A couple of weeks ago LinkedIn rolled out a new design for the site. LinkedIn is the only professional network to date; has more than 175 Million members and went IPO last year.
Since I am a daily user of the Q&A forum on LinkedIn I noticed more confusion than relief about the new format. Members that are new or not very proficient on LinkedIn are trying to find their way.
The new design looks like this:
LinkedIn new format managed to have some positive changes like the navigation headline color, group activity feed, news updates but also had few negative changes where members feel that they need to go on a treasure hunt to find basic important feature like Printing Vcard, the website links, PDF printing etc.
Let us see what are the positive changes:
- LinkedIn made their homepage more dramatic by adding Black color to the top of the navigation themes. The navigation bar is fixed at the top of the [age as you scroll up and down the page, and now includes more features: Home, profile, Contacts, Groups, Jobs, Inbox, Companies, News and More (that has a drop down menu for the learning center, Q&A forum and the free applications on LinkedIn)
- They actually added a link to the “LinkedIn Help Center” at the bottom of the page that has been buried during a previous format and design update
- The Feed updates from your connections are more visible and easier to find as they appear at the top of the screen- which lead to the question if LinkedIn will care more about “Sharing” than actual functionability
- LinkedIn Today Design also changed and is easier to scroll as the new format has larger images that could be visually appealing (Pinterest influence?) though has a lot more noise than before but some find the news update a great feature that offers better engaging experience
- The page background color changed to different degrees of grey and that makes the page a bit more plausible to navigate
- Since LinkedIn bought Slideshare, LinkedIn advises that you can upload videos on the application and show it on your profile (But what they do not tell you is that to upload videos on slideshare you need to have a paid membership on slideshare of at least $19.00/ month). One more point, since them Google Presentations that used to host videos on the LinkedIn profiles stopped functioning. You can still use the free application box.net that you can find under MORE at the top of the page in a drop down menu as long as the video format is in FLV format.
- The Twitter feed can no longer be seen on the LinkedIn Profiles which in my book is a positive change as many didn’t know when to stop tweeting or how to control their tweets on LinkedIn and flooded their connections updates which was really annoying
Tomorrow, I will discuss the NOT so positive changes in the new LinkedIn new design and some ways to maneuver around the new changes
Till then,
Sahar Andrade, MB.BCh
Diversity Consultant – Social Media Strategist
Sahar Consulting, LLC. – Home of the D.I.A.L.O.G.™ Programs
Diversity& Inclusion in Active Leadership Organizational Growth™
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