Visualizing Your Professional Network With LinkedIn and InMaps

LinkedIn unveiled a new feature today called “InMaps” that helps you visualize and interact with your professional network. The feature provides an interactive visual representation of your professional network, helping you to see who you are connected to and how they are connected with each other.

I’ve been mucking around with my map this morning. The output is pretty fascinating. I can see clear, distinct networks all from phases of my professional and personal life. I’ve shared my map below and I’ve drawn on it a bit to make it more clear what’s going on.

I can see my life-long friends from my academic life clearly separated at the top-right in pink (Graduate School at Georgetown mostly). Then there are distinct clusters from teams I worked with in KPMG‘s IT Advisory practice. Interestingly this broad network is split into three, representing the bottom left quadrant of the map – the Boston office, the San Diego office and a distinct cluster of connections to cross functional KPMG teams I worked with across the country linking them. Then there’s Callaway Golf – a network almost totally on its own in green on the bottom right. I worked there for the last 2 years in Carlsbad, CA.

What I find most interesting is the area on top – that’s where my online life meets my offline one. The blend of gray, purple and dark blue clusters represents the connections between my friends who are involved with web startups or in the tech community and my friends in private equity and venture. Seeing an algorithm spit out my own personal slice of the web and startup world clustered around a core of friends in private equity made me smile. It’s fascinating how visualizing our connections can make us look at our lives in a new, or perhaps shockingly familiar light.

Here’s a quick video on how InMaps work…