Launching public app today

on Wednesday, 7th of March

The real deal is here!

Launching public app today

Remember Letmelinkyou? The app that makes you the ultimate connector, allowing you to introduce everyone within your networks to eachother.

The past few weeks have been all about our public testing periodand your feedback and input into making LMLY the best app we possibly can. We have succeeded in doing so, which we could not have done without you guys, we are for ever grateful for your help!! During the BETA period we were already picked up by some very cool dutch blogs like frankwatching.com, iphoneclub.nl and lifehacking.com. We received almost nothing but 5 star reviews in the appstore, and Kees Romkes was even kind enough to make us a screencast, which we are happy to share with you guys. 

Spread the word!

We need your help spreading the letmelinkyou word. Feel free to share the great news on twitter, or recommend our facebook page to your friends!

Added features

With the help of many emails, tweets and user input from our feedback forum we have selected and implemented most of your idea’s into this public release of the LMLY iphone app. 
The new and improved features:
Connect yourself
This feature makes it possible to send your own ‘business card’ filled with your social accounts to anyone you meet, at any moment in time ofcourse! 
Improved connect page
The page where your connections meet has had some severe improvements, with many thanks especially going out to Miguel for his ideas. 
Emails
We’ve noticed many problems with registration emails ending up in SPAM-boxes. A tough nut to crack, but we worked it out!
Numerous improvements
A lot of small improvements have been made in general, making the app even easier to use, and connecting all the final dots. 
 

Video and …

Check out our brand new video, explaining the app in minutes!

The concept of LMLY is very simple, and we’ve simplified our explanation even further by posting this video on the front page of our website. Let us know what you think, and ofcourse don’t be afraid of sharing it with the people you know (or dont know yet:). 
Speaking of sharing, talk to us about how you are enjoying the app, if you have any further thoughts on it or if you just want to say hi. You can find our team on Twitter and Facebook, where we will keep you posted on whatever you may find interesting. 

Download the iphone app right here

This will make me get out of my office chair in 2012!

on Wednesday, 11th of January

“How new media adds value to business meetings”

Catching up to talk business … During a New Year’s drink, during a meet up at Starbucks or during a professionally organized business event. Through a strong influence of social media and an increasing workload, the ways in which we connect has changed tremendously. On the eve of a New Year, three young entrepreneurs met each other in the heart of Utrecht [The Netherlands]. Each one of them is professionally involved in the form and content of what they call ‘contemporary encounters’. Together they outline the contours for 2012; They’ll tell us their thoughts on how new media can contribute this coming year to encourage people to leave their offices and to meet others.

It needs trust to share ideas

One thing is absolutely clear, despite all mobile and online resources that we use to communicate with each other, the need for personal contact remains. “In fact, in an economy where innovation is increasingly important and in which we make and establish contacts quicker every day, the need to meet face to face increases equally. If you don’t trust somebody, you are less likely to share your ideas”, says Robert Daverschot [29]. Together with the company ‘Shakespeak’ he facilitates mobile interaction during the meetings. The audience uses their mobile phones to respond anonymously to the speaker via text message, [mobile] Internet and Twitter. An application that enables to start a dialogue with your audience easier and which helps you to discover what their real thoughts are.

“Event-stretching”: a sustainable commitment

Over the years the preparation for business meetings and events has become more intensive, for both the organizers and the visitors. The list of the event attendees are provided in advance and attendees start their online networking before the event takes place. The actual meeting day is indeed a social peak occasion, but has simply become just one of the contact moments around a theme. Felix Lepoutre sees a rise of informal networks that are being built right after a meeting. 

Lepoutre [27], co-founder of LetMeLinkYou, developed an app that helps to connect people with each other using various online platforms. ”The technology we provide is just an enabler, in the end you are the one responsible for making true contact”, says Lepoutre. The Internet entrepreneurs like to call the range of contact moments around a meeting “event stretching”: because we are having contact before, during and after a meeting and all these moments spin around one specific topic . “Once these contact moments are being facilitated in a clever way, it will help your organization to achieve sustainable commitment”.

Corridor’ inspiration

The event landscape has changed. Nowadays knowledge can be found everywhere. From that perspective, the thought of someone explaining a group on how things are or have to be done, is outdated. Each person has his own experience, a unique point of view, which leads to valuable input. Therefore the place where we find inspiration increasingly shifts from podium to corridor.

“This means you have to facilitate both the offline- and online contact within your audience” says Jasper van Blerk. “The program sometimes is even of secondary importance: as long as there is enough time to see and talk to each other”.

In 2009 Van Blerk [35] started together with his partner, “twoppy”, a platform that allows event organizers to create a smartphone application for every event in just a few minutes [let’s say a digital event schedule for the mobile phone]. Visitors can use the app to consult all information about the event and in addition to this, they can also get in touch with other attendees.

Co-create with the user

There are many online products and services that are being co-created: the manufacturer together with the consumer or the service provider with the client. Van Blerk anticipates more and more meetings will be setup in close cooperation with the visitor. “Ask them who they like to hear, in what form and what needs to be the desired outcome”. By letting your audience participate in product development, you’ll create stronger commitment, you’ll get ‘fans’. ”To gain a strong community, it is extremely important that you provide them with the right tools. It is highly supportive to the process of “event-stretching”, says Van Blerk.

Once the event has started; how do you keep up the involvement? “Monologues don’t fit into an era in which people continuously share their thoughts and knowledge”, says Daverschot. If you keep doing this during an event, you will observe commotion being caused in the back channel; people tune out and turn one-on-one on the topic at Twitter. Therefore it makes more sense to instead facilitate the conversation. The audience is not only happy to respond, but they also generate rich content that is of strategic importance to the organization. “One of the most interesting meetings I found was when a CEO asked his colleagues: “What do you think about my style of leadership?”. Daverschot laughs and says: “I can assure you that it created involvement!”.

A full circle - the event organizer’s turn …

Clearly there are many occasions where new media can make business meetings more interesting and more effective. Now it is the event organizer’s turn; they are the ones that can embed innovations and put them into practice. The support for this thought is currently to be found with SME’s and yet much less in larger corporate organizations. Inspired professionals jump into the space that is left once event organizers do not match the needs of contemporary meetings. “You are well able to profile and brand yourself as an organization, not by sharing your own vision, but by letting your community lift it to a higher level,” says Lepoutre. This way brings more fun, you get inspired to get out of your chair!

In short, if it is up to these three young entrepreneurs, this year is going to be a truly innovative and interactive year! “We invite everyone who shares this thought, to lift their glass and to feel free to catch up with us” A toast is brought … “to many valuable meetings in 2012”!

It’s public beta time!

on Monday, 15th of August

And you’re invited to the party.

After almost a year of preparations, it’s time for Letmelinkyou to make the world a better place. Get linkin’ today, download the app in the itunes store, or check out our website for more information on the app!

Check it out!

Finally live: After almost a year of preparations, together with the great people at Tjunafish we are proud to invite you to our public beta. We’ve given the app some thorough testing, and now we are most curious about your usage of the app. Who are you going to link, are you going to use it often?

One thing is for sure, no more hassle trying to connect people that belong to different networks. No more remembering to make a connection after an event, just get it done on the fly. The connections you make, define you as a person in the big mesh of your surrounding networks. So get your link on, and let us know what you think while you do that!

Get linkin’

What does it do? LMLY lets you connect your networks together whenever you need, for any given reason. Just add your networks (twitter, facebook, linkedin, gmail, phonebook), select 2 people (or any website), add your reason and connect them.

They’ll be able to get in touch via our website, where they can give eachother more information to make the connection even simpler.

Download from the itunes store now!

Reserve your username now!

on Monday, 20th of June

Dear future linkers, 

Today is a big day for LMLY, you can now reserve your username. Be quick to ensure your username is claimed, and make sure all your friends do the same. 

In the last months we have been working hard to get our app live, final adjustments are being made as we speak. We expect the iphone app to be in store very soon. The functionality for other platforms will follow shortly after.

Our proposition to the world:

We believe connections between people and other entities will be the cement of the new world. A new world that is forming right now, where information is accessible for anyone. Where the new value that defines a person will be their position in the mesh of social networks. And we agree with Seth Godin’s blog that the most valuable people will be the ones connecting the entire mesh together.
Many social networks today support this by offering functionality that allows you to connect your network ties together. But try doing that cross network, introducing a facebook friend to a twitter follower may present a great hassle.

Letmelinkyou allows you to load all your network contacts (facebook, twitter, linkedin, gmail and telephone contacts) into one app, and to introduce them to eachother. Version 1.0 offers basic functionality, doing just that. You’ll earn points for every connection made, and the connected ties will be able to show their gratitude for your connection in their own networks. This way the whole world can see what your worth in your networks, instead of just the 2 people you connected.

Connecting people to a website will also be possible in version 1.0. Our roadmap takes that functionality and builds on it, allowing business to add their assets to the mesh of networks. Imagine you can connect your network ties to relevant jobs or to a great restaurant you love. 

Social capital explained, showing the properties of networks.

on Sunday, 5th of June

I just finished reading a bunch of research on social networks and social capital, and would like to share my notes with you. The research explains social capital very clearly from a science point of view. I know everyone is looking for the Holy Grail, so I thought this might help the search.

Social networks are collections of social entities (mostly human in this research) and the collection of connections between these nodes. This collection of connections is the basis for social capital, and the basic properties are important to know and understand. Read about them in this blog, the next blog will use them to explain social capital based on these properties.

Directionality is simply the way the tie moves. 2-way of 1-way and if yes, what direction?

Reciprocity is an important factor in social capital. Does the advice flow one-way? Is it symmetric? Reciprocity is crucial for positive affect, cooperation and trust between ties. Generally, when tie A helps tie B, tie B will help tie A later, or trust of affection weakens.

Multiplexity defines whether the relation is multi-layered. This is the case when good friends offer each other advise, the layers are friendship and advise, which influence each other but should be valued apart from each other.

Tie strength is extremely complex and very important to social capital. Nobody has been able to take into account all the complex variables, probably because they change constantly, should be measured very precise and are mainly intuitive. Researchers define many variables that are often overlapping. I wrote this for anyone interested in playing around with them, so i’ll just show em all.

• Amount of time (intensity),
• interval,
• duration of interval and total duration.
• Emotional intensity
• Intimacy (mutual confiding)
• Reciprocal services
• Activity
• Frequency of activity
• Depth
• Closeness
• Valence (affective, supportive or cooperative character of tie)

Homophily is the tendency for actors to connect to other actors of their own sort. This can be good and bad. Similarity breeds connection, so that’s the easy part. But the similarity might have a negative effect on learning about new ideas and products and changing one’s opinion. The upside is multilayeredness of ties, so similarity might exist on one level, but on other levels the nodes may teach each other and influence each other’s opinions.

Now that the ties are defined, ill share some network properties with you.

Transitivity is the driving force in how networks evolve. It defines that a connection between node 1 and 2 cant exist without a connection between node 2 and 3 (while 1 and 3 don’t have to have a tie). For example if I work at a coffee shop and sell bagels from the bakery next door, I am clearly tied to that baker. I’m also tied to the supplier of the baker’s flower supplier. The more affection and valency exists between me and the baker, the more likely it becomes that ill use that supplier when the baker can’t supply something directly and I have to bake it myself.

Structural balance. This property lies close to transitivity, but looks at the positive or negative affect or valence. Negative valence can effect triades, for instance when you befriend 2 people who are enemies. This may bring awkward situations where both parties are not eager to share any knowledge or be open to connect.

Density
How many ties are possible in a network, and how many are actually there. In a network of 5 consumers, 10 non-directional ties can exist. With 6 connected ties, the density is 60%

Closure and local clustering
Closure is the density among those in a network with whom an actor has a tie. If all your friends know each other, closure is 100%.

Centrality
The importance of an actor within a certain network. Has some sub-properties.
Degree centrality
Basic measurement, in-degree shows the people that connect to you, out-degree shows the people that you connect to. Especially in-degree centrality is great in defining popularity.

Closeness centrality
How many steps does it take for actor A to reach actor B? The less steps to each node in a network, the more closeness can be attributed to the measures person.

Betweenness centrality
Measures how ‘in the middle’ someone is. Very important since the person in the middle has the option of keeping networks separated, thus controlling flow of information and value.

Social cohesion
This identifies closely connected subgroups of networks. When many actors of a subgroup are connected, information, attitudes and values are more easily diffused.

Structural equivalence
This focuses on 2 nodes, and sees how many overlapping contacts, values, similar information sources etc. the nodes both have.

Structural isomorphism
This is similar to structural equivalence, but does not necessarily look at the exact persons. If 2 people have completely different networks but the portfolio of their networks is similar, isomorphism is important because equivalence would give a 0% result but actually the 2 people have very similar backgrounds. Just coming from different persons.
Interesting
The research defines some interesting notes using the above properties.

While many networks enjoy high homophily and transitivity, many people think that’s the reason why closed groups are not good. When people are attracted to eachother by the same properties like race and gender, the nodes in the group are similar and closed of from outside knowledge and information. The following example explains how homophily is actually a good thing for network expansion. Imagine a firm with coworkers with 3 properties, nationality (French versus german), sports (baseball of hockey) and department (finance versus marketing). 2 french people may easily connect, but their interest in sport or department may differ. So on that level they can exchange knowledge and information.This may actually aid in briding the finance and marketing department based on the similar language.

6-degrees of separation was the research everybody still talks about. ‘I know the american president in 6 steps’. The research was actually started with 296 individuals who had to send a postcard to 1 random pre-selected person. The longest path was 11, the shortest 1. The 6-degrees is therefore based on the average. Also, only 64 postcards arrived, so 71% gave up because they didn’t know where to go to or because they weren’t motivated to cary out the task (or anyone in the network in between the start and end wasn’t motivated). Important is that in later studies researchers found that high local clustering within subnetworks that are connected by only a few nodes was enough to find a really short path. The longest paths where in non-dense networks.

In the upcoming blog, I’ll share my notes explaining social capital based on these network properties.

For anyone interested in tools to measure the properties, you should get your hands on ‘social networks and marketing’ by Christophe van den Bulte and Stefan Wuyts (Marketing Science Institute).