The New LinkedIn

After what seems to be forever, LinkedIn has finally decided to launch some major upgrades, including the introduction of a news aggregator, an API for external services, and a way to see people in other social networks.

What’s more impressive is that the lack of anything particularly new over the past year hasn’t stopped LinkedIn from seeing major growth as it has been adding one million new users a month. For whatever reason, people (approximately 16 million) have continued to flock to LinkedIn even though it hasn’t had much in the way of bells and whistles.

I’m one of those 16 million members but, to be honest, I rarely use LinkedIn other than accepting the occasional invitation. For some people, the creation of a virtual business network makes sense but it has never struck me as overly useful. And even if the connections were valuable, there wasn’t anything else on the site that has grabbed by attention enough to spend time on it.

In any event, it appears LinkedIn has finally given itself a makeover. The question now perhaps is how long before the suitors (e.g. News Corp.) come calling.

For more, check out TechCrunch and GigaOm, which suggests LinkedIn’s new features aren’t enough. “LinkedIn isn’t moving forward aggressively enough to unlock the value of their data and services; they need to bring them to the places where professional networking happens”.

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