LinkedIn revamps profiles with personal branding in mind
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. -- Say hello to the new LinkedIn profile, unveiled on Tuesday morning with a revamped editing platform designed to make it easier to build a professional identity.
During a media presentation at LinkedIn headquarters, the engineering team behind the overhaul to the profile -- arguably the backbone of the professional social network -- explained that the insights available with the new profile are more digestable and easier for comparing various attributes.
Some of the enhancements include in-line editing, a new sidebar for adding profile sections, higher-resolution photos, and being able to drag and drop profile sections to arrange them according to the user's preference.
Deep Nishar, senior vice president of products and user experience at LinkedIn, said that there are three tenants to the new profile layout: simplify, grow and everyday.
Nishar explained further that means simplifying the stream and user experience as well as growing a person's visibility to other users.
"We want to ensure that LinkedIn is working for our members -- even when they're not online," he said.
To emphasize the importance of profile pages, LinkedIn reps cited that 175,000 new profiles are created each day with an approximate total of 25 million profile views also everyday.
"People are updating their profiles when they're not looking for work. Think about that for a second," said LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, explaining that people usually don't do that with their resumes until they're actually looking for work.
Right now, Weiner cited that updates to LinkedIn profiles continues to double on a daily basis, year-over-year.
"It's not just about job seekers looking for the perfect job," said Weiner, positing that LinkedIn is also about entreprenuers looking to make money, sales reps looking to turn warm cold calls in to prospects, and journalists looking for sources for a story.
"We want to put the right business intelligence in front of the right member at the right time," Weiner added.
In comparing LinkedIn from January 2009 to Septemebr 2012, LinkedIn membership has grown from approximately 32 million to more than 175 million subscribers. Revenue has increased by roughly 10 times over in that time period as well from $79 million to $724 million.
One of the goals for LinkedIn continues to be pushing its services off of LinkedIn through widgets, APIs, and other mediums.
Weiner pointed towards Project Inversion, a major redesign of LinkedIn's architecture that commenced in late 2011. Some of the products that have come out of Project Inversion include a new LinkedIn homepage, new iPad application, push notifications and more.
Thus, the new profile layout could be considered the next step of that project or even the culmination of it.
The new LinkedIn profile platform will be rolling out to members starting today.