Friday, November 18, 2005

New OpenLink Messages and OpenLink Network

Today, LinkedIn rolled out two new features for premium service subscribers: OpenLink Messages and OpenLink Network.

OpenMessages offers a way to pay to receive messages from anyone in the LinkedIn network, without exposing personal contact information such as email address. Contrast this feature with InMails, which enable paying customers to send messages to anyone in the LinkedIn network.

The OpenMessages feature is available to all premium members as an option. Those who would like to be available to contact from anyone can opt in, while those who would like to only receive InMails or introductions through shared connections can choose to not receive OpenMessages. Each OpenMessage sent counts towards the member's pending introduction limit.

Those that do opt for OpenMessages are given the opportunity to join the OpenLink Network. This network is like a special LinkedIn group: Members of the OpenLink network may select membership in this group as a search criteria.

While many people are attracted to LinkedIn due to the way it can be configured to only allow incoming messages from trusted contacts, some people don't want incoming messages being limited by trusted connections and InMail limitations.

As a premium service subscriber, I have opted in for both of these new services. It will be interesting to see if I receive any addition introductions as a result.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm having a hard time keeping track of all the Linkedin options and, as a result, I suspect that, even though I just paid to upgrade to a "personal" account, I'm not getting as much benefit as I might get. I'm beginning to wonder if the system is getting a bit too complex for my own good -- and I usually think of myself as a "sophisticated user" when it comes to these types of tools.

PS - I got confused when trying to post this comment since the form askes me to classify myself as a "blogger," as "other," or as "anonymous." Naturally I selected "blogger" since I have my own blog -- then I realized that required me to sign up for www.blogger.com account. A little confusing.

Dennis D. McDonald (http://ddmcd.squarespace.com/)