The changes keep coming out of LinkedIn headquarters. On the heels of an announcement about new company pages (not to mention a recent design overhaul of the homepage), LinkedIn has unveiled a new look for personal profiles.
The streamlined design is touted as offering “a better way to connect and build relationships,” according to LinkedIn. The components are the same, but profiles are organized in a cleaner, more visual layout, which puts the emphasis on content and connections. For a company like ours, who regularly works with clients on LinkedIn training focused on using the social networking site for new business development, an emphasis on leads and content only makes sense.
The new profile page just doesn’t come with a visual makeover—it offers increased functionality, too, including editing tools, network insights and features that enable easier connections.
In the new sidebar (pictured above), for example, you’ll see a breakdown of information about your network, including the number of your connections that work at various companies. In staying consistent with the original profile design, you can see other profiles that people have viewed, giving you a better idea of how you relate with your LinkedIn network in terms of background, interests and skills.
The new profiles are in the process of being rolled out. If you want access now (we’re impatient, too), you can sign up for an invitation.
We’re looking forward to exploring more of the new profile functionality once we get an invite. At first glance, however, this appears to be a smart move on LinkedIn’s part—the new look is certainly more eye-catching and simplified, and in an online world that’s becoming increasingly cluttered and noisy, a concise, streamlined message is likely to have a greater overall impact—which is exactly the motivation behind the larger movement (dubbed Project Katy, after Katy Perry) that’s fueled these recent LinkedIn changes.
“If you look at the average user today, she’s getting a lot more sophisticated, she’s using a lot more tools both for productivity and entertainment,” says Deep Nishar, senior VP of products and user experience. “At some level, we are becoming generation ADD, so we don’t have that much time to focus and spend on things…. At the end of the day, if we have fewer things across which to make decisions, we end up making choices and taking action.”
Interesting stuff. And in the fast-moving digital world, it only makes sense that companies like LinkedIn are focused on what users want and need—and developing their platforms accordingly.
One thing’s for sure, we like this a whole lot more than we like the LinkedIn endorsements that are trending toward the uber spammy.
Anybody have access to the new profiles yet? And whether you do or not, what do you think of the changes?
Images via LinkedIn
Shelly Kramer is the founder and CEO of V3 Broadsuite (V3B), Senior Analyst and one of the founding partners at Futurum Research. A serial entrepreneur with a technology centric focus, she has worked with some of the world’s largest brands to lead them into the digital space, embrace disruption and the reality of the connected customer, and help navigate the process of Digital Transformation. As a brand strategist, she has decades of experience helping global companies with marketing challenges, and driving strategy and growth for B2B brands across multiple verticals.
