We got bored with Linkedin
Hey fellows,
Hope you are doing well in these pandemic days. Linkedin is good for opening leads for businesses. But it became too clutter and facebook-like recently.
We are designing a product that developers, engineers, all kind of tech people can share their work activities with their followers, they can tag their activities by skills, attach their materials (articles, code repo, image, file), mention people they worked with.
You can inspire other people by explaining what have you done, what have you learned, how did you accomplished it, and get inspired by other people too.
So, you build a work-related community around you and get a professional profile that will bring offers. You can see the jobs related to you as well.
Unlike LinkedIn and Twitter when you post an activity it will not flow away in this product, your posts will be categorized under skills and people you mentioned will be kept with common work stories.
I am sharing some design screenshots with you. Please give your positive or negative comments about our design. Your feedback will help a lot.
Thanks.
Don't hide sections of information behind tabs, it's unnecessarily inaccessible. Might as well format it below the fold, but don't hide it.
In order to "compete" with LinkedIn, and convince users it's worth signing up you need a very specific value prop that LinkedIn doesn't offer. I've been thinking about one recently that might be interesting for you; critiques on creative work. Designers, developers, writers etc, would join to be matched with another person in their field specifically to get feedback and critiques on their work for the sake of improving. I think this is a unique value prop that would resonate and convince people it's worth signing up.
Best of luck!
Jer
Thanks for the feedback. I will check what I can do regarding merging skills and activities in the same tab.
Unlike LinkedIn and Twitter when you post an activity it will not flow away in this product, your posts will be categorized under skills and people you mentioned will be kept with common work stories.
The unique value proposition here is, you will have skills that filled by activities and people with common work stories in your profile.
I hope it convince people to sign up. What do you think ?
I agree with your point on Linkedin. Last time I was seriously thinking about creating a profile website that focus more on developer. You can hook the profile to github, dev.to, medium and so on. So whatever activity you had will automatically be available on that profile website. Another thing I consider adding was auto resume generator/downloader.
In term of the UI, I personally feel it's a bit cluttered.
Anyways, I would love to try your website out when it's ready.
For the clutter UI comment, I have got screenshots quite narrow (I don't know why), so it feels like there is no empty space on the page. This might be the cause.
Thanks @valehelle, we would like to see your website if you change your mind. The idea is to have a dynamic web page in which people can go browse, see profiles of people you worked with. So converting this page to a static resume might not deliver value to the user. I will share it with IH community if we reach a working prototype.
I usually post on LinkedIn to make my self more visible to recruiter(external or internal). So my solution was to cater towards that sort of use case.
Sure, will post it on IH if I change my mind.
@mountainlabs The interface pictures seem great. I can totally agree with what you said about latest LinkedIn design update. I honestly found it absolutely super cluttered.
Talking about your design, here's what I think -
I run a design agency called Brucira and am currently designing my own product, ruttl as well. Just in case you want to get your interface designed, you can check out the work we have done till now.
Cheers!
I agree with you that LinkedIn has become more like Facebook, although I don't see much of non-work related posts ( thanks to the AI working under the hood).
I have been thinking about this space for a few months now. A few things come to my mind looking at your idea.
I would start with the value proposition to potential users for them to migrate on to your platform. Firstly, what's unique about this that you'll get people to migrate. @jeremykovac covered that aspect quite well.
Is that unique feature easily adoptable by your competition , in this case LinkedIn? What's the barrier for them to do it & how easy is it?
In my mind, Work Story is similar to Accomplishments section on LinkedIn.
What's the user ob-boarding & engagement strategy? Thinking about my day-to-day work, I'd have a story every month, sometimes even longer. What's the incentive for me to go and update my profile. If I'm looking for a new job or trying to get the attention of a recruiter - Yes, I'll update it.
I feel like LinkedIn turning into a Facebook-like platform is to engage users to stay on the platform rather than just access it when they need to look for jobs. You need people to hop on-and-off on a regular basis for traction.
A funny story, I was talking to a friend about an article I read on LinkedIn. His response was "You just moved to a new job, what are you doing on LinkedIn?". Different people expect different things out of such platforms. Understanding your user base and what unique do you have to offer to them will be a good starting point.
Thanks for the feedback. Connecting your activities with skills doesn't make you tick ? Accomplishments and Activity part is small portion of your Linkedin profile. In this product it is right in the main focus.
We target tech people who likes to share their work activities frequently.(Especially in the places like Twitter, Reddit etc.) . You can keep reading the article in Linkedin, if you want every work related activity counts on your professional profile. This is for you.
Hey there, love the idea. And agree Linkedin has gotten too Facebooky recently. Having said that i got my last two jobs via Linkedin so it's not all bad.
Echoing another commenter, i think Linkedin's recent focus on spam and ads is indicative of the market. How are you going to make this site profitable if you want to avoid that noise? History tells me you can go 1 of three ways. Ads/Spam, Charge Users (lol), Sell User Data.
Difficult choices to make there. Would be interested to hear your feedback on those.
From a UX perspective, it's nice, simple, uncluttered. I think you could do with some UX'y bubbles around your "appears on" icons. And maybe make the overall font size bigger. And maybe a gradient background rather than just plain white.
Keep it up. x
Thanks, Aid. We are planning to run job advertisements. (There could be matchmaking features as well). So the business model is B2B basically. Spam can be prevented by some algorithms.
Thanks for the UI recommendation as well.
Personally, I think having everything center aligned makes things look cluttered. My preference is to use a stricter grid.
I know this is not what you're asking, but I also think the business model is going to be really key here. LinkedIn's problems stem from the fact that their business model is largely based on legitimizing spam. It makes it nearly impossible to use LinkedIn as an actual networking tool. I don't have a great answer on what the alternative should be (Ads are probably why it is also looking more like Facebook), but I do think solving that problem will give you a leg up.
Thanks for the feedback, the business model will be running job advertisements. Spam messages can be prevented by algorithmic solutions. I think legitimizing spam messages and make a business out of it is terrible idea.