LinkedIn, the renowned business and employment-oriented social networking service, has launched a new service to try to identify potential mentors and people who might be looking for mentorship, and then help match them together.
While the company is wooing new users in emerging markets; the roll out of the new service will play a key role into jelling its business in such zones.
The mentorship service (which testing commenced last month) is absolutely free and will be available first to users in U.S. (specifically, San Francisco) and Australia. And LinkedIn has set aside a hand-selected list of potential mentors, who will be initially available to people who indicate that they are interested in the mentorship.
Albeit, the mentors are given options about who they would prefer to match, be it people within their networks, or in same geolocation.
On the other hand, after a mentee indicates interest in getting a mentorship, LinkedIn provides parameters to help narrow down the search, if your list of potential mentors is as wide as the network's entire user base. Either side can terminate the communication at any point.
The company is hoping to spur engagement on its platform with the new service, and perhaps the new engagement efforts may directly relate to what most people need from the network.
But, just how much help is too much for the asking for people offering their services for free; and how would LinkedIn ensure that it has enough mentors across the different fields?
The option to become a mentor will eventually be open to everyone overtime, which means; we all could stand to learn something from a mentor.
