LinkedIn, the professional networking site with 90 million users, announced a new product today that aims to transform the site from an occasional directory into a daily social destination.
LinkedIn Today is a new platform that aggregates news stories by industry based on what people are sharing on the network. Users can see what their contacts are reading and what other people in their industry are reading and saying about different articles. They can choose from 22 industries, including banking, entertainment and nonprofits, and sort by geography and job title.
“What are CEOs reading? What are health care professionals in India reading?” said Liz Walker, LinkedIn’s product manager. “We think that can deliver relevant content to people.”
Facebook and Twitter garner huge traffic from people sharing news. And other aggregators that filter news according to specific industries, like TechMeme or MediaGazer, have proven themselves to be quite successful. LinkedIn Today puts the business spin on news sharing, and the social spin on business news aggregation. As former LinkedIn employee Mrinal Desai put it, the network wants to become the Wall Street Journal of social news.
Though LinkedIn has 90 million registered users as of January 2011, the site has struggled to get them to visit regularly, instead getting most of its traffic from recruiters looking for prospects. While other recent products like InMaps, a visualization of each user’s professional network, and Skills, a search function that illustrates popular skills in particular industries and companies, seem most helpful to recruiters, LinkedIn is indicating that its social news filter is just one of many efforts to come geared toward building relationships among everyday users.
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