Linked In gets new Android and iOS apps, with a spectacular iPad

Posted by Cash On on 2012-04-26 0

I will be the first to admit
that I don’t use LinkedIn that often. But what I do use is the
site’s iPhone app for when I’m
getting ready to step into a
meeting. According to
LinkedIn’s Head of Mobile
Product Joff Redfern, I’m not alone. At the end of Q4 2011,
15% of the daily visitors to
LinkedIn.com came via
mobile. At the end of Q1 2012,
that number had grown to
22%. With those numbers in mind, the team has come out
with a brand new mobile
apps, and the iPad version is
simply brilliant. The mobile platform is the
fastest-growing consumer
service at LinkedIn. In fact,
the site sees 19 people searches
every second via mobile
devices, and 41 Linked In profile views every second
across its current 150 million
members. When you’re
talking about devices, the iPad
has been the fastest grower,
up 250% year over year from 2011. But Redfern does say that the
iPad is being used more as an
“infotainment” device, given
the timing that people are
using it through the day.


LinkedIn sees a massive spike during what would be
considered TV prime time,
when people are watching
shows but checking email and
otherwise connecting via their
tablets.
LinkedIn wants to change
that trend, and so the iPad
version of the universal
binary is set up to act
something like a personal
assistant. You’ll start at your Hub page, where you’ll see
trending topics, job moves,
stock quotes and even an
overview of the weather, in
answer to “the jacket
question”. From here you can move to
your Expose, Stream or
individual profile views. But
what’s really huge is how
your daily calendar can now
interact directly with LinkedIn.
If you give the app pemission,
it will pull in your personal
calendar and match it with
your LinkedIn contacts. So if
you’re meeting someone for
lunch and want an ice-breaker that’s different than talking
about the weather, you can
now connect to see what
they’re posting about to
LinkedIn. That’s some pretty
useful information with which to start your day. But you’re not out of luck
when you leave your iPad at
home.

The new mobile apps
for Android and the iPhone
have the calendar connection
function as well. They didn’t get a major update, but the
calendar function alone is
enough to warrant an
upgrade to the newest
versions. My first thought on seeing the
re vamped iPad app was that
this is how I wish the rest of
the LinkedIn site would
operate.

Something about it
seems much more in tune with a touch interface than
the clicks and menus that we
see today. Perhaps we’ll get
some carry-over in due time,
but right now the iPad app is
an absolute stand out. The apps are free, and they’re
live right now. So you can
download them for iOS (as a
universal binary) or for your
Android phone. It’s the first
time in a while that I’ve been really excited about
something that LinkedIn is
doing, and i would love to know
your thoughts. Go to www.linkedin.com to download it and lauch

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