LinkedIn Signal (Beta)

Being an active LinkedIn user I’m always really interested in hearing about developments that LinkedIn are introducing to improve the usability and extend the functionality of the LinkedIn platform.

I first read about LinkedIn Signal on the LinkedIn blog – a beta product that gives you a whole new way to consume information and news that’s most relevant to you as a professional

The key features of LinkedIn Signal are:

1. Filter: Browse only relevant status updates from your stream

Hidden in the stream of status updates is information that’s valuable and helps you be better at your job. Signal allows you to hone in on information you’re most interested in for e.g. updates from your colleagues (even from folks on your same team) or audiences you’re most interested in researching and understanding.

LinkedIn Signal offers 8 dynamic filters to navigate the stream. You can narrow or expand your view of the stream based on the following filters: Network, Industry, Company, Time published, Geo / Region, School or just most popular hash tags.

2. Search for keywords, topics or people across the stream

LinkedIn Signal allows you to also search for specific keywords or topics you’d like to keep up to date on. You could also search for your favorite public personalities or a colleague whose updates you’d like to find quickly.

Given that LinkedIn has always been about your professional identity you’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll find relevant updates associated with specific names, some of which come from the LinkedIn member you’re searching for.

3. Get an auto updated real-time stream with rich content

What’s better yet is that Signal shows all the rich content shared by LinkedIn users in real time. You will see an alert at the top of the stream once new data is available. You don’t need to refresh the page anymore for the latest updates.

4. Find the hottest trending links across any relevant topic

Signal also mines all the shared links on status updates and shows you the most popular links, many of which are the hottest news stories on that topic, updated to the minute.

You will notice that the links will change over time as we continue to assess the relevance of a link based on topic, popularity and recency. Since the trending links are also sensitive to your specific search, the links shown for the search “TechCrunch” will be different than the ones for the search “Meg Whitman”.

5. Who’s Shared This Link?

Even better, you can now see who’s shared any of those Trending Links. You can also refine by industry, company and region. Imagine if you wrote a blog post on your company’s blog or were quoted in a news article, you can now see who’s shared that article and made it popular.

6. Saved real time searches

Signal also lets you create very personalized views of the LinkedIn stream that you can check into every day. You can go back to it quickly by simply accessing all your followed searches on the top left rail.

For e.g. imagine checking in every day to see a stream of updates from your colleagues at your workplace.

This week I found James Fell‘s post over at “The Wall Blog” and thought some of his points about future LinkedIn developments made good sense, what do you think?:

User Restricted Access – As company pages and groups grow companies might want to use them as portals for information in which employees can absorb information. To do this effectively LinkedIn might add functionality that allows company page owners to restrict viewing access to content based on the nature of the user e.g. a company could post company specific communications that would only be seen by its employees, or even a specific departments/territories.

Web Conferencing & eLearning – Building on the point raised above through controlling user access to content, LinkedIn could start offer companies the ability to offer Web Conferencing and eLearning packages through there current platform. Not only would this be of use to companies looking to train and communicate internally but also to educational institutions and third party training providers.

Increased Content – The LinkedIn Signal product provides good insight to how feeds and searches and feeds can be viewed, however, to interact with the content the user is redirected away from LinkedIn in order to engage with the information. To create a portal based experience LinkedIn might look to increase the amount of content available within feeds by offering, pictures, video and full stories for example to encourage the user to stay put.

Extended CRM functionalities – With people constantly building there professional networks online with LinkedIn I personally can’t see it being too long before they look to update there “Notes” feature (available on premium packages) and develop an offering to compete with Salesforce or Highrise as they have the advantage in which there data is constantly being updated by the users themselves.

Source: LinkedIn + The Wall Blog