Starting today, we’re rolling out some updates to LinkedIn groups – the first major update since we launched discussions in Groups at the end of August 2008. This is the first of upcoming upgrades to our groups’ platform, conversation system, and moderation toolkit coming shortly. Please bear in mind that these updates will be rolled out over the next week, by when you should see these feature updates applied to your groups.
Here’s a quick video that walks you through the key features you can expect from the new LinkedIn Groups. More details after the jump.
What’s different in LinkedIn Groups today?
1. An improved look and feel
We’ve made the conversations within groups similar to face-to-face professional interactions by removing the wall between original remarks and off-site content such as shared news articles. The rich link-sharing experience you already enjoy on your LinkedIn homepage is now also available within the context of groups.
Even better is the ability to easily recognize the participants of a conversation by linking to individual profile pictures that makes the experience more personal. It also brings to your finger tips profile information of the professional participating in that discussion.
2. Ease of use
The new design makes it easy to browse through the latest updates of a discussion and make comments quickly and easily. You can roll over the images of the last three participants on any thread to see comment previews and click their profile pictures to jump to their segment of the conversation.
Alternatively, you can chime in right away by commenting in line without drilling down into the whole discussion. If you’re new to the thread, clicking the discussion headline or the “See all comments” link will take you to the beginning of the discussion.
3. Surfacing the most popular and recent discussions in a group – faster
A key part of the new groups experience is the democratization of discussions, as group members actively curate the conversations that will be seen by the group. This is most obvious in the carousel of new content – original posts, RSS items, and off-site links shared by group members – that can be voted up or down by any group member.
This feature allows users to quickly peruse new content and vote either by “liking” or commenting on discussions they deem worthy of the group’s attention. Users who prefer to see all discussions sorted chronologically can just click on the “See all new discussions” link on the homepage.
In a live discussion, nodding fuels a conversation and the new “Like” button is a simple way to do this virtually. You can also see who has liked a conversation to get a sense for topics that group members are gravitating toward. The “More” drop-down in the carousel also makes it easy to flag new items as a job or as inappropriate for the group.
4. Making it easier for you to receive email updates from select group members
While you may check in to groups ever so often to get the latest news and discussions from your fellow group members, you may also like to set up a persistent email alert when select members of the group make a contribution (like or comment) within the group. This is easily accomplished from the global Groups’ People I’m Following page.
5. Shining a spotlight on users who add most value to the group each week
Finally, the new groups interface introduces an easy way to discover participants who truly drive the activity of the group’s discussions each week by highlighting them as “top influencers”. This designation is given not only to those who contribute the most, but also to those whose contributions stimulate the most participation from other group members.
Members who are highly regarded and heavily followed in the group often play a key role in stoking the conversation with their comments and Likes even if they don’t start a thread. Of course, the authors of popular threads are often the most influential.
We’re all about nurturing the professional conversation, and we hope the changes to LinkedIn Groups will make it even easier for you to contribute and participate in a professional groups setting. We’d love to hear your feedback, so please feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of this post or @linkedin us on Twitter.
- Topics:
- Best Of,
- Groups,
- New LinkedIn Features
Comments
Very cool! Always on board for improvements to the UI, and appreciate the function to identifying and following influencers.
Was SO hoping to see the ability to link events to groups as well, to promote the event outside the group but also drive those interested to the group that can provide more of the same. Cross-promotion seems useful here.
Keep up the good work!
Wow… this looks great. Will try to get more use out of this for sure.
THanks so much. Video was good.
As usual, more great features to keep LinkedIn the top business site.
Sounds like a bundle of long awaited features. Thanks!
The video looks promising – but I cannot find the new interface in my groups. Do I have to switch it on as a manager?
@Harald- You do not have to do anything. We are rolling this out over the next several days/weeks. Your group will automatically convert over when we do a broader push. I hope this helps. Thanks.
Derek
Sounds promising!
What I’m looking for at the moment, is a way of forwarding (links to) discussions in twitter (or as an rss-feed). Could you tell me how to do this?
I think that it’s a major step back that “news” has been removed a separate group of posts.
This is a definite improvement which will assist existing members and help accommodate new users. Video was great!
Very elegant, its good to see features that are focussed on userbility being rolled out consistently.
Keep it up.
With “People Im Following” is that going to be updated ? At the moment I am automatically following everyone in the same mutual groups as me; thats 000′s of people. Unmanageable.
Your video clip show we can choose to follow. Great
But how about the 0000′s I have automatically followed, can I remove all of them ?
@Phil- You are automatically following everyone you are connected to. So if you share a group with someone you are connected to, then you are already following them. If you want to ‘unfollow’ them, you can simply find an update that they have commented on and click on the unfollow link next to their name. You also seem to be a rather corner case because of how many connections you have. Most people only have a handful of connections that share the same group as them. However, since you have so many connections, you have quite a few in each of your groups that you are auto following. If you follow the instructions i gave above, that should help you clean up the people you are following a bit. I hope that helps.
Derek Homann
Great, great, great!
Thanks a lot, these new features will be very useful.
I love LinkedIn and I’m very happy it’s going to be a more conversational place and not only a place where people post links, press releases and so on…
LinkedIn is not (only) a bullettin board
Hi folks
some great new features – thx, but I cannot see number 5
‘Shining a spotlight on users who add most value to the group each week’. Where is this function located?
I can only see ‘updates last 7 days’ .
Help.
Paul
Its looks like the “News” section is gone and any RSS feeds that were going into it are now going into the “Discussions” area. Is this correct?
I don’t like this because if your RSS feeds were based upon news..which meant more data coming through than the normal rate for discussion posts…your real user created discussions get drowned out by the RSS feed info.
Is this the case?
Hello,
Great features.
I can’t get a similar screenshot as the one you built.
What does the RSS button expose? Is this possible to get RSS feeds from Linkedin groups ?
Thanks
First thanks for continuing to develop LinkedIn it’s gerat to have such a useful tool that is constantly being upgraded.
Quite some changes to the groups which is a feature I used a lot so I want to step back and digest before loving or hating it!
One thing that does leap out is that the headline of the individual is no longer listed next to their photo. I found that a great time saving item before. As I could easily make a judgement on who and what they were. Now I have to click through via their picture which is a real backward step I think. Given the positioning of the photo the headline could be placed underneath.
So I hate that and really think it should be altered. As to the other feature they have some potential. Time to field test!
Regards
Stephen
A bizarre thing has just happened I have had the new group look for the last hour and now going back into a new group via the my groups option the view has reverted to the old one! Confused yes I am. Is there some way to get the new look back?
Stephen
Okay I’ve worked it out. Some of the groups have been converted over and some haven’t. That was confusing!
A mix of good ideas and a couple and of true duds that should be nixed. The “top influencers” seems like a bad one –it will encourage spam posts + who cares?. The prompt to post something new as the first item just takes up space unnecessarily. If I want to post I will–first I want to see what’s there. Please do away with rotating discussion threads through–just make it easy to scroll through as it was before.
Please keep it simple! That is/was a big part of LinkedIn’s appeal. Thanks!
Is there a way to customize the RSS image next to a feeded news item? Would be nice to distinguish between different RSS feeds (since you can add multiple ones).
Thanks.
A
There are many fine new features in the group changes.
However, if we are combining news into discussions, instead of having them separated or at least separable, then this is a huge loss in value for LinkedIn group members and managers.
I co manage a number of multi-thousand member LinkedIn Groups. The group member discussions are the most valuable and must be separable from news. I also allow different items in news from the discussion area so the members can yield the value of each. I will probably stop all news feeds in my groups as the dilution the news post will create outweighs their value. But net of it all, it will be a loss for all group members.
I can see some group managers creating subgroups for news feeds. However, we all know only a small fraction of any group joins any particular subgroup, so the exposure of news items to most of the members will cease to happen.
I hope that Linked In will decide and disclose fairly quickly if they will be restoring (or will be enabling in some modified way) the separation of news items from member discussions. Understanding if this is coming or not will at least let group managers understand how to communicate with their members new expectations around postings that go into the discussions.
If we (group managers and group members) don’t know if it is coming, there is likely to be a great deal of confusion, frustration, and potentially mixed and changing directions to LinkedIn members (which is a negative to the members, the group managers and ultimately LinkedIn.)
Overall, the changes look very promising and a great set of improvements. However there is this one gaping hole that needs addressed.
Terry Eberhart
Is there a way to put the old interface back? I hate it.
Mixing RSS news with Human discussion is a bad idea!
RSS news could easily flood the discussion area and make real discussion hard to find/follow.
Why cant I embed a hyperlink into a discussion any more? I can see that I can put the link in at the bottom, but when I do that it takes the person to my blog embedded in a linkedin page. My blog doesnt get the hit then. Why? I liked it better before when you went straight to my blog from the link.
my profile listed on a comment in a group I am part of is way outdated. How can I change this?
I also can’t believe there is no contact for customer service, only a FAQ
Is there a way to close a discussion from further comments
?
After a few days use I think that:-
Adding news into the main stream enables an opportunity to encourage people to post and share more: whether this is positive or negative I am uncertain of as yet.
Looking at peoples photo avatars is good, but i miss seeing their headlines. LinkedIn is about knowing who people are and headlines have always done such a good job with that.
The Like button is a great idea, low level interactions should be an encouragement.
@Derek I am still missing the use of following if everyone I share a group with I am following I am unable to see how to get any benefit out of it> anyone enlighten me ? I seem to be missing the point !
Phil
@Phil- It is intended to give you a quick snapshot of the things that people you are interested in are saying in your groups (instead of having to dig for them). We automatically default you to follow people you are already connected to because we think you probably have an interest in what they are saying. If someone you are following comments within the group, they should show up in a module on the right hand side of that group so you can access it easily. We also give you the ability to unfollow them if you actually do not care what they are saying in your groups. I hope this helps explain the reasoning behind it a bit better.
Regards,
Derek
Gah! The new interface has huge text and icons. I was checking on one of my groups, opened the page and my eyeballs nearly bugged out of my head.
There are no lines separating discussions, everything just blends in together down the page.
The scrolling bar doesn’t stop moving.
The new “Facebook” enhancements are a nice touch.
The life blood of LinkedIn groups are the discussion boards. By merging news into discussions, you are diluting the discussion content and making it very difficult to find this. Discussions are getting pushed off the board so they are no longer accessible. I’m getting a bunch of complaints from my group members about being unable to locate active discussions.
If people stop using groups because they are not user friendly and they cannot find discussions, then LinkedIn’s advertising revenue will drop significantly. The groups are what drives people to LinkedIn on a daily basis. Their function is key to LinkedIn’s success.
Overall, pretty good, but new articles need to go somewhere else as there is just too much spam from people pumping their splogs into group news. In the past 24 hours my groups have been dead as crappy news articles have pushed the real discussion off the page.
I’ve sent a feedback post, but haven’t heard back… There are some issues with the new design. I clicked on See All Discussions and See Discussions I’ve Started, and ended up not being able to go back to the group’s “home” page. If I close out and go back into LinkedIn, I’m still stuck not being able to go back to the homepage. AND… from those alternative Discussion view pages, the More… link doesn’t work!
I’m not crazy about the new design, but am trying to be open-minded. It’s clear, though, that there are some bugs still to be worked out.
I like the bigger photo’s
But the discussion threads heve become useless
In log threads most of the contributions has become unreachable.
Why is this?
You are now saying long discussien threads with over 5 arguments are now wat Linkedin wants.
shouldn’t users decide what format they want?
The old discussion thread pages, had a sort of breadcrumbs with pagenumbers.
These are gone, but have to come back! how canwe find older parts of the thread back?
Is there any way to get the new look and feel rolled out to our group?
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2093744&trk=hb_side_g
I think these changes just seriously damaged all decently managed groups.
Mixing news feeds with genuine human discussions (and drowning them out) just means that RSS feeds will be cut (I’m doing this already)and news posts will be deleted (I’m doing this already). It’s quite a confusing interface and certainly no improvement – change for changes sake perhaps?
I don’t see an benefit for the users in these changes. It’s harder to navigate, harder to see who is whom, what’s a “top influencer” anywhere and who cares?
It’s harder to manager too and that puts an extra time-burden on those of us who do moderate and keep our groups fresh and ad-free. Consequently groups may become less well-managed.
Does anyone even talk to users before these changes are rolled out?
Please listen to the feedback you are receiving regarding this issue. People in my groups are asking for news and discussions to be separated again. Merging RSS news feeds with discussions is a bad idea. The discussions get lost in the news.
People also miss the headline by people’s postings. It helped them know who was posting and whether they were credible.
We also can’t see all the ongoing discussions because of the current format. I deleted discussions after 60 days in my group to keep content fresh, but you can only see the most popular discussions. Things are disappearing now because of the RSS news feeds pushing things off the list.
I am little confused about the group discussions
I think the addition of RSS is a great idea
Derek,
The headline must come back under the pictures – it takes twice as long to see who someone it – that’s a big decider in whether I follow through with the individual or not. I’m on Linkedin for business and want to interact with people in my sector.
I certainly do have conversations outside my direct business world but I do like to focus.
I’m surprised to say that I really hate the news and discussions being merged. I thought it would be fine but it’s a total nightmare trying to find actual discussions instead of posted links. If I want links I’ll go on Twitter thanks.
Please unmerge! And give us the headline back!
Stephen
The new groups UI is a big improvement. I use groups all the time to local thought leaders in an industry. You just made me job easier. Thanks LI!
Making group discussions available through RSS feeds would be extremely useful. Any plans for this?
There are a few things I REALLY don’t like about the new user interface :
Mixing RSS/News with discussions takes away of lot of the real content and value from the group as a lot of spammy things are posted by people desperate for attention. Please revert to separate areas for news and discussions !
Not immediately seeing the headline of the person also takes away some value. This is not Facebook and I don’t really need to see a big picture of the people who posted… I do care about who they are (or they want to be perceived) though… Could you please put the headline back ? Sacrifice the picture if needed (though I like to see it, but it’s not essential)
then on the slightly less important side :
In the presentation :
* I don’t like “would the group like these new discussions?” at the top of the page, and the rolling thing is a total pain for the eye and distracts attention.
* I don’t understand what the point is about the “top influencer”… Is this going to be as useless as the “top experts of the week” in Q&A where people type in one-liners just to be on the front page ?
* the visual separation between different discussions is not clear and makes the scrolling difficult… To me it feels like you forgot content and focused all on the pictures… Sorry… but you’re supposed to be a professional networking site… focus on qualiy content not so-called “trendy” apps with pictures etc…
Remember, as per LI, your audience is 43 years old, professional and affluent. Do you really think that these changes are what matters to this kind of audience ?
On the positive, I like the “like”, “pass” features and would also add a “share” button like for the status update.
While I am very excited about the new look and feel of the groups – and I am confident there is more to come, it has created some challenges in the “quality” of many groups.
I manage two groups with over 30,000 members total, and the changes have combined NEWS and DISCUSSIONS – my group members liked to create and contribute to discussions, but now the discussion posts are “drowning” in an overwhelming sea of “blog link” and “promotional” posts – they are very difficult to find.
Is remedying that situation something LinkedIn is looking at?
I think Linkedin is 99% of the way there but unfortunately misses the boat with the combination of news and discussions.
Group members should not have to wade through or “dislike” news items to get to an actual discussion.
Give news its own spot and you have a home run!
Respectfully,
Paul Castain
Sales Playbook Group Manager
One of the groups I manage has not yet converted to this new look. I would like to convert it ASAP. Please advise.
@Brandon-It should be switched over now
Derek, are you getting the drift?
Bring back the headlines on people who comment so we know where they are coming from.
Separate news from discussions so individual opinion and articles are not jumbled together.
And let me add my own, agreeing with Geoff above, that I know Version 2.0 has seriously damaged all well-managed groups.
You have stripped managers of the power to order the five discussions on the old Overview page, instead subjecting their members to the clutter of the 16 carousel discussions and a dozen discussions underneath it selected by software!
As manager, I would organize the overview page like a magazine editor organizes his or her cover. Select a careful mix of recent discussions and older ones that received a lot of comments. And others that I believed would eventually receive comments.
Not democratic perhaps, but it was a way to include human judgment on the home page. That is gone!
My group is in the computer industry, where people are overwhelmed with information. We sold joining the group by promising not to overwhelm them with information for their own benefit. They have joined in droves.
Now that promise is hollow, and I expect membership and participation to tank.
Please reconsider. Put the human back onto the home page. Let us control the madness of the crowd. It’s what members want.
Best…Bill
Hi!
My group, Music Publishing And Licensing, now has over 6,000 members. The new interface is different, but not necessarily better or more convenient to manage.
Some examples of great features which used to work, but are now lost:
1. Ability to separate Discussions from News. This makes it easier to manage or Close the News section if things get out of control with spam posts.
2. Ability to close a Discussion. Now the only option is to delete it entirely, but evidently there’s no way to simply close, for example, if it’s just a general announcement, instructions or a topic which should be available for general searching, but NO new comments need to be added, etc.
Also, though the profile images are larger now, most people uploaded images to fit the native size of the old format, so now the images look blurry because they’ve been enlarged to fit the larger space. Profile imgages are Ok, but not as important as being able to manage the Discussion and News comments.
Thanks for considering bringing back these basic group management controls!
Michael
With the “News” tab gone, the “discussions” are now mostly news feeds broadcasting news. This is absolutely the wrong way to go. The new look is good and I would like “discussions” to be just that – discussions. The whole point is to stimulate conversations,not one way news broadcasts. This is a major move backward and will likely keep me away from starting and engaging in discussions. I do not want to see the news. I get all of these feeds elsewhere. Put back the “news” tab and allow us to have real meaningful discussions about issues!!
Please restore the separation between news and the discussion board. The fact that they’re now mixed is disorientating. Also I have noticed that some old discussions in my group have disappeared completely (I would have preferred to be given the choice, as manager of the group, to decide on which discussions I want to keep and which I would delete if the problem is with the resources for storing the information). Thanks.
Derek,
Could we see some response to the many people clearly unhappy about
A) mixing news and discussions
B) the lose of the headline
I’m not looking for a yes will change back but a ‘yes we are considering your views’ would be nice.
I feel a little like a peasant outside the kings castle shouting for justice. Some acknowledgement of our concerns would be great.
Regards
Stephen
@Stephen- We absolutely take all of the feedback we receive into consideration (including the two points you have listed). We also take into account many behind the scenes metrics based on user engagement as well. We use both of these routes to continue to iterate on the changes to our products.
So basically, yes, we are listening. However, we aren’t sure what, if any changes, will be made to the product at this time.
Derek
Unfortunately, our only alternative was to no longer allow news items in our group.
As a compromise (but a lousy one at that) we will most probably create one thread where people can post.
Its unfortunate that groups now have to ban news items in order to protect the ability to to have a discussion.
My suggestion to the others . . . remove news items and get back to discussions the way these groups are supposed to be.
Or you can always lose members and participation from people who are fed up with having to wade through endless blogs and articles!
Respectfully,
Paul Castain
Derek,
I have now used the new group features for some time. The merging of news into discussions is horrible for anyone wanting to follow or manage discussions. I imagine it is seen as a positive move by people marketing all their stuff: blogs, events, products, services, jobs, etc
With My Groups, I am now going to start deleting and cutting off anything that is not in discussion. That is what discussion is for, at least that is what discussions used to be for.
So in effect you have taken the NEWS section away from your members. This is not a positive value add, but a major value loss, especially if you trying to maintain a core value of linked in as business networking. Of course if you are jumping ship and changing Linkedin’s value proposition to being a marking distribution channel for members instead, then this change would make sense.
Is that LinkedIn’s intention, because that is what they are executing now.
Severely disappointed (and not alone in this.)
Terry Eberhart
I just joined LinkedIn so I can’t compare the old vs. new, however I don’t find the current format very user friendly. The rotating banner is annoying and discussions that “no one has liked” still appear. More importantly, however, when a thread has numerous comments, I am not always able to see the entire discussion even when I hit “more comments.”
I also do not see the links that people include in their posts. It’s clear from the title we’re supposed to be clicking on something but I see nothing.
Lastly, I do not like how the messages aren’t listed chronologically. A brand new post can end up half way down the page while another thread which hasn’t had any comments for several days appears at the top. The standard dicussion board format is to have the most recent posts at the top. How many people are accustomed to scrolling down the page to see if there’s something new?
Glad you’re listening, Derek. Let me suggest restoring manager/moderator control. If you think the carousel is a great idea, fine, let us pick which discussions are still relevant for our members to be in it. Ditto the discussions on the main page, not just in a little corner called “Manager’s Choice.”
We are all overwhelmed with information now. Let group managers have some control over that flow or we all, including LinkedIn, are going to lose members.
Behind the scenes metrics are wonderful, your users complaining about limiting the value of the groups might be more important.
Even if many of your users are happy with the changes give the groups managers options for separate news sections and to eliminate the rolling headline system. In addition give us a roadmap – without dates, but just tell us you’re working on replacing what you lost.
How you handle solving this problem and the communications around it will speak volumes to whether or not LinkedIn really cares about its groups.
@Terry Eberhart (Digin4ed)
I’m considering cutting the RSS feed as well. It’s just not worth the distraction to my group members.
The other day I locked my first discussion on my new group (no spam and policies comment). Today I found some comments on it, and, moreover, now I can’t see any button to lock any new discussion.
I see that someone asked here about the “lock” button, but I can’t see any answer to that.
Other than this, well, discussions before the update were better imo
There was a more clear and easy to navigate list. Now it’s a mess and sincerely I don’t have time for all of this.
Thanks
Best Regards
Agostino
Derek,
I appreciate the response and it is good to know you folks are keeping an eye on the responses to the change.
Regards
Stephen
PS Bring back the headline!!
Just write a good article on your own blog and add a link to it in the group discussion.
Of course your blog has a catchy title and short summary to invite everyone to leave Linkedin over to your blog
Bring back manager selection and ordering of discussions on the home page.
I have a potential solution to the NEWS+DISCUSSIONS dilemma for those of us who are frustrated by the discussion value dilution in our forums.
For Group Owners, Managers and Moderators – if they create a subgroup – provide the ability to push a post from the Discussions area into the SubGroup in the same way that we currently can with Job Postings.
That way, we can create an open subgroup for people to share blogs, articles, promotions, events, etc., and if our posting guidelines want to keep the DISCUSSIONS area article/promotion/blog free, all we have to do is MOVE those posts to the subgroup.
Hi all. Thank you for the comments. I agree with the themes so far.
I am bummed that the subgroups tab was removed (moved to a submenu link). In the group I manage we’ve been talking about adding our paid-members to a sub-group, leaving the parent group open to the public. I was sort-of counting on the visibility of the tab as advertising for paid-only list. I’m concerned no one will bother to look for the link hidden behind the “More…” link. I guess this is not a big deal, but at the the same time there is no shortage of space for the tab links so why remove it?
Ditto for the “Group Profile” link. That should be a tab, not a secondary link in a submenu. Or at least have the logo link to the group profile page, not the discussions page.
Hi Derek,
I find the new group interface annoying and tend to disregard the home page and use more updates and search to navigate the discussions. I have been unable to get a response from customer support on a problem I am having with the new group interface. When I posted a bad link to the group I am no longer able to view the discussions. Can you help?
Thanks,
John Carrillo
@John- I just checked on your request and it looks like our CS team will be responding shortly. Thanks for being patient.
Derek Homann
LinkedIn Product Specialist
how are you supposed to see all the text in the comments of a discussion? they reply privately is hidden/bled into the bottom.. but if a user posted more than two lines of a response, you cannot read them.. no more button, nothing.. I can’t figure out how to see all of the text.. I have hovered, etc. clicked.. nothing the only thing that comes up is the bled over reply privately..any suggestions? this occurs on every group I go to.
Allow me to correct myself.. it appears if the user entered a carriage return to paragraph their text, then it disappears I can give an example if needed.
Lynn:
The problems you are experiencing are due to your browser. I had several in my group have the same problem and we eventually figured it out. As web sites upgrade, their functionality doesn’t work on obsolete web browsers.
The current version of Internet Explorer is 8. I have also had success with Firefox. You also need to make sure your Adobe Flash is upgraded to the current version.
It would be useful if LinkedIn would post something on the home page that indicates the upgraded site won’t work properly with an obsolete browser.
********************************************
Derek:
User after user have posted similar comments:
*Combining news and discussions was a bad idea
*Taking away people’s headline makes it difficult to determine the expertise of the person posting
*You have taken useful controls away from the Group managers, such as our ability to stop comments on a discussion without deleting the discussion
Hiding the subgroups tab decreased their traffic
*Discussion threads are pushed off the board by the RSS news feeds.
Your response to these posts is that this will be considered, but no changes are imminent. This is disappointing.
I think you know that the most active LinkedIn users are in the groups. It is the groups that keep people coming back to LinkedIn, day after day. The changes made did not improve the function of the group. In fact, it made things much more difficult to follow and use. You replaced function with fancy graphics and scrolling news. I have group members telling me they are accessing LinkedIn less because it is no longer user friendly.
LinkedIn users care more about function than fancy graphics. We are business people who value efficiency. If you take away the efficiency in use, we will lose interest in the site.
I know all of us would appreciate seeing LinkedIn admit they made mistakes, and change things back. While the prior format was not perfect, it worked much better than what we have now. Bring back Classic Coke….we don’t like New Coke! Thanks.
I just dont like the new look and feel. The fact that discussions and news are not seperated anymore is not an improvement. Its getting a bit “a mess”…..a messy look and feel.
Who is laos not a big fan of the new look and feel?
Thanks,
Martijn
Mark, I don’t need them to admit they made a mistake. I just want them to fix them!
Agree with every one of your points. Nice summary of the discussion so far.
They have returned the headlines when mousing over the pictures, a great first step!
Now let’s please have the six others, including restoring managing control over ordering all the discussions — on the main page — not just in Manager’s Choice.
These groups need — and want — moderators and we need to have tools.
Bill
I concur with a number of the other commentators that the NEWS feed deserves a distinction from the discussion groups. The separation of the two in my updates allows me to skim for the information I want to see quickly. Since the elimination, many of the groups are blocking any feeds or creating a separate group which will dilutes the value of sharing information and requires you to join more groups – I get enough emails as it is and would rather see this combined within a single digest.
Now, where do you post news? Has this been eliminated?
Hi,
Can we get the page numbers back in the discussions posts? I often refer back to points or want to refer others back to a point made in a comment. Without page numbers it impossible to find!
It’s incredibly slow and annoying to navigate now.
Cheers
I HATE the new Groups format! My group of 3,100+ members made it clear that they mainly visit the Voice and Speech Specialists group for news that I provided through 21 feeds and I carefully managed. Discussions were almost always focused on technical questions and were very easy to identify as to what questions were out there for experts to provide input. With the new format, it’s just a jumble of everything.
My 17 yr old is a member of the group and his remark was “it looks like LinkedIn has a bunch of old dudes trying to be cool by copying Facebook’s rotten mishmash of a interface.”
Since the move to the rotten interface, traffic to the group has dropped by at least 60% and though I continue to add several hundred members every month, they are clearly spending less time because LinkedIn didn’t consider Customer Experience.
If LinkedIn won’t admit their mistake and return to a more customer friendly interface, I may decide to toss in the towel and close down the group.
New look or old, LinkedIn groups are totally anarchic. So many groups duplicate other groups, and people multi post topics to many of them.
As a discussion forum they are awful, with no rich text or images, lousy threading, searching and notification options.
You should not have to join a group just to see what is going on in it.
Why they did not learn from decent forums like Eng-Tips I fail to understand.
I think they need to completely rethink and reboot them.
I’m having the same problem as Lynn and I think it’s because the new design is not compatible with IE6 (which, unfortunately, a lot of companies still mandate for their employees). Any chance this will be fixed or there will be a user option to revert to the old interface? It’s really annoying not being able to read discussion posts that are more than a couple of lines long!
@Mark Walls Unfortunately, in the business world, more often than not, you can’t control which browser your company lets you use. Many companies (about 10% – not an inconsequential amount) are still standardized on IE6 and, since LinkedIn is a business-oriented site, it would be nice if they could find a way to accommodate that. Sure, I can read LinkedIn discussion posts at home on FireFox, but I’m subscribed via my work email address, so following discussion links in my email digest becomes a frustrating experience.
Agree with Kevin Brown above. My 2,500-member group interaction has dropped 64% since the new format. Unless we get back some control over the discussion and tools to manage the group, we’re going over to the real Facebook.
It’s a step in the right direction. There does need to be a better way of organizing the data and A few things like the news feed (or lack thereof) needs to be tweaked.
Great. All group manager are pleased that you’ve moved “Manager’s Choice” up to the top of the right column, brought back the window from mousing over pictures, and gave “Manage” it’s old tab back. But there is still work to be done:
1) Make the Carousel an option! Groups without strong moderators are probably delighted that your software is picking 16 discussions and displaying them. However my group, 2,500 computer industry executives, are already overwhelmed with information, and the Carousel makes the home page look impossibly cluttered. As a result, they are commenting 64% less than before the change. A simple switch: Yes/No — Display Carousel.
2) Let “Manager’s Choice” order the discussions displayed on the main page, as in the past, not off in its little corner. Again strong managers will use it, as I do, to judge their group’s interest in something, decide when a discussion has played out, move discussions around to make the page appealing. It can just be first 10 discussions as before! But let it be on the main page.
Then let your algorithm select the rest, as it’s done on my group surfacing a discussion that ended four months ago.
Please return human intelligence to the management of groups. Let those who prefer software, use your software. Others, our brains and judgment.
Please reduce the size of poster’s picture. The large picture is really a distraction of my reading time.
And another annoying thing is the newest post is always listed below the popular posts. Readers are very hard to catch the new items in the top scrolling bar and will miss the new items forever.
I’ll add that after reviewing my post, that certainly, “yes I abused quotation marks”.
/;-{D
I admit my mistakes, when will LinkedIn?
Hi – All the groups I am a member of have the new look. But the group I am the owner of is still stuck in the old look. Is this just an “owner’s” view or do I need to do something. I can’t find a help topic on this.
Thanks,
-Tara
I don’t understand why there’s such a short character limit to the initial discussion. This isn’t twitter, and 200 characters is grossly insufficient. I did like that I can add a link separately, especially since I had to conserve characters and abbreviate to get the basic idea condensed to 200 characters, but then when the discussion posted, the URL wasn’t even functional.
I thought it was a perplexing, poor set-up that defeats the group discussion’s intended purpose.
@ Avi Rappoport
@Terry Eberhart (Digin4ed)
Yes, I agree, the news/rss feeds need to be separate from the discussion area. They are two different features and combining them dilutes the value of both. If you are not going to have a separate News area/tab, then at least add another feature (a checkbox called ‘Enable the News Feature’ under the Manager tab, then under Edit Group Settings, and then under Discussions & News section) that allows managers the option to turn off or on the news/rss feeds so that news/rss feeds do not get mixed in with actual discussion questions.
The fact that you can not set the posts to list chronologically is terrible.
I end up announcements about old events at the top of the group’s page. Then people get interested in the event, which they think is coming soon. They start click the post, which keeps it at the top. In the end I just have to any old posts that are remotely interesting and time sensitive (the majority of posts in our group).
There needs to be an option for administrators to make posts sort chronologically.
I end up with announcements about old events at the top of the group’s page. Then people get interested in the event, which they think is coming soon. They start click the post, which keeps it at the top. Therefore, I have to delete any old posts that are remotely interesting and time sensitive (the majority of posts in our group.
Our group is not as popular as before. Why? Because I can no longer list discussions in the order that I deem important. Or am I missing something. This is a very basic and necessary tool to make this whole thing worthwhile. Forget the bells and whistles, just give us the basic common-sense features. How can I determine the list of discussions? As I add discussions now they go all the way down to the bottom of the page – if even on the page. Boo! It is completely reverse of what works. Please make this possible again. Frustrated, Rick
Hi there..!
1) Wondering if there’s any way I can feed discussions started by my group members to the associated Twitter account + link it back to the group?
2) The RSS Feed icon in my groups are grey and not the original orange like your screenshot is – why is that?
Thanks!
S