misconceptions about mapping my LinkedIn connections
Last summer I started on a project to map my LinkedIn connections. The project ended with a presentation at the GIS Conferentie in Rotterdam in September. The main purpose of the project was the prove a point about the relationship between social media and open innovation: create something valuable with the help of many others, in a planned fashion. In case you wonder: the application still works! But it has not left the beta product phase and I don’t think it will for a while.
Since I keep receiving questions about the app, it looks like there might be some misconceptions about this app (and I completely take the blame for that…). Maybe the following can clarify Mapmyconnections a bit:
Business model
There is no business model associated with this application and there was none intended. If you are interested in ‘monetization’: I don’t charge for using the app, it is actually costing me –some- money (I host this blog and the app in the cloud). If someone bought the app, I guess it would make it a business model as well. I do believe there is much more value in an application which geo-enables LinkedIn, but we need LinkedIn to open a few gates for that.
Link to Esri?
Yes and no. To be clear: no company time was (mis)used during this project. I do work for Esri (Nederland), but hardly had any internal conversation about this. I did ask the tech team if this was doable and what tools would be best to use. Please note that we only used open api’s to webservices (at Esri and LinkedIn). And yes, I could have used Google Maps as well, but thought these maps looked nicer.
Current bugs
There are quite a few things still to be improved. For example: the location is not very ‘exact’. LinkedIn divides the world into regions, some of which are huge. Also, many towns with the same name exist and LI makes it hard to choose the right one. Also, some towns don’t work for a “first town” in this app (we think). Opening up the LinkedIn API for locations of group members would be a nice feature. Sorry if the app is not working for you…
What is next?
I have started on a project with looks into the relationship between location, relation (connections) and organizations. First step is to get a group of testers, but I will need all the help I can get for the different roles in the project.
More questions about Mapmyconnections?
Yesterday I posted a host of error messages that appear to have disappeared today. Not sure if it was you or Chrome that fixed it, but it still fails to reach the last connection (#612)! Is there a caching limit in AGS? AGS seems to be the bottleneck, as nothing seems to speed it up / slow it down – visually, no benchmark test! – with or without VPN from Kuwait, fast office network @ ESRI distributor in KWC or slow wifi @ hotel. I promise to write a blog post this weekend if it works, ditto give a talk to OpenWare. Groete, Andrew
we did not change anything here, so I would suspect it is on your side. I don’t think the problem is on the side of the Esri webservices we have used, suspect there is something ‘wrong’ with your last connection (the geocoding for that name).
I just checked it with my connections (some 700), it is still works. Hope it will for you too…
If you want to use some of my slides (www.kortsteroutes.nl/published), just let me know which ones. I appreciate all feedback.