Over the next few weeks, LinkedIn will be rolling out a complete overhaul to its Groups feature to make creating and following conversations easier and more engaging.
When you visit a revamped LinkedIn Group (check out Fans of Mashable), you will immediately notice that strong emphasis has been placed on starting conversations. In the past, you’d have to click either “Start a Discussion” or “Submit News” to add a conversation to a group. Now both of those functions have been combined via a publisher box that is prominently displayed at the top of the page.
LinkedIn’s follow system has also been expanded. You may not know this, but the business social network actually gives you the option to “follow” individuals if you want to see what they’re saying in different groups, but aren’t his or her connection. That feature is now prominent, not only for people but for conversations as well. If you stumble across a great debate in a group and want to keep tabs on it, all you have to do is click “follow discussion” and it’ll appear in your news feed and in your inbox.
There is also a new focus on surfacing quality conversations from influencers. A new feature allows you to scan different conversations and “Like,” “Pass” or “Comment” on a discussion within a group. This information then brings the best conversations to the top of the group. There is also now a “Top Influencers” feature, which highlights quality contributors based on how well they stimulate conversations from other members.
LinkedIn told me that they are trying to make the conversations you have on LinkedIn “a bit closer to the face-to-face interaction” you find at conferences or in-person meetings. To do that, they’ve focused their energy on not only increasing engagement (which should keep people coming back to LinkedIn), but on increasing quality engagement.
While groups have long been part of LinkedIn’s core structure, we’re willing to bet most users almost never post news or conversations in them — they’d rather place their thoughts on Facebook or Twitter, where they will get more engagement. We’re looking forward to seeing if this redesign changes things. Check out the video below that explains the new features, and let us know what you think of Groups 2.0 in the comments.
Video
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Tags: business, linkedin, Linkedin Groups