LinkedIn Stays All Business with New Social Features - Customizable Modules
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These modules bring certain kinds of information directly to your home page, right at your fingertips where you can use it. Right now, there are only three modules available, but LinkedIn clearly intends for there to be more. The modules cover jobs (latest job postings in your areas of interest), people (shows you people you might know; can be customized for special purposes, such as finding candidates for a particular position), and “Answers” (the site has a Question & Answers section; the items highlighted in this area are relevant to the user’s field).
At last, I can actually show you what something from my own LinkedIn home page looks like.
Let’s take a look at the People module first. As it happens, I don’t know Declan O’Connor from Searchles, but I probably should; I’ve exchanged friendly emails and, in one case, a phone call with four other people who work for the social bookmarking/search engine company. One of them is in my LinkedIn network, as it happens. I know Mitch Keeler at least by reputation, having listened to a couple of his podcasts and quoted him in some of my articles for Web Hosters; I may even have exchanged emails with him.
I’ve never heard of Rishi Shah at Flying Cart, but since the other two seemed to be on target, I now think it might be a good idea to at least look up Flying Cart and find out what they do. As it happens, I can simply click on Shah’s profile, in which he includes a direct link to Flying Cart (he’s the CEO). From the home page, it looks like the company helps people set up their own online stores, quickly and easily.
That’s not quite in my line as far as writing for SEO Chat, but I can see the possibility of finding others in the same business, comparing their services, and writing an article for Web Hosters. This naturally suggests a very good business use for LinkedIn for me. Trust me, when you’re a writer who has to meet a set quota of articles every week, any new idea is worth its weight in gold!
The Answers module is kind of interesting. Clicking on the question takes you to the answers that other people have given for that question. Clicking on the “See more” link takes you to more questions. Aside from looking much more business-like, this area of LinkedIn’s site reminds me of Yahoo! Answers or Amazon’s attempt at a social network. There are about sixteen categories of questions. These are further divided into subcategories.
For the Answers module, you’re subscribed to a certain category and subcategory of questions depending on the interests you stated in your profile. I seem to be subscribed to the Web Development subcategory of the Technology module. None of this prevents me from clicking a different category or subcategory; in fact, since these modules are customizable, I expect I can change it to send me questions from whichever category I wish.
Since the Jobs module seems to be self-explanatory, I won’t go over it here. Instead, I’ll state what LinkedIn seems set to accomplish with these new features. First, it’s getting people excited about the web site again by offering them functionality that they’ll actually find useful (the Jobs and People modules alone may be worth it for someone who is looking for work). Second, it’s bringing itself into the modern era of social networking – but it’s doing it the LinkedIn way, with a briefcase and a business suit. That’s actually a good thing; it’s a valuable differentiator in a crowded social network market.
Will these changes lift LinkedIn out of an “also-ran” position in its field? It’s too early to tell at this point. But the new features have convinced at least one inactive member that it might be worthwhile to update that profile and find out everything the site has to offer. Who knows? It might even make good business sense.
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