Good news for those of you on LinkedIn who have found your way into the TechRepublican group, Link'd Republicans: On Friday, the uber-popular professional social network will be expanding its groups feature with several new items:

* Discussion forums: Simple discussion spaces for you and your members. (You can turn discussions off in your management control panel if you like.)
* Enhanced roster: Searchable list of group members.
* Digest emails: Daily or weekly digests of new discussion topics which your members may choose to receive. (We will be turning digests on for all current group members soon, and prompting them to set to their own preference.)
* Group home page: A private space for your members on LinkedIn.

Is it just me or is LinkedIn continuing to innovate to become one of the most relevant utilities on the web?

So tonight, for the first time, I used LinkedIn's Q&A feature. Naturally, my question revolved around how the GOP could work to win back the youth vote. Here's the note I sent to about 200 of my connections:

Today's article in the Politico.com [h/t Second Cup] brings more attention to a disturbing trend for those of us concerned about the longevity and continuity of the Republican Party: We are losing the under-30 vote (a.k.a. Gen Next/Millennial) like never before.

I've tried YouTube before to see if anyone would answer the question of how we reverse the trend.

My question to President Bush - unanswered.

My question to Mitt Romney - unanswered.

My question to the YouTube Republican debate - didn't make the editorial cut.

So I've decided to ask the question here - at our LinkedIn community.

I understand the "hip" and "cool" challenge that Barack brings to the debate for any of his opponents. However, I think we could at least try and off-set his popularity by doing a better job of communicating the reasons why we all found the Party in the first place.

So I want your thoughts and input on this thread.

How can we work to ensure that John McCain wins the Gen Next vote?

Crossposted from Eyeon08.

So I went to accept a LinkedIn invitation. You’ll never guess from who. But, in any case, I get to the screen, and there is Barack Obama asking a question.

This strikes me as a pretty clever way to use LinkedIn. This is a crowd that, if you engage, can probably turn donor. And they are probably pretty well connected to other people. They are relatively wealthy. And, if someone responds, Obama can highlight answers. By answering, people take some ownership. Wiki-politics plus social networks. Very impressive.

A little discussion of why this is so clever. When you ask a question on LinkedIn, it appears to 3 degrees of seperation. There are 1.4m people within 3 degrees for me. That’s a lot of people. And they are relatively well targeted. After all, if someone responds, they are, by definition, a friend of a friend of a supporter. (and probably wealthy) If someone responds, you know which of your supporters to have work the guy over.

Rudy Giuliani, via Katie Harbath, also has a LinkedIn account, but so far they just offer "friendship"

I am consistently impressed by the way Obama uses social networks and technology