Professional social media LinkedIn is adding new features to become ever more useful to workers and job searchers. The network is featuring personalized news feeds, messaging “bots,” and recommendations for online trading courses.
The site strives to be more than just a job-searching engine and become more of a digital environment for professionals. The new objectives come two months after LinkedIn met the new boss, as Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is paying $26 billion to buy the platform later this year.
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said the company hopes o incorporate some of the tech giant’s technology as it builds software that carries limited conversations with their over 450 million users.
LinkedIn chatbots could help someone schedule a meeting with another user
Chat bots are the new hot technology in the Silicon Valley. Facebook, Apple, and Google are already offering their first AI messaging services.
LinkedIn’s bot will gradually expand to make it easier for users to communicate without the need to open new screens or switching to email services.
The updated newsfeed will show articles and announcements posted by professional contacts
The new “Interest Feed” will offer a collection of opinions, post, articles, or different text pieces of news events and current issues. Many already turn to Facebook or Twitter for real-time information, but LinkedIn is suggesting their feeds will have a more professional interest, with a combination of human editors and computer algorithms.
On that regard, the media added Lynda.com’s library to their site. Lynda features over 9,000 online training courses, both free and paid, and now they are joining the professional media to add their content a prominence they were lacking.
Nearly 18 months ago LinkedIn bought the training site for 1.5$ billion, and finally, they will put their investment to work in the form of LinkedIn Learning, a service available for premium subscribers and soon to target enterprises.
The company unveiled a desktop site revamp that will mirror the mobile app interface
The new look will be available late 2016. The company says it will be less cluttered and with easier access to the different features and services the network offers.
“We found with our mobile experience, when you clean up the interface, when you focus on the things that matter, we help people get the most value of LinkedIn, and this gets them more engaged on the platform,” said the company’s senior director of user design, Amy Parnell.
It’s worth noting that the firm makes most of its money from recruiters paying to use their database to search candidates worldwide.
Source: TechCrunch
