Heard on the #LinkedIn listening tour

LinkedIn is soon to announce a major change to Groups.

That’s all I can tell you, bound by an NDA (nondisclosure agreement) of what I saw as one of 56 other LinkedIn aficionados who spent 4 hours in their Empire State Building office in NYC last week.

But don’t stop reading here, because here’s what was really interesting: even experts and novices all shared the same desire to see LinkedIn breathe new life into the valued silo of shared interest expertise that Groups should be, but never really attained.

And…drumroll…they admit that it’s just too hard to use LinkedIn, especially Groups and that’s probably why it languished.

People don’t want to click and click and search and click in a group populated by many folks, searchable only by name (not location, expertise area, key word, etc. for some odd reason), managed by and large poorly, to be barraged by emails of unmoderated posts in the Group, and finally stop contributing, and eventually looking at Groups.

We focusgrouped (a verb?) on various aspects and issues they were looking for input on, and I was pleased to hear many smart managers of Groups as frustrated as I am with lackluster participation in the Groups I run.

So get ready, a smart group of young experts from around the country is working to save Groups from itself. Stay tuned.

PS I saw some possible add ons to Groups that really got me excited.

Best news of all, I am glad LinkedIn is finally asking the opinions and input from expert users to the changes they propose to make.

In the meantime. keep using Groups to tap into free and abundant expertise at your fingertips. It will only get better.