategy Expert posted an article today on the Saleforce blog making the point that LinkedIn should just be a starting point for sales people selling to CXOs. You can make the case that her article is self promotional since what she says to do, learn more about the CXOs you are selling to, is exactly what her company Boardroom Insiders brings to the table, but her point is spot on and should be written big and bold on posters of all sales team offices.
“If you are an enterprise sales or marketing pro focused on C-suite selling, LinkedIn is not a silver bullet,” said Gillenwater. “It simply does not provide the insight required to engage a Fortune 500 key decision maker. In fact, LinkedIn can give you a false sense of security going into important meetings. You think you have done your due diligence by looking at a few LinkedIn profiles, but halfway through the meeting it can become painfully apparent that you don’t know what you don’t know.”
The idea is simple enough, don’t put your foot in your mouth by NOT KNOWING what is easily knowable. Has the company recently been acquired? Did the Chief Marketing Officer that you are meeting with write a company blog post last week where she blasted a competitor that you were going to reference as similar to them? Did the Germany based IT Manager that you were planning to lunch with to discuss your company’s tech solution post a YouTube conference presentation where he mocked the unprofessional state of tieless tech guys?
You might just wear a tie to that lunch meeting! It’s important to know your potential customer before you speak to them and even before you email them. The more you know, the more likely you will be to sell them. As Gillenwater says, “An executive is not going to write in her LinkedIn profile: “I hate jargon, so don’t use it when you meet with me.””
“You’ll need everything available publicly online, from media interviews and Twitter posts to the latest quarterly earnings call transcripts, industry news, and corporate press releases,” says Gillenwater. “Selling to CXOs requires a commitment to knowing what’s on their minds and guiding their decisions—and keeping up with that as it changes.”
LinkedIn announced today the availability of programmatic buying for its display ads, giving data-driven marketers advanced opportunities to target more precisely and with more efficiency.
“This means you can now work with your preferred buying platform to buy highly visible ads that help you reach and engage the right buyers and build your brand in the premium context of LinkedIn,” commented the Head of Products for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, Russell Glass. “Our goal with programmatic buying is to give our customers more flexibility in how they work with us, and expand the ways we can partner to meet their marketing goals.”
LinkedIn says that you can purchase programmatically through either an Open Auction or via LinkedIn Private Auctions. They also note that “If you’re already buying programmatically, Open Auction is the fastest way to buy LinkedIn Display Ads programmatically.” The Private Auction provides marketers more targeting options.
When using your own first or third party data like website visitors and CRM contacts, our Private Auction offers the ability to explicitly target LinkedIn.com as a placement. As another option, the Private Auction can leverage our proprietary member persona targeting features (e.g., target “IT decision makers”) if you don’t want to use your own first or third party data.
We support majority of the demand-side platforms (DSP’s) and agency trading desks (ATD’s). We currently have more than 4,000 premium brands enabled to run across our site to ensure customers can buy through the one that is best suited for their business.
“Accessing LinkedIn programmatically has given Essence access to quality inventory, at scale, while allowing us to monitor performance in-house, in real time. Not only can we efficiently reach our desired target audiences–such as SMBs; we’re able to leverage our own tools, leading to high viewability and performance across LinkedIn,” stated Agatha Isabel, Programmatic Media Planner, Essence.
LinkedIn has two targeting options for programmatic buyers:
