The LinkedIn face(book)lift

What? Why? When? How? - Just some of the questions we're sure have been resonating round offices lately.

We're pretty sure everyone can now see the updated LinkedIn, and if it hasn't reached you yet (emphasis on the yet because it will) then just think of a slightly less cluttered Facebook. Businesses pages aren't all completely in this update yet, but there are getting there. We can't count how many times we've described its function as a professional Facebook when asked (some people have never used it, shocking, we know), and now, it really and truly is. And we know that some of you may be less than happy to see a change, but we've got a strong feeling that this may be reminiscent of the uproar every time Facebook made a change. Remember the time Facebook changed the way we access our inbox? No? Neither do we. Remember the time that MySpace didn't change enough? Yep, it crashed and burned. Change is inevitable and why not base these changes on the most popular and most successful platform of all.

LinkedIn have performed a much needed overhaul on their desktop UI, they've taken it from a slow and clunky, overly complicated social and professional networking page and made it sleeker and faster. It's adapted to be more inline with the app, which is great news really as it makes the swap between mobile and desktop that much easier, users will not lose their way round as navigation's and titles remain very similar. The layout is reminiscent of Facebook and in making these more fluid design decisions the functionality has become more simple, smooth and basic, and not in a bad way. Even the colour change has brought it into the Facebook (blue) spectrum, though it must be noted that Amazon did this too, it's obviously a popular colour hue.

Home:

The top navigation houses your shortcuts- notifications, messaging, jobs, my network and home, a search bar as well as a 'more' button giving you access to more LinkedIn products. They've added a cool ripple effect that emanates out from the shortcut as it loads, little details like this are always enjoyable. Below this, sits a central news feed, this flows down from the status, photo and media sharing window. To the left of this sits a short cut summary to your profile, a snapshot of your picture, followers and profile views and this looks exactly like your profile on the app. To the right sits an area for trending info and below this an ad box… yes, this is exactly the same as the Facebook home page, with perhaps some more business orientated wording. Is this a bad thing? No.Not at all. Facebook is the most used social platform and will make way for a whole new wave of ACTIVE LinkedIn users who already have years of posting Facebook status updates under their belt.

Me: Formerly known as 'Profile'

'Me', well that's you. As in your profile. So this is when you can see (if you went temporarily blind earlier) just how much like the mobile app they have made it.

The profile page, now shows only two introductory lines, so get thinking about some snappy two liners that'll grab attention where needed! A new feature on this updated UI is the prompt to write your summary and an example of how it could look, the content is based on your experience and skills, very handy. The actual profile itself has made it impossible to shift your profile sections around, so again, make each one (especially the top ones) count!

You: How do other users look now?

Firstly the background has changed, there is no customisation. The contact info is on the right and the call to action is gone... basically it is more consistently clean and fluid. The new layout is in keeping with the less cluttered approach that LinkedIn have taken.

Notifications: Still is Notifications

The biggest change with notifications is the fact that they have their own page. Before, there was a drop down box, which you had to scroll and hover over to ensure it remained visible. This new notification page has made it so much easier to navigate activity, and respond to it then and there. Responding to notifications is easier and has become much more of a prominent feature, a clever move as it makes for much more user activity and engagement.

Whats gone

You don't know what you've got till it's gone. Not always a bad thing when many will agree it was not the best looking or easy to use. For most of us making it more like Facebook and more like the app is definitely a positive. But there are some reasons as to why this may not be the case for everyone. Tagging is one of the main features to have disappeared. It allowed you to categories and group people together. By defining your connection and relationship with your contacts it was easier to target and refine your outgoing information and distinguish different areas of your contacts with information that was not included their profile, it could also keep tabs on where you're at in the business development process with them, the sense behind having a function like this is notable. That being said, this update is not final so what's to say it won't come back?

Soooo...

LinkedIn's functions and use are not far from the actions available on Facebook, after all, they are both social networks. That being said, once you strip back the outer layers of the UI and layouts you'll find a different core, directed at the business development and recruitment side rather than the embarrassing photo tags and emotional status updates of Facebook. When we say they are similar, we are talking about the ability to 'share' and to build a profile of yourself that may have elements of self-promotion. Making them similar was a very clever move, pretty much everyone (1.79 billion Facebook users) are trained in the ways of the Facebook UI. We can't credit Facebook with a unique layout though, they have just been good at keeping up with what works. What layout is better, where are the hotspots and how do we view a social media page, they've made a template based on clever investigation and LinkedIn have, quite rightly, used it. I mean, Facebook itself is taking on the 'story' trend of Snapchat and Twitter. They've also (finally) cottoned on to the ever growing trend of desktop and mobile interfaces becoming more and more concise, especially following the Google's upcoming Mobile First Indexing. The redesign and alignment with the Facebook UI will definitely go some way to welcoming LinkedIn (467 million users) into the 'squad goals' of social media but, thankfully, it's definitely still that nerdy business man at heart. The professional, news reading, CV building, blog posting, article reading lovable egghead of the social networks.