LinkedIn Takes on an Ancient Facebook Tradition

Have you noticed anything new lately on LinkedIn?  They have taken a “page” out of Facebook and – 5 years later – added Message and Notification icons on their menu bar.

New Notification and Message Icons

The new bright red icons pull your attention to the fact that you have Messages (including both invitations and messages) waiting for you. (You can still find them under your inbox tab as well.)  The icons turn to black when you have emptied your Inbox and have no notifications, and your inbox will turn blue once you click on it even one time.

I also noticed I kept getting an error message when I clicked on it that my Inbox was unavailable.  But three times was the charm.  Just keep clicking it til it works.  Or just click on your Inbox tab.  I like that you can accept or ignore Invitations still from the new icon dropdown.  You can also reply or Ignore your messages.   Because of all the recent spam lately, I still recommend going into your actual LinkedIn inbox  - and then their profile – and checking the folks out before you accept an invitation or respond to a message.

The tab I find interesting is Notifications.

Now in one place you can see when:

• Someone likes or comments on your status update
• Someone shares your status update
• Someone comments in a group discussion you started
• Someone comments on a group discussion you have commented on
• Maybe more but I don’t know what yet

When you click on the notification, it will take you to the discussion, comment or post so you can further interact with the individual.  Now this is a modification I can get behind! Finally LinkedIn is giving us something back after taking away vCards and Network Statistics and Recommendation numbers!

So I am sure there is more to come – but I just saw this and wanted you to know about it ASAP!

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