LinkedIn Launches Social News Site for Professionals

LinkedIn has been rolling out new features fairly regularly lately, as it strives to make the professional social network (and all its data) relevant and useful. Today, the company is unveiling another piece of its strategy to make LinkedIn a destination site for more than just job-seekers, with the launch of LinkedIn Today.

LinkedIn Today is an industry newspaper, of sorts, available online and via LinkedIn’s iPhone app. It offers headlines and links to the popular stories within certain industries and within your LinkedIn network. You’ll be able to see what others in your profession are reading, as well as “save” articles to read later.

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LinkedIn Today aggregates industry news, tailored to your professional interests (or, rather, to your industry). The news will be drawn in part from the stories that those in your LinkedIn network are sharing. As the company says in its announcement of the news service, this should provide pertinent information as “you know and trust most of your connections and coworkers, so if they share an article it’s a good signal that it’s something you should be paying attention to.”

LinkedIn Today will also let you follow particular industries and will deliver the popular stories that are being shared from that sector. You’ll be able to see who is sharing information along with any comments they might have included when posting. “Only LinkedIn gives you this layer of professional identity and search capability on who’s sharing or tweeting an article,” the company says.

It’s hard to see how the curation that will happen on LinkedIn will be different from what happens on other social network sites, as many people simply duplicate their shares from Twitter, blogs, or feeds to their LinkedIn profiles. Even more, arguably, don’t share at all to LinkedIn, something that will need to happen more if, indeed, this is effort is to become a useful place for people to turn to for their daily industry news.

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