LinkedIn Raises Your Profile, Now Lets You Add Photos, Videos, PowerPoints And Comments From Others

LinkedIn today announced another upgrade to its site, part of a bigger plan to add more features and reasons for people to hang around on its pages for longer: this time it’s the turn of profile pages, where users will now be able to add more images, videos, resumes, presentations and comments and likes from other users as part of the mix. While the site continues to add more features to make itself more “social,” profile sharing — that is, the ability to send over a link to someone to be able to view your profile, and then sharing certain aspects of it, such as a resume or presentation — will not be coming today, but a spokesperson says that this will be available soon.

The feature is being turned on first in English-speaking countries on the LinkedIn network starting today.

This will be a useful way for LinkedIn to continue to further its reputation as the go-to place for people looking for jobs, and for professional networking.

linkedin new profileBut it will also help pretty up the general experience. Up to now, regardless of what your profession or job is, every LinkedIn profile looked exactly the same as the other. Now, the idea is that if you’re an architect, you can expand your profile with more dynamic pictures of buildings you’ve designed; or if you’re a tech analyst, you can include links to some of your recent research. No two job seekers are alike.

This also means that LinkedIn is introducing one more way that it might, potentially, monetize the site. Although today’s profile features are all free of charge, you can see how, for example, LinkedIn might put a premium on extra services (like Sharing, only “coming soon”), or more storage space — for example to hold more content on your profile page.

This also gives LinkedIn an interesting entry into both the area of companies looking to “own” the online profile space, such as About.me and Flavors.me, as well as GetHired, Grouptalent, HireArt, BraveNewTalent, and ResumUp.

Today’s news comes on the heels of a number of updates at LinkedIn — all also made to improve the user experience and usefulness of the platform. They include a Contacts update to add in more “personal assistant” life organizing features; new iPhone and Android apps; an expanded search engine; @mentions in status updates; Klout-style endorsements; and a Recruiter homepage redesign for the site’s most dedicated user vertical.