My little baby is all grown up and in second grade now!

Congratulations to JibberJobber, a little side gig that gave me hope during a long, depressing job search.

I hope that you continue to grow and in another seven years you’ll be a responsible teenager.

(I know, I know, that was weird.  Happy birthday to JibberJobber anyway!)

I recently got my plaque that accompanied the award for the Innovative Use of Technology Award from the Maryland Career Development Association.  Here’s a snippet from their homepage:

I’m honored to have this recognition. I love speaking in Maryland.  I’ve connected with some amazing people there, and am excited anytime I can make an excuse to be there.

Thank you MCDA for your work and consideration!

Last week I announced a massive change in the levels on JibberJobber.  We had to tidy up some code before we released it, and the release happened late last night.

You can read the details in last week’s post.  In short, this means the free verion of JibberJobber is way, way more powerful.

In fact, as of right now, there are only a few reasons to upgrade.

This change prompted job clubs and other organizations that help job seekers to re-evaluate JibberJobber, and recommend it more.

I hope this change helps YOU re-evaluate JibberJobber (and taking ownership of your own career management) more.

Please spread the news with your contacts, job coaches, outplacement companies, university career centers, and family and friends, whether they are in transition or not.

JibberJobber just became way more relevant to you.

So, why would anyone upgrade now?  It’s simple… choose one of the following four reasons.  If those don’t matter to you, use the free level forever

Reason 1: The Email2Log feature is awesome.  Imagine you send 20 emails a day.  This premium feature will probably save you one to two hours each day, as you track and organize your job search and networking.

What does the Email2Log feature do?  Simple: each time I send an email to someone (or multiple people), I BCC (blind carbon copy) the JibberJobber server and the email will (a) create a new Contact, if that email isn’t associated to an existing Contact, and (b) create a new Log Entry out of the email.

Reason 2: Import in bulk. If you want to import contacts from another system (any system that exports to a csv file, which is pretty much any system out there worth your time), you can import in bulk to JibberJobber.

Reason 3: Have as many Contact and Company records as you want.  The free level is still capped at 250 Contacts and 250 Companies… upgrade and you can have more.

A common question is “what happens if I am over the limit when I’m Premium, but then go to the Free level?”  Answer: We will not hide or remove your Contacts.  They are still there.  We do not hold your Contacts hostage!  Use them, edit the records, associate them to Companies, create Log Entries… they are 100% useful and functional!  So, during your Premium trial, add as many as you want (import thousands and thousands from Gmail, Outlook, etc.), and then later decide if you want to delete them… but get them in.

Reason 4: Get Action Items sent to your email or SMS.  Don’t want to forget things coming due?  Premium users get messages in their email or through text messaging on their phone.  Don’t regret missing a follow-up phone call just because you forgot to look and see what you had going on that day… get them pushed out to you!

I might be forgetting one or two features, but those are four compelling reasons to upgrade.

Like I said, if those don’t do it for you, use the Free level, with all the new bells and whistles that used to be Premium!

On Friday I told my JibberJobber LinkedIn Group that I was going to make a massive announcement on the blog today.

We were going to do a release (that means, change the software on the server) last night and I was going to be ecstatic to to share what we did.

Alas, we didn’t make the release last night but should in the next week or two.  I wasn’t excited about postponing this release but we had a good reason to wait.

I’ll make the announcement anyway, though.  Instead of “here’s what changed last night” I’ll tell you what to expect in the next week or two:

These weren't free before, but they will be soon!

First, we are moving most of the Premium features to the free (Regular) level.

I think this is going to be a significant boost to JibberJobber and to you (a rising tide raises all ships, right?).

For almost seven years we have had a bunch of bells-and-whistles that were Premium features.  We have identified just a handful of things to keep Premium and we are moving the rest to the free side.  The handful of features that will remain PREMIUM include:

• Limit of 250 Contacts and 250 Companies on the Regular level* (see footnote below),
• Email2Log to create Log Entries and Contacts,
• Importing in bulk (from Outlook, Gmail, etc.),
• Action Item reminders to email and text/sms

Features that will soon be on the free Regular level include:

• All of the reports,
• Exporting your data,
• Merging records from the List Panels,
• All of the icons under List Panel, including: merging, exporting, the two reports, managing Tags, etc. (very useful features!),
• Ability to add multiple email addresses and phone numbers on a record,
• Categories in the Interview Prep area,
• Features on the Action Item panel on the homepage, including RSS, the Calendar, etc.

There are others that moved from Premium to Free but they are less important.

There are two reasons for this change (here’s a peak into our business and strategy):

1. It is now a lot easier to understand the value proposition of the upgrade. I think before it felt like nickle-and-diming… too many little features here and there, and it was just too complex.  Plus, the features we kept as Premium are the features most people upgrade for (not many people said they upgraded because of the features that we are moving to the free side).
2. If you can’t upgrade, you will still get significant value out of using JibberJobber. I tell my team that I want more (a) signups, (b) users, and (c) upgrades.  If we make the free level of JibberJobber more useful to you then you are more likely to become a hardcore USER.  I want more of my signups to become users, and I this should have a significant impact on that.  (and, more users will turn into more upgrades – use it, love it, get hooked on it, and you’ll be more okay with paying for it)

If you upgraded for a feature that is now free, simply downgrade by clicking on Account and then clicking the button to stop your subscription.

Second, we are introducing the Duplicate Finder.

This is something I’ve wanted for years.  I have almost 6,000 Contacts in my system and I thought “how cool would it be if we could push a button, see a list of duplicates, and then easily merge dups?”

I’ll tell you: it is VERY cool!

We’ve worked hard to make this easy to use and not overburden the server as it sifts through tons of records.  It’s taken lots of development, tweaking, testing, and more to get it ready.  I hope you enjoy it and get good use out of it!

I’ll explain more when this feature is available. And yes, it will be in the free level.

More exciting changes are in the works as my programming team is moving forward quickly!

JibberJobber launched in May of 2006. I had the idea in February 2006, just three months earlier.

Since then we’ve worked full-time making enhancements, big and small.  Last night we made a release with a bunch of things… here are the ones I can document (some are simply hidden from you or more for the admins than for users, so they won’t make sense to list here):

Premium Users: Send action item texts to your cell phone

This has been requested over the years and we finally did it.  You must go into the Account/Preferences page to set this up.  Once set up, and if you are a premium user, you’ll see this box on on the Log Entry / Action Item:

All Users: Custom Fields Now Show on List Panels

You can now choose to show Custom Fields on List Panels.  Simply click the Manage columns icon () and then you’ll see your Custom Fields on the list in the first column… click the checkbox and that Custom Field will show on the List Panel (these Custom Fields will now show on my List Panel):

All Users: Degrees of Separation more intuitive

Did you know we help you keep track of the real Degrees of Separation in your network?  It’s actually quite brilliant, and a bit different than how LinkedIn defines it.  When you meet someone through someone else, and enter them in JibberJobber, you can say they were “referred by” the person you met them through.

This image shows a snippet from a Contact’s Detail Page, on the right side.  You can see DoS with an image of 3… before that was just a text number and it always seemed kind of hidden (especially if the number was a 1… which just looked like a line).

Now it’s more obvious how you met the person.  If you click on the icon it will take you to the valuable Tree View.  It also shows, right under the number icon, who introduced/referred you.  I know this is a really minor enhancement (the functionality has always been there, we just changed the text number to a more prominent icon), but this is great info when you are networking!

All Users: Auto Save on Notes and Log Entries

One of my favorite users (hi Brad!) asked for this… he has been on a call with a prospect and then something happened to his browser or computer and he lost the notes he was taking…. now we are auto-saving Log Entries and Notes every 30 seconds to avoid that.  As you type you should see this message in blue (the message goes away after a few second):

All Users: Pull a URL out of an Email Address

This is another minor thing but I will LOVE it.  Many times I’ll put someone’s work email address in the system and then think “darn, I have to practically retype the URL into the URL field.”  No more insanity!  Now, in the URL field there is a little icon that, if you click it, will pull the URL from the email address.  Here’s an email address but no URL:

When I click on that little icon (), it pulls the URL from the email so I can have this:

Minor, yes, but we’re doing everything we can think of to make it easier to get data into the right places.

All Users: Easier to set dates to TODAY, yesterday, etc.

Another tweak to help you, with a few clicks and no typing, put dates into he system.

For example, on this detail page I want to say I met you last night at a networking event.  I double click the gray area to open the edit field, then I click the back arrow to go to yesterday, and Save.  OR, I can click on Today, and then use the arrows to go forward or backward… easier than (heaven forbid) I actually type the date in.  I will overuse this feature

All Users: Get Emails is now a free, not Premium, feature

We have had discussions about what should be free, what should be premium.  I’ve finally figured out my “guiding principles” to help me figure it out, which means a number of previously-premium features will be moved to the free side.

From the Contact List Panel you have a bunch of icons on the bottom, one of which allows you to select a bunch of Contacts and then get a “report” of their email addresses, formatted perfectly for copying-and-pasting into an email.  This is now a free feature.  You are welcome  Here’s the icon you would click to get the email addresses:

Once you click on that icon, the Contacts you have checked will show up in this report.  Sorry for erasing out the contact info but you can see in highlight the separation… the format is this:  ”Jason Alba” <Jason@JibberJobber.com>, “Next Name” <email@address.com>, etc….

… and a number of other fixes, minor enhancements, typos and other things that I’m not going to mention here.

My team is awesome, and I really appreciate them.   It still consider it a miracle we’ve been able to build something so cool and valuable for people to manage and own their careers and networking!

I can’t wait until the next release… it will be some of the biggest news we have for JibberJobber… and we’re all on pins-and-needles with anxiety until it releases

Well, this morning is my LinkedIn New Profile webinar.  It’s going to be awesome (I hope).

If you are tired of hearing about it, check out this awesome article titled 7 Tools to Organize Your Job Search in 2013.

#2 is JibberJobber.  Here’s how career expert Kristin Johnson starts talking about JibberJobber:

“This website has a funny name, but a seriously bad-ass capability to manage relationships, companies, and processes for your job search.”

I think that’s the first time I’ve seen that description

Check out her 6 other ways to organize a job search here.

I’m doing a 90 minute webinar on optimizing the new LinkedIn Profiles. Supposedly everyone should have them by the end of 2013.

This webinar is… how do I put this: not free.  I like doing free stuff, but my accountant likes it when I charge for my services, knowledge, passion, etc.

I have done over 100 presentations on LinkedIn, and I know this is going to be worth it the price.

Who should come? Everyone who is on LinkedIn, period.  These new changes have a HUGE impact on your Profile.  Some have said LinkedIn “blew up” their Profile, others have had things disappear without their knowledge, and others have their picture messed up.

Not only that, but changes with the Apps (changes = they went away) and what they are replaced with is powerful, but I’m sure we’ll see gross abuses of the power (embedding video for Funny or Die?  Oh boy… :/)

Come join us on the 17th.  If you can’t, I’m recording it and you can access the recording.

Click here for more info… including one of three bonuses to choose from, and my commitment to not pressure-sell at the end.

Oh yeah, the price goes up after 1/11. Sign up now…  Here are some changes… and that’s just the top:

Tomorrow morning at 9am MST (which is 8am PST, 11am EST) I’m doing the first monthly Ask The Expert webinar with Kim Mohiuddin.  There is not cost to attend…

Check out more info here.

And register here.

Please come 10 minutes early – we’ll start at the top of the hour, even as others are rolling in late.

I’ve thought about this for a few years… last week I sent my first batch of Pink Slip cards to an evangelist as a “thank you” for something.

Don’t know what I’m talking about? Here’s a post from October 2010 where I talk about how awesome they are.

Not to brag, but … well, okay I’m bragging.  Yes, I’m bragging.  This is one of my most brilliant ideas (I’ve only implemented a few of the brilliant ideas).  Why?  Because as I’ve travelled the country speaking I’ve left thousands of pink slips with people who wanted stacks of them to hand out.

Did you catch that?

People asked me to hand out my marketing tools.

They wanted to.  It is fun, and you can get a fun reaction from people when you give them one.  Some people took a few, others took dozens.  In cities like Baltimore, McLean (and surrouding cities), Phoenix, the Silicon Valley area, Minneapolis and more I’ve had my evangelists giggle and hand out my Pink Slips.

I’ve only done that when I’ve spoken, but this year I’ve taken on less speaking and more projects from The International JibberJobber Headquarters, which means I have a bunch of cards in my closet.  And I want to get them out on the street, where they belong.

Can I send you some pink slips?  If so, please use the Contact Us form and I’ll mail you about 20.  And if you want more, I’ll send more.

There is no charge for this.  Have fun, give them out, and I thank you in advance for helping me get the word out about JibberJobber.

Click here to ask for your Pink Slip cards… make sure I have your mailing address!

This blog has been listed in a number of “must reads” for job seekers.  Finally we are listed at #1

I like being #1 because, well, my last name is Alba, and I’m used to it!  It’s no fun being less than #1!

Honestly, though… after six years, it’s nice to be the #1 position – thanks Spark Hire!

Click here to see the entire list.