LinkedIn have just implemented a new change to LinkedIn Groups. Unfortunately by implementing the change to groups, they also temporarily broke Profiles! Profiles were deleted for a few minutes and caused a considerable amount of concern and panic! The issues with changing live systems without a proper test environment perhaps?!
Anyway, what are the changes to LinkedIn groups?
To get the new version of groups at the moment you need to have an email invite from LinkedIn – I’m sure this will change over time.
At first glance there doesn’t seem to be any change, but comparing the new version to the old, the new is much cleaner. The 6 tabs at the top have been reduced to 4, with additional buttons on the top right of the group page.
The buttons on the top right make it easier to Leave
a Group (click Member rather than hunting around to find the leave button) and clicking the i shows information about the group (owner, members, links to rules, profile and statistics) which used to be available under the More tab.
Comments are displayed in a simpler way so less clicking is required to view them.
As a group owner, you can add an image to the top of a group – known as a “Hero image” to give information about what the group is about, as well as displaying your branding. When you upload the image you wish to use, you need to tick a box confirming that the image you have uploaded does not contravene copyright laws. This ensures that LinkedIn is covered in case of copyright infringement and I wonder if this idea will be implemented elsewhere on Social Media sites.
So no big changes, but an improvement overall I think. What are your views on the changes?