Over the next few months, all LinkedIn members will start to see their profiles in the new look and feel.”

With this brand new profile experience, we’ve made it easier for you to do three things:

1. Tell your professional story

Our new visual design helps you make a powerful first impression and showcase your skills and accomplishments. We’ve also provided tools such as inline editing, making it a snap to create a complete, up-to-date profile.

2. Discover people and opportunities

Have you ever wondered how many of your connections already work for your dream company? Or what you have in commonwith the sales prospect you’re trying to reach?

The new profile shows you rich and visual insights on the people and companies in your network. These insights also make it simpler to discover people outside your network and quickly establish common ground to make more meaningful connections.

3. Engage with your network

We’ve also made it easier to see what your network is up to and to engage with them. Recent activity is now on the top of the profile, allowing you to stay current with what your network has been sharing and doing.

If you’d like to be one of the first ones to get the new Profile, you can sign up here:http://www.linkedin.com/profile/sample. We look forward to your feedback as we continuously evolve the LinkedIn experience.

Also, if you missed our press event this morning where we demoed the new Profile for the first time, you can check out the recording of our live stream.

With just one click, you can now endorse your connections for a skill they’ve listed on their profile or recommend one they haven’t added yet. Think your connection is great at programming AND project management? Let them know!

Here’s how you can endorse your connections:

• On the top of a connection’s profile, you’ll see recommended endorsements for them. You can suggest additional skills as well.
• You can also endorse them from the new Skills & Expertise section that now showcases these endorsements.

Want to see who has endorsed you? We’ll notify you via email and on LinkedIn whenever you are endorsed. You can  scroll to the bottom of your profile page under “Skills and Expertise” to see the faces of people who think you’re great at what you do. You can also accept any new skills recommended by your peers that you may not have thought to include on your profile. Or you can also add a new skill by clicking on “add a skill” on your profile page.  Check out how it works:

Introducing LinkedIn Endorsements from LinkedIn

It just takes one click. So go ahead, endorse your connections for their skills and help them show off their professional prowess.

For a business, it’s the opportunity to:

• Tell your company’s story
• Highlight your products and services
• Engage with followers
• Share career opportunities
• Drive word of mouth at scale

For millions of professionals, a Company Page is a place to:

• Explore companies of interest
• Get the latest company updates and industry news
• Research products & services
• Learn about job opportunities

What makes up a Company Page?

Overview The Overview Tab provides a friendly introduction to your business. It’s a great place to start spreading your message and opening up the conversation.

What will members see?

• A high-level overview of the business.
• Company posts on topics ranging from company announcements to product releases to industry news.
• Friends & colleagues who are connected to the business.

Products and Services Here’s your chance to catch the eye of prospective customers by highlighting your products or services.

What will members see?

• A showcase of products & services.
• Recommendations from trusted LinkedIn members.
• Connections to the members making the recommendations.

Careers (Requires a paid subscription.) LinkedIn Company Pages give you a unique opportunity to interact with millions of passive and active job seekers on LinkedIn.

• Post any job on LinkedIn and it will automatically appear in this section.
• Tell your story, describe your culture, outline career paths, showcase awards and philanthropy.
• A Silver or Gold Careers Page allows you to feature additional content about your employment brand, showcase your best employees, and tailor your messaging and job postings to target audiences.

Employee information Here you’ll see aggregated information about company employees, including job functions, educational background, and experience.

Analytics This tab is only visible to administrators of your Company Page. Analytics help you understand who your followers are, who is viewing your page, and what content appeals to them.

“Millions of you are coming to LinkedIn everyday to discover and discuss what matters most to your professional life. And today, we’ve started to roll out a simpler and easier way to navigate Homepage experience that offers quick access to the relevant information and updates that help you be great at your job.

So what’s new?

A newer, simpler, and more modern design
We’ve revamped the entire Homepage experience with a new look and feel to make it easier to scan and find the information that matters most to you. This simpler and cleaner design makes it easier to navigate the page and quickly find the updates you’re looking for – whether that’s a news article your boss has recently shared or it’s to see who has just started a new job.

More relevant updates up top
Now you can see the most important network updates and articles at the top of the feed. This makes it quick and easy to stay on top of what matters most, such as trending topics, news, and professional updates based on what your connections and industry are reading, sharing, and discussing. This means, you’ll be spending less time hunting for information you need to be prepared for your workday and spending more time being great at the job you’re in.

A richer, cleaner update stream
We’ve completely refreshed the way updates look and feel in the stream with richer visuals for easier scanning and viewing. You can also see a continuous stream of updates without clicking “see more” to access all the latest updates from your network.  It’s also easier for you to see what your connections are talking about and engage in these professional conversations by liking, commenting or sharing the updates that are most important to you.

We’re always looking for new ways to make the Homepage experience better, more efficient and a place where you can come everyday to get what you need to be productive and successful. This is just the beginning of many more exciting, new features we plan to bring to the Homepage to offer more customization and functionality this year. We look forward to making the LinkedIn Homepage your go-to destination to discover and discuss what matters to you, your industry and your professionals network around the world.

This newly redesigned Homepage is rolling out to all members over the next few weeks. We look forward to having you check out our newly redesigned homepage. To learn more, visit our Help Center.” – Caroline Gaffney, July 16, 2012

It makes for an interesting read but makes you wonder where are all the Irish websites? Boards.ie, RTE.ie, and IrishTimes.com. Let me know if you think there is a website that should be in the Top 10.

Ireland’s top 10 websites are as follow’s……….

Google.ie – The local version of this pre-eminent search engine, offering Irish pages as well as world results.

Google.com – Enables users to search the world’s information, including webpages, images, and videos. Offers unique features and search technology.

Facebook.com – A social utility that connects people, to keep up with friends, upload photos, share links and videos.

YouTube.com – YouTube is a way to get your videos to the people who matter to you. Upload, tag and share your videos worldwide!

Yahoo.com – A major internet portal and service provider offering search results, customizable content, chatrooms, free e-mail, clubs, and pager.

Wikipedia.com – A free encyclopedia built collaboratively using wiki software. (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License).

LinkedIn.com – A networking tool to find connections to recommended job candidates, industry experts and business partners. Allows registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business.

Live.com – Search engine from Microsoft.

Twitter.com – Social networking and microblogging service utilising instant messaging, SMS or a web interface.

Blogspot.com – Free blog provider from Google

You can use LinkedIn on your computer or download the app for your smartphone. To see how LinkedIn works have a look at my profile. My Profile

As you can see it lists all my current and past jobs as well as recomendations from people I have done business with. It also show the connections I have. Connections are people I know or have done business with. This is a great way to find a lead in a business. If you search for a person or business it will check to see if any of your connections are connected to that person and you can then ask then for an introduction. It takes business networks to a whole new level.

Here are some facts and figures provided by LinkedIn

Company Background

• LinkedIn started out in the living room of co-founder Reid Hoffman in 2002.
• The site officially launched on May 5, 2003. At the end of the first month in operation, LinkedIn had a total of 4,500 members in the network.
• Roughly one million new members join LinkedIn every week, at a rate equivalent to a professional joining the site faster than one member per second.
• The company is publicly held and has a diversified business model with revenues coming from user subscriptions, advertising sales and hiring solutions.

LinkedIn Facts

• LinkedIn operates the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 100 million members in over 200 countries and territories.
• More than half of LinkedIn members are currently located outside of the United States.
• There were nearly two billion people searches on LinkedIn in 2010.
• Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., LinkedIn also has U.S. offices in San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Omaha, Neb. International LinkedIn offices are located in Amsterdam, Dublin, London, Paris, Sydney, Toronto and Mumbai, India.
• The company’s management team is comprised of seasoned executives from companies like Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, TiVo, PayPal and Electronic Arts. The CEO of LinkedIn is Jeff Weiner.
• LinkedIn is currently available in six languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
• LinkedIn started off 2011 with about 1,000 full-time employees located all around the globe, up from around 500 at the beginning of 2010.

Worldwide Membership

• 100m+ professionals around the world as of March 2011
• 20m+ members in Europe as of December 2010
• 5m+ members in the UK as of December 2010
• 1m+ members in France
• 2m+ members in the Netherlands
• 1m+ members in Italy
• 1m+ members in the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland)
• 1m+ members in Spain
• 9m+ members in India
• 3m+ members in Canada
• 3m+ members in Brazil
• 2m+ members in Australia
• As of April 2011, LinkedIn counts more than 11 million recent college graduates* around the world as members (*LinkedIn defines recent graduates as members who have graduated within the last five years–between 2005 and 2010.).

LinkedIn and Business

• As of January 2011, LinkedIn counts executives from all 2010 Fortune 500 companies as members; its hiring solutions were used by 73 of the Fortune 100 companies as of March 22, 2011.
• More than 2 million companies have LinkedIn Company Pages.
• LinkedIn represents a valuable demographic for marketers with an affluent & influential membership.
• Thousands of developers are using LinkedIn APIs to create innovative tools and services for professionals.

I will post more information over the coming weeks.