LinkedIn, the most widely-used social recruitment site, provides a directory of applications available for users to add to their profiles. Applications cover a variety of subjects – from creative portfolios, to travel, to blogs – and having already covered the blogging and presentation applications, I will now look at the Sharing and Collaborating applications.
When adding an application, the user is given two options – to display it on their profile, or to display it on a console on their LinkedIn homepage. By adding an application to their profile, a user can highly increase their chances of catching the eye of a future recruiter.
In terms of sharing and collaborating on content and projects, there are four application available - Box.net is the only sharing application available, with the three collaborative apps being Github, Huddle Workspaces and Manymoon Projects and Teamspaces.
Box.net
The tagline for the Box.net app is “start sharing…today!”. This application allows for sharing of content on a user’s profile however, when the app is added, you have to either connect or register for a new Box account – and there is a limit on the amount of files you can upload (which can be upgraded to 50GB). This application could be extremely useful if the user’s account is linked to the phone or web app as well, and being the only sharing application on the website, it’s the only real option. Positive points for this application include notifications if a user downloads your content, and the ability to upload anything for people to use.
Github
The first of the collaborative applications is GitHub. Powered by LinkedIn, the app allows a user to showcase their GitHub coding projects on their profil, see which of their connections is most active on GitHub, and gives them the option to tell their network about the app activity through network updates. Github application users have the ability to ‘follow’ other users or ‘watch’ projects – with the number of followers and projects shown on each user profile. This application is extremely useful if you have coding projects to collaborate on, however, it is not one that can adapt for other purposes.
Huddle Workspaces
Huddle Workspaces is powered by Huddle, who describe themselves as the ‘Enterprise Content Collaboration Platform’. The app allows users to create different workspaces for different groups of connections (necessary for private information or documents), and to access their documents from anywhere, anytime. The app contains discussion forums, 1GB of space per use, comments and approvals, the ability to create as well as edit documents, as well as unlimited connections through the app (all for free with a Huddle.net account). Huddle is better version of Github, and gives the same platform as Box.net but with added extras (such as the comments and approvals).
Manymoon Projects and Teamspaces
The final ‘collaboration’ application is Projects and Teamspaces by Manymoon which, as the app states, “makes it simple” for users to ‘Get Work Done’ with their LinkedIn connections. The application can be used in any field, with users able to share and track unlimited workspaces, tasks, projects, documents and Google Apps. This application offers everything the other three do, but with even more extras, and it is extremely professional as well. One of the extremely positive aspects of this application is assigning tasks and setting due dates.
Conclusions
All three applications are extremely good, and serve their purpose, however in conclusion, Box.net is a good sharing tool, whereas Manymoon trumps in the collaboration stakes against Huddle and the coding-based GitHub. Manymoon offer unlimited storage, is very easy to use (as they advertise on their page), and has even more extras than the other two. They are also constantly improving their service, as they have just added Notes and Real-Time Notifications. Github is good for coding projects, and Box.net is useful for just sharing documents – job posts for example.
Have you used any of these applications? Do you think there are any that LinkedIn could add?
You can access the entire LinkedIn application directory right here.
Laurence Hebberd
Laurence Hebberd is Community Manager for Link Humans in London. He also runs the Link Humans Twitter feed - @LinkHumans.
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