Professional social network, LinkedIn, announced an overhaul of one of their stand-alone apps, Contacts, on Thursday. The new and improved app, named "Connected" includes a slew of features you may not have known were available before.
The original app, Contacts, was more than just that. The app also included a “to Do” tab and a News-Feed stream of alerts, such as birthdays, work anniversaries, or new job notifications. In the updated Connected app, these alerts are now brought straight to your attention to keep you updated on your connections' life events.
“This app helps you invest in your relationships today, so opportunities blossom for you tomorrow,” the company said in its announcement.
An interesting new feature is what Vinodh Jayaram, LinkedIn's director of engineering for networking and relationships products, referred to as "anticipatory computing". This allows Connected to sync with your calendar and then suggest you check out the profiles of people you’re scheduled to meet with beforehand, as well as follow up with them afterwards.
LinkedIn is the leading social platform for businesses and business owners. Unlike some of the other social websites, LinkedIn focuses on professionals and helping build business relationships. This update seems to be a way for LinkedIn to encourage users to engage with their services on regular updates, rather than only visiting when you're looking for a job or writing a co-worker a recommendation. Connected seems to be LinkedIn's approach to simplify user experience, much like Facebook's recent release, Paper. Time will tell if users adapt to the new ways of LinkedIn but our first impressions are that the newly updated app has some great tools to help you network smarter.
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