Mobile Friendly is the way to go!
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Photo: LinkedIn
What has previously been an industrial experience just had a serious working over. The new LinkedIn app is out on the streets. The question is, does it change the game and has Linkedin life become a bit easier?
Linkedin has released a ground up rebuild their mobile app. The idea being to develop a mobile experience that is more intuitive, smarter while simplifying the LinkedIn experience.
The streamlined new app has five core areas
Your Feed – Me – My Network – Messaging – Search.
Your Feed - (Home) is content updates from your network. Linkedin’s aim is to find the most relevant content for your industry, function, and skills along with the conversations you want to see.
For the first time, LinkedIn will ask you what content you are interested in, and if you don’t like what you see, you will be able to unfollow things.
Me - is all about your professional brand. It’s where you can see who’s viewed your profile, who is commenting on, or sharing your posts.
A real step forward is the ability to update your profile that previously has been very limited. From first appearances, the ability to add rich media to your profile is still limited in mobile apps
My Network – is a daily briefing of what’s happening in your LinkedIn world.
You can see people you may know, new posts from your network and suggestions to keep connected. These will include all the usual prompts to say congrats (why they can’t use the word congratulations I will never know!) to a connection celebrating a new job or work anniversary, or send a message to someone in your network when they have written a post.
A useful attribute comes from syncing your calendar. You’ll be pointed to look at the profile of the person you are meeting, with details on what shared connections or shared interests you have. A real warm introduction to anyone you might meet!
Messaging - breaks away from email for a more Facebook/ Whats app approach to keeping in touch. It is easy for you to ping someone in your network on a quick question or continue a conversation as you would in real-time.
Linkedin tells us that search is now 300% faster, and smarter. Their example, search for jobs with the title “Gold” and get results before you even finish typing.
LinkedIn state the following – “The new app also fully realizes our multi-app strategy by bringing more focus to the main flagship app. And with the new app launcher feature, it is incredibly seamless to launch into other LinkedIn apps for dedicated and deeper experiences, like Pulse, Groups, Job Search, etc.”
This is a big move by LinkedIn, who realise that they like others are getting increasing amounts of their traffic from mobile devices. My thoughts have leant toward the idea that LinkedIn has a clunky back end.
Early days with the new app and we will see what improvements have been made over time. The desktop version is still key, and you still need that for the full experience of Linkedin (Work sample sharing of rich media, etc.)
It looks like a step in the right direction. What do you think?
For more info check out the LinkedIn Blog
