LinkedIn’s new interface and upcoming changes may not surprise you, but you will notice them. It will happen sometime in 2017. The redesigned website is meant to bring LinkedIn’s desktop experience more in line with its mobile app.
The main changes are to the look and feel. It will cleaner and has more responsive and easier to navigate features, including better search features. There are also some features that they are retiring:
· The ‘notes’ and ‘tags’ features will be removed from the Basic and Premiere levels and will move over to their paid “Sales Navigator” plan.
· The advanced filters that were once available to Premium members is also going away and will be moved over to Sales Navigator. These include “Company Size” and “Current Positions” searches, among others.
· Profiles have also been refreshed, with the image brought to the center.
· LinkedIn’s also made the Message button more prominent when you visit other users’ profiles and put more focus on connection notes, like connections in common and other relative details. There’s also a specific notifications tab, like in the app, which highlights all your important activity (while also providing LinkedIn with new, prominent ad space).
· LinkedIn also demonstrated that the messaging will highlight relevant connections in your bottom right messaging feed when you interact with certain content.
For example: when you’re looking at a job ad, any LinkedIn connections you have that are connected to that company will shift to the top of your messaging feed, making it easier to get in touch and ask for a recommendation or tips.
· LinkedIn is also adding in a new bot system to help users more effectively schedule their time. Synched with Google Calendars, the bot system can be accessed within a messaging thread in order to locate an available time for you to schedule a meeting with that contact.
Some results so far: LinkedIn has seen a 2-3X increase in referral traffic, while members are publishing more than 160K long-form posts via LinkedIn Publisher every week.
LinkedIn will be sending notices to its users on when these retiring features will take effect. If you’ve already received your notice, you’ll have until March 31, 2017 to download the notes and tags information, or you can transfer the info to Sales Navigator, if you’re interested in this paid plan.
If you haven’t seen your notice yet, be on the lookout over the next several weeks.
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