In what is most certainly a move to stop the Facebook bullet train from picking all passengers (and businesses) on its way to station: social media nirvana, LinkedIn have come out guns blazing to compete with Mark and Co in a place where they really don’t belong; design.
LinkedIn has long known to be the messiest, the most confusing yet somehow the most informative of the social media platforms. With its focus squarely on businesses and professionals, a mentality that continues to hold it number one for so many IT pros worldwide, (at one point 20% of all LinkedIn users were in the tech space) the priorities were always given to connections, industry news and job opportunities. Increasing the design budget for LinkedIn was never really a consideration.
Now, as LinkedIn shares slide and as Facebook teams up with job boards BranchOut, Work4 Labs and Jobvite, its crown of “business social media king” is seriously under threat.
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Anyway, a blog post written by LinkedIn product manager Caroline Gaffney touts “a newer, simpler and more modern design” that “makes it easier to navigate the page and quickly find the updates you’re looking for.” The picture clearly shows this and we'll reserve opinion on the navigation.
The new design is said to be rolled out in the coming weeks and for LinkedIn’s sake, I hope it does work. From a “better for your bottom line” perspective, my LinkedIn connections have proven to be far more valuable than all of my other platforms combined.
