LinkedIn rejigs mobile app

19 Apr 2013

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In a move aimed to give its mobile app a spark, social network LinkedIn will simplify and customise it to individually fit each of its users.

The major update was rolled out by the business-focused social network late Wednesday night. The updated app featured an overhauled design and minimised build that was intended to let users access as many features as they possibly could with as few finger taps as necessary.

According to Tomer Cohen, a LinkedIn senior product manager and mobile phone lead, the social network had been designed with one key core principle in mind: having all the stuff people cared about one tap away from them.

Since this comes as LinkedIn's first major mobile app redesign in over a year and a half, the company said it wanted to give users the best experience. That meant creating an algorithm that figured out what parts of the app each individual user used most. On the basis of that the app would arrange its sections to best fit each user's way of handling the app. Users could also customise the sections of the app themselves to fit however they want it to.

Cohen said in a phone interview on Wednesday that the company did the work understanding what people liked most about LinkedIn.

Meanwhile close on the heels of last week's acquisition of news aggregation app Pulse, LinkedIn yesterday announced a major update to its iPhone and Android apps - the first major upgrade in nearly two years. Also to take advantage of the growing mobile traffic, it was also introducing ads, in the form of sponsored content in the LinkedIn stream.

After the introduction of sponsored content as a  ''small test'' on LinkedIn's desktop and iPad versions in January, Joff Redfern, head of mobile products for LinkedIn said LinkedIn was now expanding the test into the mobile phone experience.

According to Redfern, the two new, free apps launched yesterday were created out of the feeling that the originals ''were just not as shiny as they were one year and eight months ago,'' at the time they were first launched.

The new look was focused mainly around an upgraded, and more interactive, activity stream. As with the desktop app, the stream continued to deliver content posted by people one's network; but but also included posts from ''influencers'' as also news from within one's. Additionally it has bigger, less statically-placed pictures as also a generally slicker look.

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