Technology

Review: LinkedIn App has Sleek Interface, Weak Search Tool

By ABS Contributor | Published on: April 19, 2013 Comments (0)

The good: The LinkedIn mobile app performs well, has a beautiful interface, and offers many of the most frequently used features of the professional networking website.

The bad: Weak search capabilities and a lack of powerful tools for research will disappoint LinkedIn’s most dedicated users.

The bottom line: While the LinkedIn app should suffice for most, power users will be disappointed, mostly by its anemic search tool.

The revamped LinkedIn mobile app for Android offers a sleek interface for accessing the popular professional networking service while on the go. While it may not come loaded with all the functionality of the full, browser-based site, the app can perform most of LinkedIn’s primary functions and gives access to its most frequently used tools.

With its recent redesign, LinkedIn’s interface now revolves around the user’s stream. Just like on the Web, this stream serves up status updates, connection updates, news, posts from the influencers you follow, group posts, job changes, and so on. And according to the app’s developers, LinkedIn gives you a different experience depending on how you use the app. For instance, the algorithm powering the stream selects top stories since your last visit if you’re an infrequent visitor, and shows all of the most recent updates if you’re a more habitual user of the application, which is a nice touch. What’s more, all of this is packaged in an attractive and geometric Home screen with sharp corners and large images, similar to Google+.

To update your LinkedIn status, just hit the Compose button at the top of the Home screen. From there, you’ll be able to set the visibility of your post to be seen by anyone or connections only, and choose whether to publish your update to Twitter at the same time time — conveniences that are also available on the Web…

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