LinkedIn for the iPhone

A few weeks ago I was a panelist at NoCoNet on the topic of LinkedIn. In addition to many excellent questions, the audience also provided numerous useful tips on LinkedIn. The tip I found most helpful was the availability of a LinkedIn iPhone application. Like many other iPhone apps, this one is free and can be downloaded in about a minute from App Store. If you have a smartphone with a web browser other than an iPhone, you can use LinkedIn from it simply by going to http://m.linkedin.com. It’s not quite as nice as the custom iPhone application, but it is still quite useful.

In my last tip posted about LinkedIn, I had recommended using an RSS feed to keep track of your network updates. LinkedIn has the Network Updates feature prominently displayed on your LinkedIn Home page, but the updates age off quickly, usually in a day or less, especially as your network grows larger. That makes it hard to keep up with them. Thus, one option is to use an RSS feed which can capture and store them until you have a chance to sit down and scroll through them. I have found that the iPhone application works even better than the web-based Network Updates feature, since it captures much more history, although not as much as history as the RSS feed. Still, the ability to scroll through your network updates during a spare moment using your iPhone is a good way to make use of what might otherwise be unproductive time.

The iPhone includes a Safari web browser and it works better than any web browser than I’ve tried on a 2.4″ screen, but browsing the web on a screen that small is something you’ll only do when you have to, sort of like driving around on a tiny “space saver” spare tire. As soon as you have access to a larger screen, the iPhone goes back in your pocket. However, if a web application is written specifically for a small screen, it can work very well, and the LinkedIn folks have done an excellent job at repurposing LinkedIn’s data for such a small screen. I’ve included a few screen shots from Jerry Luk’s blog posting where he introduced the application.

One of the best features is that you are able to contact anyone in your network from the iPhone, even if you haven’t stored their contact information, since it can send the email through LinkedIn’s email service. That way you don’t have to let your personal contact list swell to a size where it’s no longer very useful.

Keeping tabs on what’s going on with your network is part of why we network with others in the first place. When you have an awareness of who in your network is changing jobs, or connecting with a mutual long-lost friend, or just knowing what other people in your network are working on, you can be a much more engaged networker.