I was just looking at my connections and noticed a new link that appears below each connections name…”View and Edit Details”. This is currently in beta, but it appears that you can add details such as phone number, address, email and notes to your contacts. Sounds great, right?
First let me say that I like that LinkedIn is adding functionality. The notes option could be interesting and a great way to track information to particular contacts. Now for the downside.
First, anything you add can be deleted if the person removes you as a connection. That may not be important since if the person removes you, you probably will not be contacting them in the future. This is a minor issue.
The real downside is that I already have all of my connections contact information in Cardscan, outlook and my Blackberry. (Because I usually have their business card before I send out an invitation.) I’m really not going to take the time to renter 250+ connection contact data into another application.
A better solution would be for LinkedIn to allow me to add this information to my profile and choose whether or not my connections can view this information. This is what Plaxo does and it’s one of the features I like about it. I still don’t really use Plaxo, but they at least have laid out the groundwork for a better way to handle this.
Another option (that Plaxo has) that I would like to see is the ability for me to classify my connections as a friend, business colleague, client, etc.
This is currently in beta so there is still the potential that this feature will be improved. For now it is a step in the positive direction.
