The social network for professionals, LinkedIn, is putting its recent acquisitions to work optimising its mobile services to keep apace with users’ increasing reliance on mobile devices.
A recent study conducted by Wakefield Research on behalf of LinkedIn found that 70pc of Americans can’t survive a work day without checking their mobile devices. A further 82pc believe that time spent on mobile devices makes them more productive, while 80pc say mobile devices enable them to stay fully connected to their work and professional networks.
With the statistics to justify it, LinkedIn has invested in three updates to its mobile platform. With 72pc of those surveyed saying they watch or read news on mobile, LinkedIn’s take on the Pulse news app – acquired in April this year – will arrive soon with a more personalised experience.
Introducing Intro
Another recent acquisition, Rapportive, has been enlisted to create LinkedIn Intro. This new mobile offering works with the iPhone Mail app and builds on Rapportive’s ability to embed contact information into emails. With LinkedIn Intro, emails you receive will come with LinkedIn profile data to put unfamiliar senders in context.
All of this information can be viewed without leaving the Mail app. The service is currently available in English to all LinkedIn members and supports Gmail, Google Apps, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail and iCloud, but only via the iPhone Mail app.
iPad app refresh
Finally, the LinkedIn app for iPad has been rebuilt with a more mobile-friendly visual design and new features like expanded search and rich media, which lets you tap on an image to expand and play videos in-line.
Influencer, Channels and Jobs content have also been added to the app and new capabilities like ‘swipe to connect’ make use of the tablet’s gesture controls.
The updated LinkedIn app for iPad is available now in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Turkish and Korean.
