Redefining News for your company – LinkedIn News

In this post, I'd like to focus on the salient features of LinkedIn News since a lot has already been said about it this past week. As you're probably aware of, your LinkedIn Network is a valuable resource that enables you to draw on the collective wisdom of your colleagues, business partners and others in your professional world. LinkedIn Answers was the first step in fulfilling that goal and with LinkedIn News we're taking it to the next level.

LinkedIn News starts by delivering news about key daily topics:  your company, products, industry, and competitors, drawn from more than 10,000 publishers and blogs.  Then, we use the wisdom of your "crowd" of colleagues to determine the handful of articles that are the most important to your business -- the articles you need to read each day.  LinkedIn News Beta is currently available to a select group of users, and will be expanded to all LinkedIn members in the new year.

Check out LinkedIn News

Here are some of the basic elements of LinkedIn News you'll notice:

1. Company News Snapshot:

The first thing that draws your attention when you log into LinkedIn is the minimalist LinkedIn News summary section that has the five most widely read articles in your company network. We regularly cycle through the Top 5 news articles in the following four categories:

* Most popular

* Latest about your company

* Latest about other companies in your space

* Latest about your industry

2. There's more -- a lot more News:

For those of you who'd like to see more than the five relevant, most widely read articles in your company network; no worries. We have hundreds of thousands of news articles and blog posts that you can check out as you click through. We even have them arranged by the most read every (a) day, (b) week or (c) past two weeks.

Our goal with LinkedIn News is to help over 17 million professionals (as of Dec 2007) fully utilize their network to increase their work productivity. LinkedIn News is designed to ensure that professionals see what they need to know each day to be more effective and clued in to what others in their networks are thinking about. It ensures that the most relevant and urgent news are top of mind for professionals as they start their work day.

Let me know if you've any feedback or suggestions. Feel free to leave a comment.