LinkedIn has big plans for mobile adoption in 2014, and a new standalone app (or two) appears to be among them.
The professional networking company has “more apps planned” for 2014, according to Parker Barrile, VP of Product for LinkedIn Talent Solutions — with one of them coming in the “not too distant future.”
That app, the company’s fifth, could arrive in the next few weeks. Here are LinkedIn’s existing four apps:
- LinkedIn — This is the standard LinkedIn mobile app for phones and iPad, and brings most of the features from LinkedIn’s web version to users’ mobile devices.
- Pulse — LinkedIn acquired Pulse and its mobile newsreader app for $90 million back in April of 2013. The app surfaces popular news and feature articles from the web, and replaced LinkedIn Today as the company’s news curation technology for the main site back in November.
- LinkedIn Recruiter — The Recruiter app was released in October and is primarily for human resources and recruiting professionals. It brings tools used to monitor and discover new employees on LinkedIn to a standalone mobile app. The company announced an Android version of the app Thursday.
- LinkedIn Contacts — Contacts extracts LinkedIn info such as calendars, profile alerts, and profile details from your connections into a standalone app.
Neither Barrile nor Joff Redfern, VP of mobile products at LinkedIn, would share specific details about upcoming app, but we can assume the new app is intended for LinkedIn’s general user base — unlike Recruiter, which was built specifically for human resources and recruiting professionals.
Reaching a larger audience with the new app should help LinkedIn build upon the company’s base of 277 million members worldwide.
LinkedIn doesn’t have a standalone messaging app right now, and other social networks like Facebook and Twitter have made private messaging a priority in recent weeks.
Don’t expect LinkedIn to roll out a messenger app now, however, as the company doesn’t currently offer a chat-style service. It’s more likely the app will pull from one of LinkedIn’s existing features.
“Mobile apps work best when they are very focused on one specific use case or value proposition,” says Barrile. “So whenever we see a use case among our members that we believe is meaningful enough or broadly based enough to merit its own app, we’ll build that app.”
Mobile continues to be a focus for LinkedIn. The company isn’t shy about adopting the same “multi-app” strategy used by Facebook, which has already added multiple new apps this year via internal development and acquisition.
At a LinkedIn event in San Francisco on Thursday, Barrile shared that 41% of all global traffic comes to LinkedIn via mobile, and CEO Jeff Weiner said in November that the company will achieve 50% traffic from mobile within the year.
This milestone — 50% of traffic from mobile — is what LinkedIn is calling its “mobile moment,” and the company has been preparing for months to accommodate users who will be seeking mobile products, says Redfern. This preparation also requires the company to prepare mobile revenue streams, he added.
New apps are just just part of this preparation strategy. LinkedIn on Fridayannounced its first partnership with Samsung to integrate a user’s LinkedIn network into tools like calendars and contacts on their phone. It’s a way to help users connect more regularly with others on the platform, says Redfern, and should help with engagement.
All of the preparation is built on the expectation that the majority of LInkedIn users will soon access the site from their mobile devices. When that “mobile moment” does come, Redfern says the company will be ready.
“This is a company that is absolutely squared at the mobile moment,” he says. “We are very much on the path of mobilizing our company.”
Source: Mashable