LinkedIn signals a new internet phase
Jinfo Blog

11th October 2010

By Penny Crossland

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For a while now business networking site LinkedIn has been adopting features already offered by its social networking counterparts: since May, for example, LinkedIn users are able to “follow” companies as you would on Facebook or Twitter (see http://www.vivavip.com/go/e29156); company profiles, very similar in lay-out to member profiles, were launched in April. Keen to expand the use of its 1 million company profiles, LinkedIn recently launched additional ‘social’ features, enabling administrators to publish blogs, company news and job opportunities. Twitter feeds can also now be incorporated into company profiles. Mindful of the increased number of users looking for jobs as a result of the economic downturn, LinkedIn has also introduced a “careers tab” which will allow members to gain insight into the composition of a company’s workforce, the average tenure of employees, and which colleges and universities they recruit from, amongst other criteria. Now Venture Beat has alerted us to a new LinkedIn beta product called Signal, currently being rolled out to limited groups of members (http://digbig.com/5bcpfc). Via a dedicated interface, similar to Facebook’s News Feed or Twitter, Signal (http://www.linkedin.com/signal/) essentially allows users to extract relevant information from LinkedIn and Twitter updates by using eight filters, including connections, company, industry, region and school. (For a full description of the product read this Computer World: http://digbig.com/5bcpfd) A search toolbar provides the ability to narrow down by keywords or topics. A trending link displays the most widely shares links across LinkedIn. Usefully, searches can be saved. So, not only is LinkedIn becoming more ‘social’, it is also becoming more relevant to its 80 million members, making the site a first port of call for career seekers. However, according to LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, this new product marks a completely new internet phase, providing a solution to the uncontrolled explosion of information generated by social networks. Signal will definitely be a feature to watch. Feedback is currently being collected from beta users and the plan is to make the product available to all by the end of the year. LinkedIn was the subject of a comparative review of social networks, including Jigsaw and ZoomInfo, in May this year. You can purchase the report from the FreePint Shop at http://web.freepint.com/go/shop/report/1651

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