Change is the Only Constant
Change is the only constant, so they say. And that holds true in the world of social media. LinkedIn, one of the older social media outlets, has recently rolled out some changes to their user interface. And as is typical of most changes, these changes have had their pluses and minuses. While some of the changes in the LinkedIn interface are minor, there are some changes that power-users will want to be aware of.
Sue Cooper, our Associate in Brisbane, Austrailia, is the resident LinkedIn expert here at the Search Engine Academy. Sue has taken the time to go over the changes in LinkedIn. Sue walks us through a side-by-side comparison of the old versus the new layouts, going over each of the features that a user will want to understand to continue making the most out of LinkedIn. Take a look at Sue’s video!
Transcript
Let’s start off with the navigation bar or the menu bar. On the left here, we’ve got my LinkedIn profile and then on the right is a client of mine who has agreed to let me use his for the demonstration purposes. I’m just going to expand my profile out to show you what has disappeared. It’s primarily the three button or three icons at the top that the messages is now out within the main navigation as the new layout, the notifications button is now here as indicated by the little bell and new connection requests now fall in within the network icon. That’s what has disappeared.
Now, let me just get these screens set-up again and I’m going to expand this one out so that we can … I just wanted to show you what each tab was called. Home is still home. That hasn’t changed. The profile is now your icon and there’s a bit of info underneath so your privacy settings to view your profile, now that’s all pretty well self-explanatory. What’s next to network, so my network, this is where your new connection requests will fall in and Troy doesn’t have any … so, no pending invitations but if he had any, then they would display there.
The jobs, I don’t use LinkedIn from a job seeking perspective but if you do, it’s the same. It’s just carried across. Interests is now under this more or apps icon. I’ve seen it called by [inaudible 00:02:24] on some layouts, it’s called “More.” On Troy’s it’s called “Apps.” I haven’t figured out why the difference yet. Here you’ve got your … a few things like groups, this where you would find your groups, SlideShare, different things like that. What have we missed? Company pages is now under the Me icon. Here’s the company pages that Troy has set-up. That’s about it for the navigation bar.
Now that the search is different, let me put this back. One change that I have noticed is that there’s now no advanced option for search and it’s just the straight search here and once you go in … I’ll got through in depth later but there’s no advanced option. It’s just the one straightforward search functionality. As for the actual home page, it looks really different to me. It is cleaner. I’ll give them that. Anyway, here is what I can see different. Your profile details are different. As we go down, as we scroll down on the old layout, the profile box stays where it is. It’s constant but in the new section, it does follow you down the screen. I can see no benefit of that whatsoever but it is what it is.
This information here, so, “28 people viewed your profile in the past day,” now that … it shows different information. It was always how many people viewed your profile in the last day but this is displaying how many people have viewed Troy’s profile in the last 90 days. Whether that’s because of volume, I’m not too sure but that is a difference that I’ve noticed. How many people have viewed my last update, there’s an actual post. Now, my update is the last thing that I’ve posted and Troy’s post is his last action on LinkedIn….
For the rest of the content, please take a look at the video.