In my opinion LikedIn has always been somewhat lacking in terms of providing their users with a useful iOS application. Facebook and Twitter, for instance, have always provided a decent iOS experience which acts as a complete replacement for needing to visit their respective sites on the web. The LinkedIn application on the other hand missed out a lot of features available on their site, meaning most users actually needed to visit the website on their mobile devices instead of being able to simply use the app.
Version 4.0 of the iOS LinkedIn app remedies some of this. A lot more of the standard website features have been incorporated in to the application. The most notable changes to the application though are those which have been made to the UI. LinkedIn v4.0 on iOS is now a lot more aesthetically pleasing than its predecessors. Take a look at the new ‘home page’ of the application:
LinkedIn's new greeting screen
From the main page, it is now possible to access your profile, your inbox, updates from news groups you have subscribed to via LinkedIn today and updates from your groups (as well as invitations etc.)
Selecting you inbox will take you to the redesigned inbox page:
Your new inbox page
Once again, a very nice design, which is simple to use. You can easily create new messages from here as well as reading your received messages. To get back to the main screen you simply tap on the title at the top of the page.
From the main screen, you can access your profile – ‘You’. This shows your profile in an elegant manner, with all your information from LinkedIn. Information which you may have added via widgets will not be displayed however.
Your profile
From here you can post new status updates as well as view any recent activity. You can also view your connections. Unfortunately it is still not possible to edit your profile information from the application itself. Something a lot of users have been wanting, myself included. This did surprise me actually, as the majority of negative app reviews concern the lack of this major function.
Heading back to the main screen, we can explore the last option which is updates:
The main updates screen
LinkedIn Today News
On the left you can see the main updates screen. This includes all notifications and updates as well as your ‘LinkedIn Today’. LinkedIn Today consists of news from topics you may have subscribed to, such as ‘technology’ or ‘internet’. Tapping on the LinkedIn Today bar at the top of the screen will then take you to the screen on the right.
You can see that ‘News you follow’ allows you to add new categories to your subscriptions. Once following these new sources, they will appear in your ‘Top News’ feed.
Your ‘Top News’ feed shows you relevant news, and what it currently trending. Tapping on an article will open the relevant source in the built in browser.
Thoughts
v4.0 of LinkedIn looks great, but it is still lacking some major features which you would expect to be present in the app. However, the new UI is great and it is now much easier than before to access your Top News.
