New LinkedIn Apps offer some great social networking features

Recently, LinkedIn made a variety of 8 different applications available that add so much-needed functionality to the platform.

Anyone who is unfamiliar with LinkedIn should check it out; it’s a very business-oriented social networking site that allows you to connect with other businesses, share ideas, and keep up with new trends in your industry or in other industries. The site is aimed at business professionals so it has some unique benefits over other social platforms that are geared towards dissimilar interests such as MySpace or Facebook.

According to LinkedIn, their applications “enable you to enrich your profile, share and collaborate with your network, and get the key insights that help you be more effective. Applications are added to your homepage and profile enabling you to control who gets access to what information.” The new apps give you the ability to link other social media sites such as your blog, SlideShare, or Google Presentation; as well some apps that give you that ability to use LinkedIn as a shared workspace. Huddle Workspaces app gives users private and secured online workspaces with a whole set of collaboration tools for team projects.

If you check out my LinkedIn profile, you’ll see that I’ve integrated our blog as well as our Slideshare account.

This is another example of the power of social media and the ability to tie updates and information into a variety of different sources to expand your reach. Definitely worth checking into!