Secrets LinkedIn can tell you about your customers
One of the frustrating things about an open-source business is you don't generally know who is using your software. The paid customers you know, of course, but generally this represents a small fraction of the total user base.
In Alfresco's case, roughly 30,000 people download our software each month. Of those, maybe 4,000 to 6,000 register for documentation or give us their contact information in some other way.
Larry Augustin gave an excellent presentation [PDF] on this recently at OSBC. He talked about how to engineer a product to maximize conversions from downloads to dollars.
Today I found a new way. LinkedIn. What do I mean? And is this only something for open-source vendors?
I was searching for potential sales engineers, and initially did the standard searches: People in Chicago or Austin with Documentum, FileNet, Sharepoint, Java, etc. in their profiles.
Dense though I am, it eventually dawned on me to search for the word "Alfresco" in the LinkedIn database. What I found surprised me.
First, I discovered a wide range of people with Alfresco experience. Some are existing Alfresco customers and partners, some are employees. But a significant percentage include potential customers and partners.
Think about that. Wouldn't you rather hire someone that already knows your code? Wouldn't you rather engage a partner that has already done implementations of your software? Of course you would. LinkedIn can help.
Second, I found out how people are using Alfresco. A large stock exchange migrated from Interwoven to Alfresco. The world's top personal financial management software vendor uses our Community Edition to power its website. I wouldn't have known this but for LinkedIn.
I just did a search on "Mule" for my friend, Dave Rosenberg (CEO, MuleSource), and found some big-name customers and prospective partners using and promoting his software. He had no idea on these. That's just how open source is, but LinkedIn can help.
LinkedIn is just one source of data. I'm betting that there is interesting data sitting in Flickr, Facebook, MySpace (OK, maybe not), etc. All of these networks have data on what interests their participants. Someone needs to provide a way to search all that data from one query. That would be powerful.
In the meantime, I encourage you to check LinkedIn to see who loves your open-source project. You may be surprised (and pleased) to find out that careers are being built on your software.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
One of the amazing things about an open-source business is that you know exactly who's using your software, when you deploy a product like LoopFuse.
LinkedIn User Profile Advanced Search
http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=012022021532202637257%3Aok-gfdpm_38
LinkedIn Groups Search
http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=012022021532202637257%3An0e8vkkccdq
Maybe these will help some people get some useful data from LinkedIn.
- by dch613 October 20, 2008 4:02 PM PDT
- <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidhughes1" target="_newWindow">http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidhughes1</a>
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