A few weeks ago we announced we were doing limited testing of a new navigation design for LinkedIn. Thanks to all of you who have sent us feedback. We are now in the process of rolling out the new design to all of our users. If you don’t see the change yet, you will sometime in the next week.

The first thing you’ll notice in the new design is that there is no persistent left-hand navigation. All global navigation is in the top navigation bar. We did this in order to free up space for page content – information about you and your professional network.

Another thing you’ll notice is that the new global navigation bar takes up less vertical space. Page content is moved up higher on the page – less scrolling!

The global navigation bar

The global navigation bar is always available and provides convenient access to all LinkedIn services. Pass your mouse over the bar and you will see menus that provide quick access to the most popular LinkedIn features. For example, the Groups menu has links for finding and creating groups; it also has quick links for the groups you access the most often.

Additional applications and services are available under the More menu.

Local Navigation

When you are in an area of LinkedIn  (such as Contacts or Groups) you see local navigation. The major sub areas are in tabs along the top of the page. If the page allows filtering of content (such as Discussions or Search Results) these options are shown on the left.

On some pages, the new navigation can increase the amount of space available for page content by almost a third. In the coming weeks and months, look for continually improved and relevant content to occupy this space. Stay tuned!

Ed. note: This belongs to a series of posts on how web sites and services are integrating LinkedIn functionality using the recently launched LinkedIn API. Thanks to Jeremy Glassenberg, Platform Manager at Box.net, for this week’s post.

Business today is complex. Not only do we need to share content with co-workers around the globe, we also need to connect and collaborate with clients, partners, and other key business contacts. Box.net’s latest initiative with LinkedIn is going to make sharing with all these parties much easier.

We recently debuted a new OpenBox action, making it simple for Box users to access and share content with their LinkedIn networks from within the Box environment. The process takes all of a few seconds: Box users can select the LinkedIn application from the OpenBox tab and click “Add Application.” From there, sharing your Box files with anyone in your LinkedIn network is just a few clicks away, as outlined in our blog post. This new functionality adds to our earlier integration with LinkedIn – the Box.net Files application – which makes it easy for LinkedIn members to manage and share documents, folders and presentations on Box from within the LinkedIn site. Now you can access your content and contacts whether you’re on the LinkedIn or Box platform.

Sharing your Box.net content with your LinkedIn connections

Box and LinkedIn have very similar philosophies: we believe in open platforms, and connecting those cloud-based platforms to address the needs of businesses. Our developers were thrilled to find that LinkedIn’s open API was very easy to use, so much so that writing this latest OpenBox Action took only a few hours. This kind of easy integration is critical for the adoption of cloud-based enterprise tools to begin the massive hyper-growth stage that we’re anticipating. Over the next year, we hope to see more companies working together and connecting their cloud offerings in much the same manner.

[Ed. note: This is the first in a series of posts on different web sites and services integrating LinkedIn functionality using the recently launched LinkedIn API. Thanks to Todd Pringle, VP of Product Management at Yoono, for kicking off the series with this initial post]

Here at Yoono we’ve just launched the latest upgrade to our social aggregation app, Yoono 7. It has many new features but one of the things our we are most excited about is (yes, you guessed right) LinkedIn integration! Our focus has always been deep integration with the most popular social networks (and instant messaging services) rather than supporting a hundred social networks in a half-baked way. For a while now the missing link (sorry, had to pun) for us has been LinkedIn – it’s consistently been the most requested social network addition from our users for over a year.

As professionals leverage their real time social stream more and more for content discovery and relationship management, LinkedIn has become a must have network for us.  Thanks to the new open LinkedIn Platform, we’ve been able to deliver that in an extremely short amount of time.

For developers considering the LinkedIn platform, we can say with confidence that it’s been extremely easy to develop on.  Within a couple days of getting our developer key we’d completed our initial integration that enabled our users to view their LinkedIn updates stream, update their LinkedIn status, or view and search their LinkedIn contacts.

Yoono already leverages oAuth for other supported social networking services such as Twitter, MySpace, and FriendFeed so it was a big bonus with LinkedIn’s embrace of oAuth as well. We’re already working on designing additional features supported by LinkedIn and most of all we’re excited about the possibilities.

If you’d like to learn more about Yoono 7, check out our blog post here.  You can download our Firefox add-on today with LinkedIn support as well as new features such as support for Twitter Lists, Facebook Inbox & Notifications, multiple accounts per social network, Groups (yes, you can add LinkedIn users to a group with friends from other networks then filter your updates stream by group) and full text search of your social stream so you can see what your LinkedIn connections have to say about a particular topic. We’ll also be updating our Yoono Desktop for Windows and Mac with LinkedIn support later this week, so stay tuned.

We recently passed 3 million downloads and we’re confident LinkedIn integration is going to further extend our reach and provide more value for our users. Congrats to the LinkedIn team on a great start for the Platform!

Over fifty million users entrust their professional identities and relationships with LinkedIn, helping build LinkedIn into the largest global professional network today. However, professionals around the world use a wide variety of applications and Web sites to get their work done, and they have spoken loud and clear that they want the ability to leverage their professional networks wherever they work.

Starting today, developers worldwide can integrate LinkedIn into their business applications and Web sites. Developer.linkedin.com is now live and open for business.

The evolution of the LinkedIn Platform

Over the past months, LinkedIn has supported integrations with some of the most prominent and critical software applications in the enterprise. Partnerships with companies like IBM, Blackberry (Research in Motion), and most recently Microsoft, have given us time to invest in both functionality and scalability of the platform.

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oftware is moving to the cloud, and business applications need context for who people are and how they are related. LinkedIn now is the obvious choice as a provider for those services. It is hard to imagine a business application that would not benefit from LinkedIn integration.”

– Roger Neal, SVP/GM at BusinessWeek Digital, McGraw-Hill

At LinkedIn, we have always believed that business applications are better when they are built over a platform of professional reputation and relationships. In real life, our most valuable professional assets are the skills and experience we acquire and the trusted relationships we build. It’s not surprising that business software becomes more productive and valuable when it is built over these services.

How can I start developing for the LinkedIn Platform today?

Registering as a LinkedIn developer is as simple as filling out a form on developer.linkedin.com. The LinkedIn platform leverages the open OAuth standard to make integrations from almost any language and development environment as simple as possible.

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hat a breath of fresh air. We were able to go to http://developer.linkedin.com, request a key, and actually write functioning code in less than 15 minutes. It’s amazing to have access to such a powerful platform on tap at any time.”

– Iain Dodsworth, Founder and CEO of TweetDeck

A number of developers who have helped provide us with feedback and guidance in our development will be announcing integrations in the coming weeks. For example, TweetDeck is announcing full support for the LinkedIn platform in its next version. Now you can easily view or take action on your LinkedIn network updates from within TweetDeck, with the full integration of the LinkedIn profile information of the person who posted the update.

This is the beginning of a new set of opportunities for the LinkedIn platform, and we look forward to seeing the integrations that developers will launch in the coming weeks and months.

Stay tuned for additional enhancements over during the coming months as we learn and grow this platform together.

Today, Microsoft announces an exciting new addition to the upcoming Microsoft Office 2010 – the Outlook Social Connector. The Outlook Social Connector is designed to seamlessly bring communications history as well as business and social networking feeds into your Outlook experience.

LinkedIn will be the first networking site to support the Outlook Social Connector. The LinkedIn functionality will be available in early 2010. Our big belief is that you can be much more effective if you have your professional network close at hand, and you can leverage your online identity in the work you do on a daily basis. The Outlook Social Connector will bring your LinkedIn Professional Network to where you work – right within your e-mail inbox.

Here are three key benefits you get from this integration:

1. Keep up with LinkedIn connections right from your e-mail inbox

One of the great things about LinkedIn is being able to learn what your professional connections are working on and thinking about. Just glance at the Network Updates on your LinkedIn homepage and you’ll be able to learn what articles & books your connections are reading, what conferences they are attending, and what questions they are asking and answering on LinkedIn. Many use this information to keep current with their industry and profession, as well as to learn new things and expand their horizons.

The Outlooks Social Connector makes this even easier – by automatically showing the latest activity (i.e. Network Updates) from any LinkedIn connection that sends you an e-mail. So now you can get the latest information from your LinkedIn network even without having to leave your inbox.

What’s more, for any connection with a public LinkedIn profile photo, you’ll even get to see their picture as you communicate.

2. E-mail your LinkedIn connections directly from Outlook

Know that perfect LinkedIn connection to help you with a business task or question but don’t remember their current email address? No longer do you have to go to the LinkedIn website to find their contact information before sending them a message, as your LinkedIn network is now available right within your inbox.  Just start typing the name of a LinkedIn connection in the “To:” field of an Outlook message and the connections’ e-mail address from LinkedIn will automatically appear as if they are an existing Outlook contact. In fact, the Outlook Social Connector will create an Outlook Contacts folder for all of your LinkedIn connections and bring down their contact information, professional details, and picture from LinkedIn into Outlook.

3. Keep building your professional network from Outlook

Working with someone new but haven’t had a chance to connect with them on LinkedIn? By bringing professional networking to where you work, the Outlook Social Connector again makes it easy. Just click a button next to any e-mail you receive and instantly send an invitation to connect to the e-mail’s sender. It’s that easy.

We hope that these functions start bringing some of the key elements of your LinkedIn professional network to where you work – your Outlook e-mail inbox, sometime early next year. But these are certainly just the first steps. Let us know what else you’d like to see by leaving a comment below.

As you’ve likely heard by now, we launched our first Twitter integration features at LinkedIn earlier this week.  For professionals who want to make Twitter part of their professional identity, you can now easily add your Twitter account to your LinkedIn profile, and seamlessly post LinkedIn status updates to Twitter, and vice-versa.

This launch also brings with it a brand new addition to the LinkedIn application platform: Tweets.

Tweets is an application that allows you to seamless integrate basic Twitter functionality into your LinkedIn experience.  For our users who are regular users of Twitter, Tweets provides the following:

• Twitter client functionality, right from your LinkedIn homepage. Tweets adds a module to your homepage that allows you to easily see the most recent tweets of the people you follow on Twitter.  You can also easily reply to each tweet, or retweet it. Better still, you can even share it with your LinkedIn connections.

• Add your recent tweets to your LinkedIn profile. Tweets adds a module to your profile that shows your Twitter account and most recent tweets with a rich, compelling presentation.  You can easily choose to either display your most recent tweets, or only those tweets which feature the #in or #li hashtags.

• Easily browse the tweets of people you follow. Once you click through into the Tweets application, you can easily click on any Twitter user name, and view the most recent tweets of that user.

Next week, we’ll be adding Tweets to the Application directory on LinkedIn.  For the time being, if you’re interested in giving Tweets a try, here is the link to the Tweets installation page.  It’s also available from the “Add Application” menu on the homepage.

Tweets joins its sibling application, Company Buzz, the most popular application to date on the LinkedIn platform.  Company Buzz makes it simple for professionals to easily keep track of what people are saying about their company, products, competitors, and partners in real time by monitoring saved Twitter searches.  Together, they are a powerful set of tools for professionals to make monitoring Twitter a part of their LinkedIn routine.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be adding additional functionality to Tweets to make it as easy as possible for LinkedIn members to find and follow people on Twitter.  We hope you enjoy this new addition to the LinkedIn application platform.

Today we’re announcing a partnership between LinkedIn and Twitter – and new features that we think are going to make both Twitter and LinkedIn more powerful for you. 

The idea is simple: When you set your status on LinkedIn you can now tweet it as well, amplifying it to your followers and real-time search services like Twitter Search and Bing. And when you tweet, you can send that message to your LinkedIn connections as well, from any Twitter service or tool.

Why? Because when you’re trying to get something done, you want Twitter and LinkedIn to work together. Like peanut butter and chocolate! Or at least that’s what Biz and Reid think:

LinkedIn has always been about helping you to build your professional identity on the web. The many elements that make up your online professional brand range from your LinkedIn profile to the many professional conversations you’re a part of. Status has proved valuable to our users, from finding new assignments and jobs to kick-starting a global business enterprise.

Now you can amplify those messages by broadcasting them to your audience on Twitter.

How does LinkedIn work with Twitter?

The feature is now available to all of our users, and with today’s launch, we’re making that two-way communication between your status updates and tweets a breeze to set up. Here’s how it works:

1. On LinkedIn

Want to share some interesting ideas about an industry-specific article you’ve just read with an even broader audience? Or how about letting people view your Twitter account name on your LinkedIn profile? Begin by joining your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts in just a few clicks. All you need to do is check the Twitter box under your Network Updates box on the homepage and follow a few simple steps.

Syncing your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts

Clicking through the setup process will allow you to specify the Twitter account that you’d like to sync and/or display on your LinkedIn profile.

Display Twitter on your LinkedIn profile

2. On Twitter

As a professional online and in the real world, you’ll often find articles or think of ideas that would be useful to share with your Twitter followers and your LinkedIn connections. It’s about sparking interesting conversations. Now you can share from anywhere. As part of the setup process, you can choose to either send all your tweets or select tweets from Twitter back to LinkedIn as a status update.

Share tweets as your LinkedIn status

If you pick the latter, don’t forget to add the #li or #in hashtag to every relevant tweet you’d like to send back to LinkedIn. Here’s a good example:

Include #in with any tweet to post as your LinkedIn status

So go ahead and get started. Link your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts today to add a new dimension to your professional conversation.

This morning, at the BlackBerry Developer Conference in San Francisco, I have the great pleasure of announcing one of our most important mobile efforts for 2009: the launch of LinkedIn for BlackBerry.  Needless to say, this launch has been hotly anticipated by the millions of LinkedIn members who make the BlackBerry their mobile business platform of choice.

LinkedIn for BlackBerry: Home

Imagine walking into any interview, any customer engagement or client meeting with the ability to look up the details on over 50 million professionals worldwide, in real-time.  Soon this will be a reality, as this application will bring the powerful capabilities of LinkedIn to your BlackBerry.

LinkedIn for BlackBerry: Search

LinkedIn for BlackBerry: Profile

We’ve worked hard to develop an application that takes advantage of the unique capabilities of the BlackBerry platform.  LinkedIn for BlackBerry will also include deep integration with the native Messages, Contacts & Calendar applications on the BlackBerry platform.  For example, here is an early screenshot of the native BlackBerry Messages application, with LinkedIn invitations and one-to-one messages integrated into the inbox:

LinkedIn for BlackBerry: Messages

LinkedIn for BlackBerry will join our existing suite of mobile products by the end of this year, marking the next step in our continuing effort to bring LinkedIn to wherever you work.  This is just the beginning – expect continued enhancements and expansions of the LinkedIn mobile platform in 2010.

See you at the BlackBerry Developer Conference 2009. To stay updated on BlackBerry developments, join the LinkedIn for BlackBerry Group.

And, if you’re one of our users who can’t wait to find out when the application will be ready for install, just email blackberryapp@linkedin.com to receive a notification.

A couple days ago, we launched several new features aimed at enhancing the professional conversation in LinkedIn groups. We call one of those features “following”.

Following makes it easier for you to see contributions made by your connections and other people you value within your groups. To get you started, you’re already following all of your connections and they’re following you. But it doesn’t stop with your connections: to follow someone who is not a connection, just click “Follow Their Name” under their name on a discussion page or on the Member page in your group.

Now when you go to your My Groups page, you’ll see updates about what the specific people you’re following have contributed to the groups you share. Updates from the people you’re following (and your updates to the people who are following you) also appear on the Overview page of each group you share. All of this makes it faster and easier to interact with your own personal “group within the group.”

For more information about Following, check out our FAQ.

Go ahead, check out your groups and start following!

I often come across interesting profiles on LinkedIn, but I’ve found it challenging to save profiles so I can easily come back to them later. Usually, I resort to bookmarking the profiles in my web browser or scribbling down names on a piece of paper.

Today we are launching Profile Organizer, a new Premium feature that lets you save profiles, organize them into folders, and add notes. Anytime you find an interesting profile, simply click “Save Profile” and the profile is bookmarked for you within LinkedIn.

When you click “Save Profile”, the profile is added to your Profile Organizer. You now see a module on the profile page from which you can save a profile into a designated folder, add contact information, and private notes that are visible only to you.  It’s a great way to remember relevant details about contacts, and develop your relationships.

The Profile Organizer is a workspace accessible through the Contacts tab, where you can manage all of your saved profiles organized into specific folders.

Profile Organizer also lets you save profiles directly from the search results page. With just one click, you can save a profile and add it to a folder directly from search.

If you do many searches on LinkedIn, the single-click “save profile” action can save you time. You no longer need to review each interesting profile in detail: just save from the search results page, and you can narrow down your list in Profile Organizer later.

A few of us at LinkedIn have started using Profile Organizer and find it particularly helpful after attending networking events or conferences.  In the past, I collected a stack of business cards and came back from the event unsure about what to do with them. Now, I find the contacts on LinkedIn, and jot down relevant information into Profile Organizer. The next time I go to a similar event, I simply glance through my notes to recall details about our past conversations.

If you have a minute, check out this short feature demo:

Get started using the new feature by clicking on the “Save Profile” link from any LinkedIn profile or search results. Alternatively, you can also check out your Profile Organizer page here.

Profile Organizer is a Premium Account feature, but we are offering a 30-day free trial for all of our members to try it out. Learn more here. We’d love to hear your questions and / or feedback at feedback@linkedin.com. Or follow us @linkedin.