Yesterday LinkedIn announced a smarter and more streamlined search experience to help its members optimize the way they find connections and opportunities. The professional network seems to be honing in on the value of putting integrated social content at users’ fingertips to heighten the sense of connectivity across its community. In many ways, LinkedIn’s new ‘unified search’ is incorporating features social net users have come to appreciate in Facebook’s recently launched Graph Search.
Linked In no longer requires searching for people, companies or jobs independently. The site’s query field now pulls results from all across the network. Peoples’ profile content is still what’s being highlighted, and it’s what LinkedIn uses to cull searches and optimize results from across its 200 million members. Hence, similar to Facebook Graph Search, whether a member shows up in the results comes down to whether their profile is complete.
“LinkedIn’s search efforts are founded on the ability to take into account who you are, who you know, and what your network is doing to help you find what you’re looking for,” said the company in a recent blog post. “And we’ll continue iterating on this with better ways to surface new kinds of content across LinkedIn as well as more personalized results.”
From a technical standpoint, the new search options aren’t radical. They do mark a milestone in the social net’s maturation. LinkedIn is one step closer to being perceived as a living, breathing community and not simply a rolodex of peoples’ professional profiles.
In a recent interview with VentureBeat, LinkedIn product lead for identity products Brad Mauney described how the new search features enhance community by curating content based on interests and connections.
“If you want to see what’s resonating with your network, if your LinkedIn network is good, LinkedIn is going to surface the best content. Using your professional graph as a primary filter against the fire hose of news and content that we’re being blasted with every day — it’s a very powerful thing,” said Mauney.
One outcome LinkedIn is hoping for is more eyeballs and engagement. The network had 5.7 billion queries last year, with people primarily using it for career and business opportunities. If it can become reliable destination for content sharing, that could drive up both user base and time spent on the site. For now, the new search is available on browsers, but the company said it is planning on launching it onto mobile soon.
Source LinkedIn
