LinkedIn Rolls Out New Technology

By Jay Greene 

SAN FRANCISCO -- LinkedIn Corp. rolled out new technology and products Thursday to keep members on its network longer, a move that could help generate more data and make it more valuable to Microsoft Corp.

LinkedIn, which agreed to sell itself for $26.2 billion to Microsoft in June, debuted training, messaging and news feed features designed to keep LinkedIn's 450 million members using the social network more often and longer. If successful, members will be more likely to keep their profiles up-to-date, add new connections, and post items that offer insight into their work interests.

"There's a flywheel there," LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said in an interview. "The more we understand who you are..., the more personal an experience we can create."

One feature is LinkedIn Learning, training videos to help professionals learn new skills, such as computer coding, for their careers. That technology comes from LinkedIn's $1.5 billion acquisition in April 2015 of online learning site lynda.com.

The company said it also refined its news feed so to give greater priority to posts that are more timely and relevant to members, using criteria such as their employer, their industry and job title, and the city where they work, rather than just the latest item that one of their connections posts.

LinkedIn also introduced improved messaging features that work inside the desktop version of the website to help workers more quickly connect with other members who might help them land new jobs.

LinkedIn showed little integration with Microsoft products during its presentation. That is because the new products and services it rolled out were already in development when the acquisition was announced, Mr. Weiner said. But LinkedIn will "prioritize" weaving those offerings into Microsoft's technology going forward, he added.

"That planning is happening," Mr. Weiner said.

The new features provide LinkedIn with more data about each member -- a key reason why Microsoft agreed to buy LinkedIn. That data, for example, could augment Microsoft's customer-relationship management offerings to give sales representatives better access to prospects and more insight into the executives to whom they are making pitches.

The messaging service, for example, was developed to schedule appointments with Alphabet Inc.'s Google Calendar. It used a personal assistant bot, created by LinkedIn, to schedule appointments that work with connections, and find a nearby location for the meeting.

Microsoft is developing its own bot technology, using its Cortana personal assistant, technology that Mr. Weiner expects LinkedIn engineers to tap.

"That can accelerate what we're doing," Mr. Weiner said.

Write to Jay Greene at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 22, 2016 15:58 ET (19:58 GMT)

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