LinkedIn Knows Companies (In A Creepy, Scary Kind Of Way)

Floating through my feeds, I noticed this Blog posting from TechCrunch titled, LinkedIn, Now For Companies.

Today, LinkedIn (one of my favourite online social networks that I don’t Blog nearly enough about) is launching a new feature (it’s still in beta, and you need to be signed in to take advantage of it) that culls data from a number of sources (including its own) to generate intricate company profiles.

I did a quick check of the one it produced for Twist Image, and while a lot of the data is rough, a little off, etc… it still gives a pretty cool 10,000 foot view of what the company is up to, who works there, how it connects with other companies and some cool other little tricks like:

– Related Companies – which companies employees are most related to (this is mostly where they came from and where they tend to go).

– New Hires – grabbing information from individual profiles as to when they are updated. This also allows you to creep the kinds of positions a company is currently hiring for.

– Popular Profiles – looks like they are ranking those in the organization with the most connections.

– Top Schools – where the employees studied is ranked and given a percentage.

– Median Age and Median Tenure – how old the average employee is, and how long they’ve been engaged with the organization.

There is lots more functionality and, according to this LinkedIn Corporate Profiles information page, in the coming months we’ll be able to:

"post targeted jobs, recruitment videos, and other promotional material for recruitment… post information about products and services… upload company images and more…"

Who would have thought that private companies will now lead such public lives?

If you’re on LinkedIn and would like to connect – feel free to do so.
UPDATE: I’m getting feedback that the Company profiles are hard to find, and that some of the links above are not working. Your best bet is to check out the LinkedIn Company Profile. You can do searches from there, or click on the “Customize your company page” or “What’s this?” links for more info. There’s also some demos and goodness over at the LinkedIn Blog – Now Companies too have profiles on LinkedIn!.