Professional networking platform LinkedIn has undergone another overhaul, with users now gaining better analytics from the top of their homepage.
Elsewhere, connection activities have been streamlined on the right-hand side of the page, and the dashboard has undergone more changes.
LinkedIn’s consistent problem – despite its clear success – has been people communicating directly through the service.
A fairly excellent professional social media platform, LinkedIn still has to battle with the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Gmail and others when it comes to direct messaging.
“Share a comment, say congrats, or simply like an update in just seconds. We bring you up to speed with the latest developments in your connections’ professional lives – and then suggest more people you may want to add to your network,” wrote LinkedIn senior product manager Elizabeth Burstein in a company blog post.
LinkedIn’s latest tweaks are obviously aimed at gaining a greater share of this audience – ‘Ways to keep in Touch’ is now its communications aspect on the homepage, a clear message it’s fair to say.
It doesn’t appear to be anything groundbreaking, nor is there anything too new of note, merely a rejigging of tools that already exist.
“In the 10 years of our company, we could have done more to make (connecting with others) super clear to members when they opened up the home page,” said Joff Redfern, VP of product management at LinkedIn. “Now we want that to be super clear. This page is about how you start your day.
“We want to make it clear that the feed is the spine of the homepage. We brought some of the stuff on the right rail into the feed, simplified the presentation of the updates, making it easier to parse, and spent time on the relevancy algorithms to make sure we’re surfacing content that is most relevant to you.”
The third of the changes, to the dashboard of peoples’ posts, blogs and articles, shows the company is still pursuing a route towards a publishing platform.
