Leebug: social networking buzz

With LinkedIn’s release of their API last month we were able to do something I have wanted to since we began to develop Leebug – you can now import your LinkedIn profile into Leebug.

The process is very simple.  Click the link in the status area of your Home page and you will be re-directed to LinkedIn and prompted to enter your LinkedIn credentials.  After submitting your username and password you are re-directed back to Leebug and presented with your profile, completely filled in from info taken for your LinkedIn account.

This is an import, not a sync, so you can make custom edits to your Leebug profile after the import.  If you make changes to your LinkedIn profile, you will have to re-import the profile.

The profile image that LinkedIn provides in the import is unfortunately quite low resolution, and therefore is somewhat distorted when viewing the full size Leebug profile image – it looks fine in the smaller thumbnails.  You can get around this simply by uploading your own photo.

This profile import will get users over the major hurdle of having to spend time filling out yet another online profile. They can now get to the good stuff, and concentrate on networking and using the various tools on the site.

Most Leebug users are auto-enrolled into the website at the time of their event registration – they are presented with a temporary username and password.  Now, with the LinkedIn integration, they can have a fully loaded profile in a few clicks and immediately get the most out of their event community.