LinkedIn Analytics with Export

I found a way to download the analytics data including visitors, IP location, company and source from LinkedIn!!!!!

Too bad I am talking about Slideshares and not the main property of LinkedIn's Business Media Network.

Slideshares insight is the name of their (now free) analytics tool . It lacks only a few of the many features available to enterprise customers. This is what Inmail results should include, but are free for all slides users:

• Action specific drill-down for each post
• Time-date stamped
• Geo - IP location
• Organization if available
• Referrer
• Export to excel

This confirms they have made a conscious decision to hobble their core product. I don't want to lambast LI for building The de-facto business media network, but I do wish they would alter the current path sooner than later and this is a step in the right direction.

It is promising to see that at least the Slideshares team is thinking like Google and the founders of LinkedIn. Google built an empire by giving away core products in exchange for the chance to learn from the technical challenges and profit from the underlying data.

I would bet my shorts that one day last year in a LinkedIn boardroom, the topic of Paid Slideshares customers became heated. Customer growth and profitability weighed less than cost to re-market and re-brand the tool. LI Product people jumped at the chance to agree. Then our masked hero spoke up and said "why don't we give it away like we did. You know like the way that we did to build the recruiting and marketing database empire that funded our massive success." Everyone froze. It was so obvious, why hadn't they thought of it?

Now that they are giving analytics away on slideshares, it is my preferred publishing platform. This Pulse / Publisher / Influencers tool is a mess. The data is only available from weekly email templates with much less detail and no export option. I hope that our masked hero finds his/her way back to the top floor meetings about the future of their messaging solutions. This is the kind of data that big customers will pay for today and tomorrow.