Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

6 years ago · 5 min. reading time · ~100 ·

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How To Solve Linkedin Notifications And Groups

How To Solve Linkedin Notifications And Groups

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About the Author

I'm a ghost but not the kind that's to pottery
wheels. I'm the wnting kind

Toften wonder if Im a tech-savvy writer or a
writing-savvy technologist Maybe I'm both. As
one CMO put it, "Paul makes tech my bitch!
That might be going a hittle too far

myTweetPack.com
The Ultimate Twitter System

This article's title could just as easily have a question mark at the end. It will offer my thoughts and ideas on how the related issues of Notifications (or lack thereof) and LinkedIn Groups can be fixed. This isn't much of an issue here on beBee. The gang is pretty good at letting us know what's happening. 

The same can not be said about LinkedIn. 

This article will ask for your input, wish lists, and just general thoughts. Bees came together to build myTweetPack.com. Now, let's come together to fix the Two-Headed Beast that is LinkedIn Notifications and LinkedIn Groups.

How this all started

Anne Thorley-Brown started the most recent version of this discussion in a status update. It started as a discussion about Influencers but quickly morphed into rants about the Notification system and the Death of LinkedIn Groups.

At one point, Mike Webster and John Marrett chimed in and made me think. Don't you hate it when that happens? LOL

A little about me: I'm both a writer and a technologist. My writing is both in English and code. I'm the creator/founder of myTweetPack.com, a scheduling, promotion, and growth platform that uses Twitter to manage multiple accounts on multiple social media platforms. It kicks serious heinie.

myTweetPack often uses excess server capacity to help promote and support beBee.com's membership. It's high time we did something for LinkedIn's membership. Notifications and Groups seem to be good places to help. The Notifications Problem is a great place to start.

The John Marrett Manifesto

John wrote "A LinkedIn Suggestion: How to Overcome LinkedIn’s Lack of Notifications!" detailing his thoughts on how LinkedIn should fix the notifications issue. An excerpt follows and I added my thoughts in bold italics type

I want at least three levels of notifications:
Level 1: I am notified of all status updates, comments, replies, articles written by for everyone I mark as being at this level. Servers are stupid. They will dutifully notify you of whatever you tell them. This level will quickly lead to notification overload.
Level 2: notification of status updates and articles written by everyone at this level. I would see this as three levels: updates only, articles only, or both
Level 3: usual LI algorithm.
For Groups, I also want to control notifications! For each Group I am a member of, I want to get notifications in one of 4 different ways:
All updates / New conversations only. I'm not sure what the distinction is here. Maybe John or someone else  can clarify?
New comments on conversations I have liked or commented on. Sorry, John. LinkedIn handles this well enough. It would be too processing-intensive (I think) to implement this.
No notificationsJohn Marrett annotations Paul Croubalian

Fixing Notifications

This is the simpler of the two issues. The only thing we need to remember is that twisting an existing LinkedIn feature to fit our needs is a band-aid fix at best. Eventually, that band-aid will fall off with or without a little "help" from LinkedIn.

We need to pull the notifications mechanism out of LinkedIn. That's easy enough to do. From a technical/coding standpoint, it's only a couple of hours worth of work. From a CX standpoint, it gets a lot more complicated. More on that a little later.

Fixing Groups

In the last two months, I have had no less than 4 groups of people approach me for my thoughts on how Groups can be reborn. Again, the technical/coding side of things is nothing overly taxing. Categorizing a post under a heading/group/bundle/whatever is easy. 

Notifying people who want to be notified is only a little harder.

That's not the problem.

The real problem is the usage side of things. LinkedIn Groups work(worked?) because they are LinkedIn Groups. The functionality is part of the platform. You could write a post and share it to whatever groups you wanted to. You didn't need to leave LinkedIn to do that.

Will authors copy/paste the links to their articles into another platform or web app? I say, "Probably not." Will members copy/paste the correct link to someone's timeline? Again, probably not.

We need a mechanism that can add posts to specific topic groups and add member links/subscriptions to whatever system we create. That mechanism needs to be accessible from within LinkedIn (sort of). A Chrome extension should do the trick. Right-click to add a notification subscription or to post your article to a specific topic group. I'll look into that. We'll need two extensions. One to subscribe to a person's activity and the other to add a post to a topic group.

Bottom line, if whatever we create isn't as easy to use as the internal LinkedIn tools (however flawed they may be), the "solution" will fail.

Here's how I see it working (subject to change)

We'll start with Notifications. A Groups solution will come later.

         - I want whatever we do to be free to use. I reserve the right to apply monetization methods later if it becomes too costly to maintain. What those methods might be I have no idea yet, nor do I care. I don't foresee an issue here.

         - The system must be fully responsive so that people can use it on watches, phones, phablets, tablets, laptops, or SmartTVs.

         - The system must be strictly opt-in.

         - The system must send web push and/or email notifications to members based on the criteria they established.

         - Every email and web push will have a link to unsubscribe, add subscriptions, and add people to follow.

         - Members should be able to add any RSS/ATOM feed link or LinkedIn timelines. Note: I'll probably knock out any feeds to Big Media unless they expressly allow them. I don't see the benefit of adding beBee feeds. The platform does a good enough job of notification. If you people think it can help, we can add beBee feeds too. The only advantage I can see to adding beBee feeds is that you don't need to have beBee open to get one.

         - Members should be allowed to follow as many people as they bloody well wish. Those who overdo it will only hurt themselves with a boatload of notifications. Feel free to substitute whatever you prefer for "boat." 

         - The system will convert LinkedIn timelines to RSS feeds. Those RSS feeds will drive notifications. Feeds will be shared and, well, feed all subscribers.

         - Initial membership will be by one-click "sign in with LinkedIn." That method will use a strictly read-only permissions level. We will use it to pull in your email address and any public info in your profile. If you added your seniority level, industry, country, etc to your profile, we'll pull it in. If you did not add that info to your public profile, we can't access it.

         - I'm undecided if I should add a sign-in with email function. The back end stuff to validate emails is annoying to set up and I really don't want to waste resources on upYours@effOff.com.

         - Every followed person will have a link to an author page. They can use that link to promote themselves.

         - Member interaction will be limited. There will be nothing for them to do other than subscribe/unsubscribe to feed notifications and add new people to follow.

         - Notifications will link directly to the status update or article. To be crystal clear, we will drive any traffic right back to the originating content. There's little sense in reinventing the wheel.

Add your suggestions in the comments. I think we can safely leave the Groups issue out of the discussion for now.

Groups sound like they need a complete overhaul. I created a private discussion board for that. Message me for access if you're interested in adding your input.

We need to look at every aspect of Groups to determine what works and what doesn't. Simple things like who posts to a group need to be looked at. Should it be submission based? Would that be too much admin work? Do we need to consider membership acceptances or is anyone allowed to join? Do we create private groups where membership is by invitation only? Can people apply for membership?

I'll let some suggestions percolate here for a bit before we start developing anything.

Cheers

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Comments

Wayne Yoshida

6 years ago #26

#28
Yeah, although I can think of many other groups in the same state. . . .

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

6 years ago #25

#27
LOL... just to clarify. . . LINKEDIN GROUPS

Wayne Yoshida

6 years ago #24

Quote of the day: Groups are a "screwed up poop fest" by Paul \ LMFAO

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

6 years ago #23

#25
#20 Sharing on Linkedin is not a problem. myTweetPack members do it all the time. The issue is more sharing FROM Linkedin rather than TO LinkedIn. The more I look into Groups the more I see they are a screwed up poop fest. There must be an elegant way to access them, but damned if I can think of it

Mark Morris

6 years ago #22

#20
Yes, I believe that's the one. To tell you the truth I have had it sitting on my browser for so long, I don't know where I got it. Wayne Yoshida. Also have one on Firefox.

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

6 years ago #21

#23
LOL, actually, I've never had a headache in my life. My wife says that just proves I don't have a functional head. She may have a point

Wayne Yoshida

6 years ago #20

#22
Hence the reason for the aspirin . . .

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

6 years ago #19

#20
To be honest, I don't know what I'm thinking yet. I have a working prototype that works for everything except Groups. Boy, LI certainly did a number on those! I'll have to do a little (a lot?) more research on those beasts. I would really rather not pull stuff away from the platform but it looks like I won't have a choice when it comes to Groups. I originally thought I could just let people know when there were new posts to a Group. That may not be possible. Fingers crossed

Wayne Yoshida

6 years ago #18

#7
Thanks Paul \ - Glad you opened this up to us folks that actually use these platforms, and glad to give you some stuff to consider. I may have to send you some aspirins or something else as the wheels in your head are turning.

Wayne Yoshida

6 years ago #17

#9
#10 -- There is a Chrome plug-in called "Share on LinkedIn" I think. I use it, sometimes. Is that what you were / are thinking of?

Phil Friedman

6 years ago #16

Paul \, one way to clean up notifications on LI is to eliminate two-way connections which historically have linked people bi-directionally for notifications. This led to LION-idiots who connected to anyone who would do so, and who ended up with 30,000 connection, receiving avalanches of notifications. And because it appears that most LIONs can't read, they couldn't figure out how to filter those notifications via settings. But if you replace bidirectional "connecting" with unidirectional "following", those who want to "connect" could just reciprocally follow. Those who were being followed would not be overwhelmed by notices from people who are following them. And those who elect to follow someone would receive notifications of posts by the writers they follow.

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

6 years ago #15

#17
Actually, Jim, myTweetPack does that on its own and it doesn't seem to be enough. I'm far newer to LinkedIn than you since I started there in late May 2015. Back Then, I would get more engagement from a few dozen connections than I do now from about 3000. I'm also sure you are 100% right as to why LI cut notifications. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be any at all. Once I get this thing operational, I'm sure many early adopters will jump right off the bandwagon once they set themselves up to get notified of everything by everybody. I will give them the power to drive themselves nuts. It's up to them to use their heads about it.

Jim Murray

6 years ago #14

These are all good suggestions. But in my experience with stuff like this, and you know I have a fair bit, it takes two to tango. LinkedIn, I believe clawed back notifications because too many simpletons, who would rather complain that going though the laborious scientific process of shutting off notifications, flooded them with complaints about cluttered in-boxes. In short LI became a victim of its own success. Resident genius @Phil Friedman came up with a simple but elegant solution which was. Write a post and then notify your followers on your newsfeed and in any groups you want to reach that you have written in. Repeat as often as you like. This, not coincidentally was the way we did it before Pulse or beBee came along. AMy suggestion for you is to created a Post-Pac that does this automatically for people. Oh wait. beBee already offers you that capability. Nevermind, bad suggestion.

Lisa Gallagher

6 years ago #13

#11
Sometimes we need to rant, your rant was not in vain!

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

6 years ago #12

#12
LinkedIn does not own the copyright on members' posts. I plan to monitor those posts, collect their titles and the URL to the post. That is what will be sent to whoever subscribed to notifications for those posts. To be crystal clear, the posts will remain on LinkedIn and all traffic will be sent back to LinkedIn. They may complain. They may ask me to stop. But, the proposed system is not malicious in any way, does not circumvent their interests in any way, and does not replace a premium service in any way. If anything, it pushes more member traffic to them.

Mark Morris

6 years ago #11

#10
Thanks, I reread your post, and better understand. I'm a bit in awe of what you suggest is possible, adding on to or augmenting what LinkedIn does, in a somewhat closed system. I'm dying to know how you'd do these things (but figure you might not want to disclose the details). I remember when LinkedIn had rss feeds. Too bad they killed them, along with....well, almost everything useful. One question on the scraping for rss feeds from linkedin. I happened to read the LinkedIn tos yesterday, and I believe they forbid this kind of thing. Or have I misunderstood what you wrote about grabbing stuff from the linkedin pages?

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

6 years ago #10

Rant mode ON Okay, so I just got a strongly worded email about why I wasn't planning to extend this system to notify from beBee timelines. It went on about how I was an Ambassador Bee (their caps, not mine) and I should promote beBee whenever possible, however possible. Well, I agree with that. I'm just fuzzy about what they were talking about. They went on to discuss my "betrayal of the platform" and suggested I resign my ambassadorship and leave beBee altogether. I did the next best thing, I unfollowed and blocked them, here, on LinkedIn, and on Twitter. I have no room in my life for idiots who act without thought. The fact that I am not planning to include beBee posts is NOT because I don't like beBee or don't want to promote beBee. Lord knows I do a ton of that. The system we are discussing here will only bring a tiny little benefit to what BEBEE ALREADY DOES. BeBee ALREADY notifies you when a person you follow posts new content. BEBEE DOES NOT HAVE A NOTIFICATIONS PROBLEM. Every other platform including private blogs does. LInkedIn's Notifications Issue is notoriously infamous and universally despised. The only thing this proposed system would add to beBee's notification system would be that you will see notifications even if beBee is not open in a browser tab at that moment. Is that worth the added effort? I'll leave it up to you as I ALREADY SAID in the post. Oh, and by the way, the person who blasted me is not another ambassador, nor is she anyone at beBee itself. The blasting is nothing official in any way shape or form. READ THE FREEKING POST BEFORE BITCHING!!!! Rant mode OFF

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

6 years ago #9

#9
Yes, I used it for a while. I can't remember its name. The problem with groups is more that LinkedIn is knocking them down. The idea of Groups is very popular, but with many abolished functions Group Owners and Managers are tearing their hair out. The extension thing I mentioned is not to post to LinkedIn Groups, but to pull directly from a browser window and send a call elsewhere. That would need to be a custom job. Anything we build within LinkedIn is subject to their messing with it. We'll get to a Groups-esque type of thing after we settle notifications. I don't even want to call them Groups at all.

Mark Morris

6 years ago #8

There's an extension that can be used to post from an article straight into a group. Been around for years. I think. Can't recall if you can do that via the Send to LinkedIn part of addthis and other third party web side additions.

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

6 years ago #7

#6
No one gets new content notifications from LinkedIn. They will send you someone's birthday, new job, or anniversary, but not their new content. Oh, they will notify you when someone comments on something you commented on, too. The idea is to bring back notifications from LinkedIn activity. We want to know that so-and-so published a post or update. We used to get that. We don't get it anymore. While we're at it, we may as well expand the idea to all sources of content

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

6 years ago #6

#5
I can probably put the "read later" in the browser's data store. It would only be an author name, a date, title, and hyperlink. I would prefer to keep that type of stuff off my servers, but that would mean if you stored from your cell, you won't see it on your laptop. Now I need to decide on local storage plus device syncing or just serve up a page. Archiving can be just an extension of the Read Later, I guess I like your vacation setting idea. It's easy enough to do. I'm less sure of what to do about timezones. I expected that the system would send off notifications as it found new stuff. I see how that can be a problem. If I write at 08:00 you would get a notification at 05:00 which would hang around until you opened your browser before appearing to you. So would the other notifications you subscribed to. That will take some thought

Wayne Yoshida

6 years ago #5

#4
Agreed, Paul \ - I think most folks will prefer to have an adjustable setting for notifications things. There should be an option to turn off everything temporarily, like a "vacation" setting. I like the "Read Later" feature - this will help a lot when users are busy and don't want to lose sight of a juicy post. One thing that will be really handy - is some way to compensate for the time differences - I have trouble dealing with US East Coast time differences and it can become worse in an international network. But maybe "Read Later" addresses this function. Maybe an "Archive" function? But where would the post be saved? (This would be sort of like your personal library of posts so the item can be easy to find later, or shared, or whatever. Was that "Paul's Library Hive" or something?)

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

6 years ago #4

#1
Yes, Wayne, I considered limiting the number of notifications a user gets. I decided against it. That's what LinkedIn started off doing and that road leads straight to Hell. I see a system where you will be able to choose between email notifications (each event or daily digest) and web push notifications. That choice will be by author and content source. So, you can elect to get a web push whenever Sarah Elkins publishes an article, get an email when she creates a podcast, but only get email digests when she writes a status update. Or, any combination of as many people and sources as you want. If you elect to get push notifications from 100 people and they all publish at the same time, you'll get 100 notifications that Chrome will show you 5 at a time. That will be seriously annoying. It's up to members to use their heads a little We can also set web pushes to disappear on their own after about 5 seconds. Of course, that would mean you would miss them if you where away from your screen How to structure the notifications is another issue. Should we add a "read later" function? How about "add to calendar" or "notify me later"? It's all just code

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

6 years ago #3

#1
Yes, Wayne, I considered limiting the number of notifications a user gets. I decided against it. That's what LinkedIn started off doing and that road leads straight to Hell. I see a system where you will be able to choose between email notifications (each event or daily digest) and web push notifications. That choice will be by author and content source. So, you can elect to get a web push whenever Sarah Elkins publishes an article or creates a podcast, but only get emails when she writes a status update. Or, any combination of as many people as you want. If you elect to get push notifications from 100 people and they all publish at the same time, you'll get 100 notifications that Chrome will show you 5 at a time. We can also set web pushes to disappear on their own after about 5 seconds. Of course, that would mean you would miss them if you where away from your screen How to structure the notifications is another issue. Should we add a "read later" function? How about "add to calendar" or "notify me later"? It's all just code

Wayne Yoshida

6 years ago #2

Paul \ offers some help on this issue

Wayne Yoshida

6 years ago #1

Yikes Paul \ - this could be a huge task. Indeed, I would punctuate your title with a question mark at the end. One thing to be wary of is the boatload or - overload - of notifications that can happen in a busy group. I think users should be able to select how many notifications they receive - but isn't this already a feature? (The "digest" selection vs "every time something is posted or commented on"?) What about the moderation thing in Groups? There seems to be a lot of tweaking and tightening down on the LI side of this. And we have to be careful of the SWAM issue. (Site Wide Automated Monitoring) But, I agree we have to do **something**. I am looking forward to seeing you work your magic on this one. Thanks for all you do for the rest of us.

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