LinkedIn News: Your company's professional watercooler
The last blog post on LinkedIn News, a few weeks ago, covered some of the sharing capabilities that we introduced. With this week’s release, we’re introducing some new features that should make “LinkedIn News” a more valuable resource for keeping up to date on the latest and greatest news about your company.
Check out a quick demo video (2:26 minutes) where we go over some of LinkedIn News' feature enhancements. Screenshots after the jump.
There are two important advancements in LinkedIn News today. Here are quick snapshots of what those differences are:
1. Surfacing most relevant information
We know that most business professionals don’t have time to scour hundreds of news articles during their busy workday. You want to quickly find the news your colleagues are reading today so you can keep up with the office water cooler conversations. The “Most Activity” section of LinkedIn News promotes the most interesting articles your colleagues are reading, sharing, and discussing on LinkedIn.
We also want to make it easier for you to consume information at a glance before you decide to either read it or discuss it with your peers from your company.
2. News Discussion within your company
Yes, that's right. This latest iteration of LinkedIn News features the ability to discuss popular news articles with everyone within your company. In essence, this version of LinkedIn News has the potential to be the online version of the company watercooler where you get to discuss articles of interest in your professional spheres (company, industry, etc...)
One thing that sets LinkedIn News apart from more traditional community-driven news sites is that our news discussions always take place within your semi-private company group. Any news discussion started on LinkedIn will only be visible to co-workers who’ve been confirmed to work at your company. This secure discussion environment will hopefully encourage the sharing of candid and insightful commentary amongst colleagues you work with everyday.
3. Discussion Network Updates
Of course, a discussion isn’t going to be very interesting if nobody knows it’s happening! Whenever you create a discussion or comment on a LinkedIn News article, we’ll notify your LinkedIn connections that work at your company, asking them to join the discussion. These notifications will show up in your colleagues Network Updates feed on their LinkedIn home page.
More to come…
Be on the lookout for more features as LinkedIn continues to build out its News and Groups feature set. Thanks to the following great engineers for their help in building News Discussions: Armin Ahumada, Oscar Chan, Chris Saccheri, and Scott Schlegel and Eishay Smith.
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We've also read your comments in the last blog post on LinkedIn News and we've addressed some of the concerns. Please continue leaving comments either below this blog post or for a more immediate response feel free to reach out to Mario, our community evangelist.
Soeren Sprogoe Mar 24, 2008
I don't get any news. It just says "We currently have no news to show you. To start receiving news updates, add your current position to your profile."
But my profile is fully updated!
I'm guessing it's because I'm an international user, and that you don't have any news to show from my company or network.
What's really bugging me is reading these announcement about News, Company Profiles etc., and then over and over again not being able to find them anywhere. Probably because of the above mentioned issues.
But you guys should really think about communicating that when posting new features, to say who they are available to and what the requirements are. Otherwise you run the risk of annoying huge amounts of your user base, and that's really not a good thing to do in such a competitive market (social networking).
Myroslav Opyr Mar 24, 2008
I do not have News on my homepage, I dug around and found FAQ http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=customer_service_news that says
"Users see news based on the company that they are currently in, but we are not serving news to all companies and users on LinkedIn yet. We are adding news for companies as quickly as we can so check back from time to time. If you know of other people in your company seeing news but you are not, remove your current position from your profile and add it again."
Does name of the company should match char-by-char or any fuzziness is applied to matching?
Alex Mar 24, 2008
I am excited for this new feature. This will give me more reason to return to my home page on a regular basis and see what's going no within my network, industry and company. I had one question, though....where is the news going to be fed in from - basic media? blogs? are you going to create media partnerships? just wondering what the strategy was here.
Antoine Mar 24, 2008
hi, the news picked up from our sites seems to be restricted to the postings on our discussion forums in Germany & the Netherlands. Is there a reason why the content that Expatica publishes on Belgium / France / Germany / the Netherlands / Spain / Switzerland as well as forum postings on all these sites except Germany and the Netherlands are not included in the news on Expatica section within linkedin? For all these products are RSS Feeds available. Thanks, Antoine
Mario Sundar Mar 24, 2008
@soeren, @myroslav,
as you probably know, LinkedIn News is in beta and the team is furiously working on expanding the service to as many companies and users as possible. Having said that, as you pointed out if there's no news about the company there's not much we can do.
@alex,
the news you receive is a unique combination of mainstream media as well as blogs, although the two seem to be moving in the same direction these days :)
@antoine,
I'm not sure I quite understand your question. Feel free to email me with a clarification | msundar@linkedin.com.
Dave Goldblatt Mar 25, 2008
Unfortunately, the news feature is pretty much useless as the company listed is not my employer, nor does it bear any relevance to my industry ("101 Dalmatians" isn't a relevant topic). There appears to be no way to modify or remove it, and repeated emails to customer service regarding the issue appear to be ignored.
Michael Pranikoff Mar 25, 2008
Hi, thanks for the post and the new features. I have question about the discussion or semi-private discussion with news from people within your company. The video says that the people in your company have been qualified. How is this done and what is the process? I'm curious to know, is that just because someone has updated their profile? What about people who have left a company to work for a competitor, but never updated their profile? I'm just curious.
Thanks for the great stuff you are all doing.
- Michael
Lincoln Rozelle Mar 26, 2008
The news section is pretty useless right now. Why is it not possible to remove it from the Home page. If you could add your own RSS feeds, actually edit the settings or just switch it off it would be improved immeasurably.
I've liked a lot of the recent changes but this so-called NEWS is lame. Please let me turn it off!
Karen Mar 26, 2008
Hi,
I'd like to turn OFF the news on my home page -- is there a way to do it? Somehow I'm receiving the news from a company I worked for back in the early 80's which is not even on my resume or profile anymore! How did you make that connection? At any rate, not only is it irrelevant, but my position was eliminated at my most recent company and I don't really care to see their news either! Is there anyway I can customized the news topics I'd like to see?
Thanks, KK
Christian Mar 26, 2008
This is a very interesting new feature.
We have new coming up for our company but I was wondering (and have not seen explained):
1) How does a news from (for example) MSN Newswire actually end up in a listing in Livelink? Are the users reading these news items elsewhere actively sharing them in Livelink (if so, how do they do that?) or are they being "tracked" in some way?
2) How do you decide who is an employee of our company and who is not? We are having a hard time ourselves keeping an eye on the comings and goings of old and new employees. Is it the work e-mail? I tried that and my (fully working) e-mail was rejected by your system.
Thanks and keeping an eye on your work on bringing social networking to corporations like ours.
/cl
Mario Sundar Mar 26, 2008
@dave goldblatt
Are you referring to "Ambient Entertainment"? Relevance of News is something we're particularly careful about. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
For all users raising issues on the blog, please leave specifics and I'll do my best to respond or pass on your concerns to the right team.
Mario Sundar Mar 26, 2008
@michael pranikoff, @christian
I'll pass on the kudos to jen and team. Privacy of conversations within News is of paramount importance to us.
Currently, we have an additional layer of verification (through your company email). If you're cognizant of any misuse of the feature, feel free to reach out to me.
@lincoln rozelle, @karen
I appreciate your raising these concerns. We're working actively to bring you the solution you've asked for. Stay tuned to the blog for further announcements.
BTW, you can also follow me on twitter for quick blog updates | http://tinyurl.com/2uz8u7
Matthew Ringman Mar 26, 2008
I want to turn the news off OR have a way to modify what news it is showing because it shows news for every company that has SCP in its title except mine.
Dave Goldblatt Mar 27, 2008
@Mario - Yes, that's correct.
Jennifer Granito Mar 27, 2008
Thank you to everyone who submitted comments and feedback. We have a lot of news features coming out in the coming weeks and many of them address the thoughts you have sent us. Please stay tuned and continue to send us your thoughts and ideas.
@Dave Goldblatt
Your comment helped us uncover a bug in the system so I want to thank you for sharing it with us. You should see a fix for this soon.
Remco K Apr 10, 2008
I have the same issue as Dave Goldblatt above.
My news is called "Remco news". Remco is not my company, its my first name. So the news is not my company news.
One of my listed 'employers' is my own company, operating under my own name 'Remco Kalf'. So probably there is another company called Remco which is wrongly connected to my profile's news.
Besides that, the news shown is totally irrelevant to my company or industry
Josh Apr 10, 2008
I am getting news for a company with a similar name. I don't want their news on my homepage and would like to know how to delete this feed. Thank you.
Josh Nelson Apr 10, 2008
I am getting news for a company with a similar name. I don't want their news on my homepage and would like to know how to delete this feed. Thank you.
David Owens Apr 10, 2008
Is there any way to remove news which is coming from a company I have nothing to do with? The first few letters match which seems to be what is causing the confusion, I guess.
David
Roy Rumaner Apr 11, 2008
Give me a way to turn it off and I will use it immediately. I am a consultant and change positions regularly. None of the news postings are relevant to me and I find that they just get in the way.
Kathy Uhlenbrock Apr 24, 2008
How do I get rid of the news? the one that shows up is NOT my company or industry. Very annoying!
Kathy Uhlenbrock Apr 24, 2008
How do I get rid of the news? the one that shows up is NOT my company or industry. Very annoying!
Mario Sundar Apr 28, 2008
Thanks for your feedback, guys! Please refer to earlier responses from Jen, since we've already addressed most comments. Much appreciated.
Stay tuned for further updates on the News feature. We've got a lot more in store that we'll be rolling out soon.
Scott Hample May 6, 2008
How do I:
1. Change the company highlighted in my news
2. Turn it off?
Thanks!
Scott
Maura May 8, 2008
I have made a request several times to have news removed from a company I no longer work for and have gotten no response so I would also like to know how to get rid of this or change it. thanks.
Richard May 11, 2008
I'd like to turn off News (and at a minimum, at least have it about my current company vs. a randomly chosen job). It's really bad you don't allow us to control it.
Mario Sundar May 21, 2008
Thanks for your patience. Stay tuned for future iterations of LinkedIn News.