LinkedIn Today: The Next Big Thing in Social News?

Where do you get your news? Right now I cherry pick from a bunch of different sources. I read the Wall Street Journal’s Marketplace section on my subway ride to work. I open at least two stories from the seven industry and function-specific SmartBrief newsletters I get every morning. I regularly click through to articles and blog posts my colleagues and other influencers tweet about. This approach helps me cover the wide ground of general management and industry news I follow for my clients, but I admit I sometimes wish it could easily aggregate all in one place.

LinkedIn must have heard my silent wishes, because they recently launched a new product that does exactly that. LinkedIn Today, now in beta, is a social news platform that features the most-shared news by LinkedIn users, customized by your personal industry and news source preferences. For example, if you want to know what retail professionals are reading and talking about, you can follow the retail industry and that news will be delivered right to your LinkedIn Today homepage. It’s also included in the newest version of LinkedIn’s iPhone app. In another cool twist, you can see who shares each article (via LinkedIn or Twitter), even if those people aren’t in your LinkedIn network.

From a public relations, b2b marketing, and business development standpoint, LinkedIn Today offers some serious benefits. Three immediately come to mind for me:

1. Save time: As mentioned above, pulling news from different sources while also staying on top of news shared by popular influencers can be time consuming. LinkedIn Today does both for you.
2. Know what industry influencers are talking about: The most read and shared news rises to the top – you can cut out the clutter and focus on the 3-5 stories influencers are reading in industries you care about. If you are part of an industry-based PR program, this is especially important.
3. Expand connections within an industry: Because you can see who shares each story even if they aren’t in your network, you can find people you may want to connect with in a certain industry.

We’ll have to wait and see how LinkedIn Today catches on with users – it’s clearly part of LinkedIn’s strategy to get users to spend more time on the site instead of checking in sporadically to search for new connections or update their profile. Paper.li offers a similar aggregation of shared news content, but we believe LinkedIn Today provides a more curated experience with news culled from professionals who really matter to you. It’s already steered me toward content I wouldn’t have caught through the haphazard news-gathering I described above, in far less time. And when time is money, that’s a huge plus.

Here are links to a few LinkedIn Today industries we thought our B2B Bliss audience might enjoy. Once you check out LinkedIn Today, tell us what you think of it! Will it get you to spend more time on LinkedIn?

Financial Services

Management Consulting

Public Relations

To reach Siobhan:

Phone: 212.840.1661
Email: siobhan@blisspr.com
Twitter: @shiv245
LinkedIn: Siobhan Ford