While Facebook, Google, and others battle it out in the social network space, LinkedIn has largely cornered the market on a specific niche: social networking for professionals. LinkedIn provides a platform for users to connect with business colleagues, former coworkers, and others to form business networks, see what their contacts are up to, look for job opportunities, or write recommendations.
This week LinkedIn launched major updates for its iPhone and Android apps, and launched a new web app aimed at modern smartphones with browsers that support HTML5. The company’s older mobile website is still active at m.linkedin.com, but it’s ugly and difficult to navigate, while the page at touch.linkedin.com offers many of the features you’d get from a native app.
All three apps are designed to let you view updates from your networks, access messages and invitations, see your profile, or browser and interact with Groups. Up until recently Groups weren’t available in the mobile apps.
LinkedIn says the company has seen a 400 percent growth in mobile page views since last year, making the mobile website and mobile apps the strongest growing portion of the business. You can use LinkedIn on the go to add contacts to your networks after meeting new people at a trade show or other industry event, for instance, or look someone up before going into a meeting.
