3 Aspects of New LinkedIn Profile that Provide a Better Way to Connect and Build Relationships

LinkedIn has been stepping up the game over the last couple of years. They kept bringing fresh perspectives to the table and attracting solid professional bonds in an easy to swallow pill. Recently introduced, New LinkedIn Profile, only available through invitations as of October 2012 seems to revolutionize how we digest content on that networking platform and how we socialize with other connected professionals.

Meet the New LinkedIn Profile, offered only by invitation

Authors point out several main areas of functional and usability change. Aside from specific technical tweaks, I thought that there are at least 3 ways that the New LinkedIn Profile seems better than the current environment:

1. You are the rockstar! All of a sudden, you, your name, your picture and your professional image are in focus. The eye is drawn to subtly and cleanly arranged basic info about you in soft color tones and polite edges of grouped content
2. Pro-blogger-like look and feel. We're jumping from lots and lots of info on boring white background to succinct relevant and most recent info about the rockstar - you
3. Consistent and familiar user interface experience. We're shifting from boxes of various sizes, shapes, different edges and unique routing styles to uniformly outlined areas on the screen that resemble look and feel of the most successful and most frequently visited professional sites. They seems to have merged the the best features of successful blogs like http://michaelhyatt.com, loved Twitter profile pages or the most sought out Google+ pages. 

Preview sample of the New LinkedIn Profile

Some could call them copycats, I call them brilliant.

I believe I had my fair share of updates and enhancements tested on me at www.LinkedIn.com over the last 8 years. Some of them felt like disjoint add-ons of various shapes, sizes and colors. For instance, I could never nicely and easily sync my TripIt gadget or make it blend well with the rest of my profile.

New LinkedIn Profile seems to offer a lot of the qualities that allow great social networks separate themselves from good ones. I wonder if professional exposure of users with those profiles will follow suit. Will freshness and ease of that clean user interface stimulate fresh, clean and professional bonds?