LinkedIn's latest digital publishing play taps into entire user base

LinkedIn has been ramping up its digital publishing strategy for some time now, mostly through acquisitions (such as Pulse) and tools geared toward advertisers as well as developers.

Now the professional social network is tapping into its largest resource of all: its user base of more than 277 million members.

LinkedIn members now have the ability to post original content to their profiles that can be shared publicly as well as within specified networks.

Essentially, the new LinkedIn publishing feature is a more professional version of a blog post, fitting in somewhere between Tumblr and a makeshift digital portfolio.

It's a simple addition, but it does offer the benefit of compiling and organizing a user's resume, recommendations, and examples of work all in one place, which could prove beneficial and a time saver for employers and job seekers alike.

Ryan Roslansky, director of product management at LinkedIn, explained in a blog post on Wednesday how the new publishing option also plays upon LinkedIn's Influencer program, which includes content from the likes of investor and entreprenuer Sir Richard Branson to media mogul Arianna Huffington.

The valuable Influencer posts and the wide range of professional content from millions of publishers that we currently aggregate on LinkedIn are powerful, but only the tip of the iceberg. Combined, our members have extremely valuable and varied experiences; however, their knowledge and expertise has not yet been captured and shared.

LinkedIn is rolling out the publishing platform slowly, starting with a small pool of just 25,00 members today. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company promised that it will extend the capability to all LinkedIn users in multiple languages over the following months.