Browsing various profiles in LinkedIn, I came across the fact that many people still uses the generic URL for their public profile. However Linkedin offer you a way to customize that URL.
I will first talk about the technical aspect of this personal URL and then I’ll give my view on this URL customization.
If you enable your public profile, an automatically generated URL is created and looks like be.linkedin.com/pub/firstname-lastname/1/x23/456.
All users have the possibility to create their own smart URL instead of the generic one; LinkedIn names it as personal URL.
In the past the personal URL would have always looked like www.linkedin.com/in/gaetandhont.
At some point (I haven’t searched when exactly) LinkedIn introduced the usage of country prefix in the personal URL for some specific countries. It is not obvious to know which country has its own prefix or not (I didn’t find the list of the available prefix, any idea?). [update-1]: The list of countries that have their own prefix for the Personal URL can be found here (Thanks Nico).
The country prefix for your personal URL is directly linked to the country listed in your Profile settings.
My “old” personal URL is still active (www.linkedin.com/in/gaetandhont) but when they introduced the country prefix it has automatically changed in the interface to be.linkedin.com/in/gaetandhont. So, people can see my profile using both URLs. I wonder how a new user today could have a public profile URL starting with www if he automatically get the country prefix. (any experience to share?)
The funny part is that I just discovered is that you can type any sort of prefix for your personal URL and it works: fr, uk, us, nl, etc. Digging into this I realized that I cannot be a citizen of Europe as “eu” doesn’t work. It looks like my personal profile is available for all the enable prefix that Linkedin enabled. This looks like a bug to me and really void the purpose of that country prefix feature. [update-2]: Personal URL is available by existing for all the prefixes. It is an intended behaviors that LinkedIn put in place (Clarification given by Nico in the comments).
My view on this personal URL feature.
I really like to be able to personalize my public profile’s URL because it contributes to my online personal brand. It is also very convenient to refer it into discussion or email.
You could also use it on your business card. I doubt that your employer would authorize it though. I believe it’s worth considering what added value this could bring to you on your (personal) business card or being Freelance, Independent or Owner.
Sidenote: I don’t like the country prefix thing. LinkedIn team: keep it simple, “www” is by far esthetically better.
If you invested a bit of time into filling your LinkedIn profile with a reasonnable amount of data and are somehow serious about using LinkedIn, you should definitely set up your personal URL. If you don’t set it up, someone with the same name as you could get it before you. LinkedIn’s approach on that matter is clearly stated: first in the place, first served.
Interested into strengthening your personal brand: have a look to the Howto personalize your public profile’s URL found in LinkedIn FAQ.
Tell me what is your view on this?
