The Facebook newsfeed is quite probably the most viewed page on the entire site, with users following what their friends are up to on a regular basis. Because so much is going on, there’s a strong incentive to interact with what you find on your newsfeed, either by commenting or liking the content.
On Facebook the notification feature allows you to easily keep up to date with the things you’ve already interacted with and because it’s likely that you’ve interacted with quite a lot, it becomes an essential feature to allow you to instantly get to the bits you’re interested in. In some ways it’s a bit like the ‘what’s new’ link on many discussion forums.
Now LinkedIn announced today that they’re rolling out their own version of the notifications feature.
Launching today is our new notifications feature, which will keep you notified in real-time when someone likes what you’ve shared on LinkedIn, views your profile, accepts your invitation, and much more.
It’s clearly designed to replicate what Facebook have, but will it work? Will it encourage more people to interact with the status updates of their network?
I’m not sure it will. I just don’t think that people hangout on LinkedIn in the way they hang out on Facebook. Because the site is a professional network rather than a social network, users are more inclined to treat their time seriously, and therefore nip onto LinkedIn to get their thing done and then leave again. This could be to message a contact or post a question on a group, but casual browsing in the hope of finding something useful isn’t done anywhere near as much as on Facebook.
It’s a major reason why company pages haven’t really taken off, because updates are sent to peoples news feed rather than their inbox. For me LinkedIn would be better served improving the features that users really do use, such as the groups, and not worry so much about those they don’t.
What do you think of the new notifications feature? Is it something you’d use?
I think I might like a LinkedIn newsfeed. I won't know unti I see it. Thanks for this update.
They're rolling out the feature over the next few weeks Pat, so you should have it before long. Let us know what you think.
If it integrates with Hootsuite I would tempted to take a look?
Fairly sure Twitter and LinkedIn aren't talking to each other any more Claire.
This is one rare occasion where I tend to disagree, Adi. I have not seen this modification yet on LinkedIn, but the changes they've done in the past couple of months are moves in the good direction, I find, in order to get folks like me to stick around just a while more. The featured stories, on the home page, usually has posts and articles I find relevant and that I don't necessarily get through my other feeds.
And as you mention, we tend to go on LinkedIn for business reasons, or for more precise needs, but this also means we don't have the same network there as we do on Facebook. Thus, it could be interesting to see what other business contacts are sharing, liking and commenting, either on the home page or within the groups we may share interests in.
Time will tell, but this could be promising.
Cheers,
Frederic
Yeah it'll be interesting to see how it turns out. I can see both sides of the coin. On one hand hanging around the site more will allow you to get a better understanding of your network, what they like, what they're doing and so on.
On the other, that kind of thing could be all a little too 'woolly' for a busy professional that needs to account for the time in their day.
I mean Facebook already has a reputation amongst many senior managers as something to fear because of the time sink it can be for employees. I wouldn't want to see LinkedIn go down that path, so it needs to be sucking people in to do useful things (ideally that can be measured).
I tend to agree with Adi, and I own/manage 8 group about franchising. I don't need any of our members to be spending more time on the LI homepage; I would rather they spent any extra time engaging in the discussions.
When LI introduces gaming, it is time to jump ship.
Maybe there could be business simulations or something Michael. Perhaps in a farm setting or something. What do you think? (sorry – couldn't resist). Welcome to the blog btw 🙂
Farming if it included placing buying and selling of commodity options.