photo credit: coletivomambembe
Extra! Extra! Read all about it on LinkedIn? LinkedIn has launched a personalized new site, that is similar to most other news sites however this one is personal to you without you ever having to set it up. Your profile and your connections have set it up for you. The articles that appear on your Today page are the top stories of the day and not necessarily like groups, articles that were only shared by members or connections. It is a time management tool of sorts as you can click on your page and see what is happening without having to scroll through Twitter for tweets or check each of the popular sites. LinkedIn does it for you.
LinkedIn Today Features
LinkedIn Today is a personal news site that caters to your needs by bringing you the top industry news and also the articles that suit your interests. The articles are selected purely by an algorithm and are separated by industry. If you are in marketing, you will not receive real estate or funding news, unless you customize. It cuts out the noise on the bigger news sites where you have to search for an article in your industry that is of interest to you. LinkedIn Today has the main articles placed on your front page (above the fold) prominently so you can click on your page (your page is located at www.linkdin.com/today) read the articles of interest and move on. The front page showcases the top articles from your industry and when you scroll down it features industries “SUGGESTED INDUSTRIES” that you can follow.
1. Customize/Personalize. Your LinkedIn Today can be customized to receive the industries you want to stay on top of. If you are interested in hospitality, you can receive that. The industries are preset (adds some importance to LinkedIn Skills) and are found as a drop down under the “BROWSE ALL’ tab. Currently there are 22 industries but this will be expanded to 115 industries.
2. Share Counter. Articles featured in each industry are based upon an algorithm of shares. Once again, bigger blogs will continue to be featured just by sheer volume. But, who is sharing all of these articles? The share counter when clicked, shows you who shared the article, how many from each company and which industry they are in. Very useful for expanding your connections within your industry.
3. Share or Save. LinkedIn has created a bookmarking feature with the Share or Save. If you are not able to read the story at that time, you can press the save button and the article will be saved for you. This is exceptionally useful as not only do the stories update throughout the day, if a story is featured in the morning, we know that it could be gone shortly due to the sharing. The save button allows you to bookmark it and come back later.
The Share button shares the article on LinkedIn and if you check the box on Twitter as well.
4. iPhone App. The LinkedIn iphone app will include LinkedIn Today so you can catch up on the go. With LinkedIn Today on your iphone, you have the ability to see what your connections are reading as well as read saved articles and actually save articles which will show up when you return to your desktop/laptop. Flight delays just got a little bit easier.
photo credit LinkedIn blog
5. StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon has made it very easy for you to stumble articles from your LinkedIn Today as well as sharing them on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. The StumbleUpon toolbar expands when you that when you click share to expose the additional sharing options.
LinkedIn Today Video
LinkedIn is hoping that this will bring visitors more frequently to the site, they will update their profiles with industry news and also engage more on the site. What is noticeably missing is the Facebook “Like” button. There is no Like button on the Share button for each article nor with the StumbleUpon toolbar. The share button has only incorporated Twitter so I guess it is not that much of a shock that the Like button is not included.
I like this as it is easy to jump on over and see what I may have missed and it is also time efficient so that I do not have to go to each site and scroll through for an article of interest. The fact it is not on my homepage and I have to go to a different page to access, does create an extra step but it is so easy to use that it almost is too good to pass up.
What do you think? Is LinkedIn Today a site that you will visit often?
