The new homepage is easier to navigate and sports a new “modern” design with richer visuals. In addition, the new homepage uncluttered all the mess, and places more emphasis on shared news articles and posts from your network and a chronological and algorithmically weighted stream of updates from your professional contacts, with what looks like enlarged photos and a more prominent display of comments, judging by the image in the blog post.
It consistently arranges the most important updates at the top of the feed and presents information in a format that is easier to read. The post touts a “simpler and more modern design,” with “more relevant updates” prominently displayed and a “cleaner, richer update stream.”
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“We have refurbished the entire Homepage experience with a new look and feel to make it easier to scan and find the information that matters most to you,” said LinkedIn product manager Caroline Gaffney. “This simpler and cleaner design makes it easier to browse the page and quickly find the updates you are looking for — whether that is a news article your boss has recently shared or it is to see who has just started a new job.”
Overall, the whole concept is different, but the big change is the update stream, which is cleaner and a bit heavier on the media — especially photos. Sections such as “People you may know,” “Who viewed your profile,” and “Jobs you may be interested in” are still there, and they still reside on the right-hand side of the page.
The stream has also been enhanced to deliver important updates to the top. “Important updates” constitute issues like “trending topics, news, and professional updates based on what your connections and industry are reading, sharing, and discussing.”
Besides, the redesign also boasts an infinite scrolling functionality that populates the home page and displays all comments and likes as users scroll down. It makes it possible for users to invite others to join their network without leaving the home page. Previously, LinkedIn users sending requests to connect had to do so through a pop-up messaging interface.
Elaborating the recent changes, the company said, “We have completely renewed the way updates look and feel in the stream with richer visuals for easier scanning and viewing,” said Gaffney. “You can also see a continuous stream of updates without clicking ‘see more’ to access all the latest updates from your network. It is also easier for you to see what your connections are talking about and engage in these professional conversations by liking, commenting or sharing the updates that are most important to you.”
The changes may make the site look more and more like a full-fledged version of Facebook, but the company claims its goal is to make the site a tool to get relevant news and information to users based on their industry and connections. The company announced a redesign of its news page last week with promises of more to come.
“This is just the beginning of many more exciting new features we plan to bring to the home page to offer more customization and functionality this year,” Gaffney wrote in a blog post. “We look forward to making the LinkedIn home page your go-to destination to discover and discuss what matters to you, your industry, and your professional network around the world.”
In short, after launching social gestures such as comments and “likes” recently, LinkedIn’s new design suggests at the company’s desire to move into a social content sharing space alongside social networks like Facebook or Google+. Although, the new homepage seems like a much better fit with the rest of LinkedIn’s increasingly good-looking product suite.
LinkedIn users should start to see the redesigned website over the next few weeks