LinkedIn’s New Graphical Portfolio

Every businessperson’s favourite social network, LinkedIn, has been continuing its gradual development and has recently added a feature that perhaps should have been part of it long ago: the ability to add images and documents to your personal profile. Whilst some might appreciate LinkedIn’s outlook, which has always veered towards the minimalistic, others have bewailed the lack of support for integrating imagery and other files into their profiles. Perhaps LinkedIn have always considered business to be about words rather than images; there are plenty of places, from Facebook to Pinterest to Google+ to Tumblr, where you can put your work online for all to see, so perhaps LinkedIn didn’t see the need for another one.

 It is interesting the decision comes shortly after some major changes to Google+, which also placed a large emphasis on photography. Google’s changes were cosmetic and aimed at mass appeal rather than the narrower business orientation of LinkedIn, but it’s undeniable out of all the social networks, Google+ is the one that has the potential to eat into LinkedIn’s market. Whilst Google’s network might have been launched with Facebook in mind, the demographic that has taken to it has not exactly been Facebook material. The same can be said for LinkedIn, but with the news of their redesign it’s worth a more detailed look to see what you can expect from the business bods.

A creative concern

The UK Government estimated in February 2013 the creative sector in the nation is worth £36 billion annually (or 70 grand a minute to be pedantic about it). The businesses comprising this sector make things that are visual, animated, interactive, and artistic, exactly the kinds of things that are often not best expressed in words. The practitioners who make them should always have had the ability to put at least a snippet of their portfolios in their LinkedIn profiles rather than simply linking to external websites; now, at last, they can.

Rich media and interactivity

 The ability to add media doesn’t stop at images, however. As the update rolls out, you’ll start seeing people upload other kinds of files, such as documents with proper typesetting and design, graphs and tables, infographics, presentations and videos. Again, while not being limited to the creative industries, this addition of more intuitively grabby forms of content will assist with putting out the desired message in a user’s profile. If you work in marketing, for example, what better way to show your skills than to produce a selective performance graph detailing your effect on the bottom line of the companies you’ve helped?

The items used will also assist interactivity by hopefully inspiring comments and discussion in a way that’s perhaps more effective than would be the case with simple text statements.

The ability to add this content to your personal profile will be a gradual process, so at the time of writing not all users will see the option in their profile’s edit page. But it seems likely the option will be popular and might even become essential, in much the same way as having a profile picture greatly improves a profile in its current incarnation - or, at least, how not having one can damage it. In other words, people comparing profiles of applicants for jobs or speculating for talent might be drawn, perhaps subconsciously, to the ones where there’s something visual to hold on to.

Look out for the paperclip!

You’ll know you’ve attained the ability to add rich media when you see the paperclip icon to the right of your picture when you’re editing your profile. There will probably also be an unmissable speech bubble alerting you to the fact as well. You’ll get the option of uploading an image, a presentation or a document straight away. It’s worth having a think about it before simply uploading anything, as anyone viewing your profile will be able to see it and relevance will be important.

Will it be useful?

There’s little doubt about the value of this rich media to the aforementioned creative media types. This is, after all, precisely what they do and they should be judged on their output rather than how well they can describe it. But what about the rest of business, where the day-to-day output has little to do with visuals or interactivity? This will all come down to how relevant the imagery is to what you do.

LinkedIn is not Facebook or Twitter, and nobody looking for a good employee or freelancer is going to be all that interested in pictures of food, beer, cats or babies on a professional profile. They want the images to show what you can do - simple as that. No doubt as time goes by there will be an element of natural selection in the type of imagery that makes it onto non-creative profiles, with most users probably opting for a “same but different” approach.

 All things considered, the change is unlikely to make a huge difference to LinkedIn’s usability, but that’s not to say it’s not hugely welcome. LinkedIn has seen steady growth since its launch and although it has occasionally innovated and absorbed business-oriented applications into its realm, it has done so cautiously and, some would say, rather slowly, adding functions rather than addressing needs or attempting to take on perceived rivals in the social network world.

Ultimately LinkedIn still stands pretty solidly in its sector as the undisputed business network leader. It might not have the numbers achieved by the top three, but it never will have, and in a strange way it wouldn’t benefit if it did. Google+ might share some of its functionality, particularly when it comes to discussion and group-forming (although it can’t hope to match Google’s extra-network reach when it comes to search etc.). But for the foreseeable future it will do what it does with aptitude and reliability, and will remain the place professionals go to make and maintain business connections.

Alex Morris is a writer for an ink toner cartridges firm in Manchester, England. He’s a technology minded individual, so keeping an eye on our printer ink cartridges is an intriguing daily task. He’s also bound to start using LinkedIn more now these changes are on their way!