For those of you that are active on LinkedIn, check out it’s new profile organizer functionality.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNAIA3Dpxcc]
This new feature is only available for paid accounts, although they are offering a free one-month trial. Adding some basic CRM functionality to LinkedIn is not quite what I would have expected. However, LinkedIn wants its users to spend more time on the network.
You can already “tag” people into groups in the basic connections screen, although I don’t know too many people that use or understand this feature.
If you aren’t already using a CRM, the light-weight features in the profile organizer might be a welcome addition to your sales or research process. It allows you to store personal contact information and notes outside of the basic information that the connection has stored on LinkedIn.
But the question is whether this feature along with the limited number of InMails and deeper search results is worth $300 per year. I would say that this is a nice addition if you are already a paid account member of LinkedIn, but not enough to convert free accounts into paying accounts. To their credit, it is nice to see LinkedIn developing new features.