Visualize Your LinkedIn Network with InMaps

Eric Colburn's Professional Network LinkedIn Map
Eric Colburn's Professional Network LinkedIn Map

LinkedIn, the business-oriented and world’s largest professional social networking site (over 90 million members), has unveiled a cool mapping tool called InMaps.

This online mapping tool uses color coded associations to map your entire LinkedIn social network.

Being able to visualize your professional LinkedIn network allows you to identify your prime connectors and areas where you could expand your connections.

Watch the Video After the Jump

Visualize and Grow Your Professional  Network

InMaps is an interactive visual representation of your professional universe that answers all of the above questions.  It’s a great way to understand the relationships between you and your entire set of LinkedIn connections. With it you can better leverage your professional network to help pass along job opportunities, seek professional advice, gather insights, and more.

Here’s how it works: your map is color-coded to represent different affiliations or groups from your professional career, such as your previous employer, college classmates, or industries you’ve worked in.

Bigger names represent people who are the most connected within that specific cluster or group. When you click on a contact within a circle you’ll see their profile pop up on the right, as well as lines highlighting how they’re connected to your connections.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Your map is actually a view into how your professional world has been created over time. To get a sense of how that’s true, label each cluster (color) and explore your connections to see who are the major bridges on your map. You can use those insights to measure your own impact or influence, or create opportunities for someone else. So, you might see two distinct groups that you could introduce to become one. Or, you might leverage one person to connect them to someone else. See an area that doesn’t look like it is representative of your professional world? Fix it by adding the necessary connections.

Source: LinkedIn Blog

My LinkedIn InMap

Here’s my Professional Network LinkedIn InMap:

Eric Colburn's Professional Network LinkedIn Map
Eric Colburn's Professional Network LinkedIn Map

Because I’m still in the process of analyzing my LinkedIn network and connections, I have not yet labeled my professional networks. My LinkedIn professional networks appears at first glance to be predominately social networking internet based, verses places that I’ve worked, for example. So, I might label my professional networks by something like disciplines (surveyor, engineer, GIS). Or, I might label my professional networks by connection origin (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, EricColburn.com, etc.) – We’ll see.

The nice thing is, once you’ve created your own InMap, you can better understand what is your professional network and areas where introductions could help you to foster and grow your LinkedIn professional networks.

To access your InMap, go to http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com.

Do note: You must have 50 connections and 75 percent of your profile completed to access your InMap.

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