LinkedIn’s Redesign is Making Business More Social

Lisa Kupfer — January 20, 2017 Follow @dearlisa

Earlier today, LinkedIn let the world in on their new desktop design, which aims to offer a more “21st-century-social-network” attitude and easy access to everything that matters.

The cleaned-up interface allows users a more intuitive browsing experience by offering seven key sections to navigate through: Home (formerly known as the news feed), messaging, notifications, jobs, me (your profile page), my network, and search. On top of that recent projects, like LinkedIn Learning, which the company is planning to promote stronger in the near future, are also much easier to locate than before.

Looking Very Social, LinkedIn!

Probably the most notable change is LinkedIn’s new real-time messaging app that is always available at the bottom of every page – much like Facebook’s Chat. For one-on-one conversations, thanks to its’ new chat bots, this interface message feature will even suggest conversation topics or help you find “the right words” for that new job opportunity that LinkedIn found for you. The news feed content will be highly tailored to your interests, skills, and preferences, plus it’ll contain organic and sponsored content based on that information – giving LinkedIn a boost in ad revenue. On the down (or up?) side, for the user that means the company will also be collecting more data on each of us.

What’s the Strategy Behind All of This?

We can only speculate but, given the Facebook similarities, it seems not too wild of a guess that LinkedIn is hoping to increase the frequency of visits and the time we spend on the platform. All aspects of this optimization are engineered to encourage us to hang out longer, consume more content and engage more often with fellow professionals. If making business more social will work? We will see.

What we’re wondering, however, is when the mobile update is to follow? With the increase of mobile usage, which overtook web last year for the first time ever, optimizing for mobile should be at the top of everyone’s list. Particularly, in a fast-paced target audience like LinkedIn’s. Let’s stay tuned.

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