1st Look At LinkedIn’s New Desktop Design

Welcome to episode 135 and what a week it has been!

This episode is 100% dedicated to sharing with you the new desktop design that I woke up to on Saturday morning.

It is still early days for the new user interface (UI) and it still has many bugs so things are bound to change over the coming weeks but having spent the last 4 days investigating every link, page and angle of the UI I can confirm the following;

• LinkedIn are unifying the mobile and desktop UI’s
• Recruiters & sales professionals are targeted as members who should upgrade to premium
• The focus of the design is to encourage more activity
• This is a massive gamble by LinkedIn!

This 2 minute video will give you an idea of how to navigate around the new UI

Lost features

1. Advanced search   (inc connection search)

Desktop search is now the same as mobile search. You have to start with keywords but you cannot combine keywords with current job title. Once the initial search is performed you can then filter the results although you cannot see a number next to each filter.

2. Saved searches

You can no longer save a search result with alerts and it would seem that our previously saved searches have also disappeared!

3. View your followers

4. emoticons in messages

Gutted….not!

5. Out of network profiles.

When you find a profile out of your network in a keyword search result you are no longer able to open that profile, here is what you see;

6. Edit display name in profile

7. Rich media in profiles

8. Move profile sections

9. Move current positions

10. Cant move or edit which recommendations show

The above points 6-10 are all covered in this video;

11. Posting updates to Twitter

The option to post a status update to Twitter no longer exists;

12. Video autoplay.

This might just be a bug but as it stands videos no longer autoplay in the stream.

13. Top/recent updates option

Our updates are now 100% based on what the algorithm think we want to see, we have no control other than by our actions.

14. Introductions

They only just fixed this feature but now it has gone. 2nd tier profiles show mutual connections but there is no option to ask for an introduction.

 

15. Last 3 posts in profile - just 1 now

This is to make way for activity. You can see this in the above video.

16. Additional info section - interests - personal details - advice for contacting.

If you have spent time adding valuable information here in your profile, I would suggest you copy and save it somewhere. When you get the new UI it will be wiped!

17. Pdf Download.

You can still share a profile from the 3 dots menu but the pdf download has gone.

It also goes without saying that all Chrome extensions have stopped working in the new UI (until their developers get to work on them!)

Additional features

1) Many links open in a new tab

This is so handy but I wish they did it for profiles in search results as well.

2) Summary at top of profile

3) Last 3 activities show in profile

4) New size for background image 1536 x 768 (1400 x 425)

5) All profile/thumbnail pics now circular

Points 2-5 are also covered in the above video

6) No need to give a reason when inviting

At last!

7) Personalized invites much more visible

This is what you see when you click on ‘connect’ in the profile or in a shortlist

That’s it for now, I will start digging into more specifics next week.

Questions

I’m sure you have plenty, so please fire away! I am more than happy to take a look at whatever you need to know about the new UI