On February 15th, 2011 LinkedIn announced the launch of  a simplified LinkedIn Account and Settings dashboard which just appeared for me yesterday.

Although LinkedIn claims member settings/defaults have not been changed, if you haven’t updated your LinkedIn account settings recently, I urge you to take a few minutes now because most people I offer fast track LinkedIn Training to tell me they didn’t even notice the options were there!

To see the Settings link, click on the small arrow to the right of your name (top right of your LinkedIn home page) and click on ‘Settings’.  So long as you’re logged in, https://www.linkedin.com/settings/ should also work too.

On February 3, 2011 LinkedIn launched beta of LinkedIn Skills which they bill as a whole new way to understand the landscape of skills & expertise, explore similar skills and compare their growth relative to each other.  What’s the best way for you to share your expertise on LinkedIn?  Start by adding skills to your profile, joining group discussions, and following related companies for each skill. For more information…  Check out LinkedIn Skills

If you haven’t joined LinkedIn yet, it’s about time you did. This social media platform hosts the biggest business network in the world — an astounding 85 million members in 200 countries. It shows phenomenal growth, adding one new member every second.

Read my column in: Durham Business Times –

January 24th, 2011 — LinkedIn introduced InMaps, an interactive visual representation of your professional universe that allows you to understand the relationships between you and your entire set of LinkedIn connections and therefor better leverage your professional network to help pass along job opportunities, seek professional advice, gather insights, and more. To access your InMap, you must have 50 connections and 75 percent of your profile completed, and go to http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com. Read more about LinkedIn InMaps via…
The LinkedIn Blog » Visualize your LinkedIn network with InMaps «.

Just read a really interesting guide to LinkedIn’s new Resume Builder…
http://blog.linkedin.com/2011/01/12/linkedin-resumes-hackdays/
which launched in early December and suggests that all you need to do to be ready for the next time a great opportunity comes along is keep your LinkedIn profile up to date. LinkedIn’s new Resume Builder takes the contents of your LinkedIn profile and automatically produces a beautiful resume. It’s as easy as selecting a template, setting privacy/share settings and dragging and dropping your information in.  You can even export to PDF for printing, and since it is online, you always know where to find it! Try out LinkedIn’s Resume Builder now!

On December 22nd, 2010 YouTube video posts shared through LinkedIn are playable directly from within the homepage and member feeds. Read more via The LinkedIn Blog » The Power of Hackday: Video Sharing on LinkedIn «.

On December 20, 2010, LinkedIn launched Open Groups to facilitate a forum for open professional conversations with the wider web. These new powerful, flexible moderation tools allow group managers to maintain quality conversations (by controlling who and how people contribute), and share it with non-members. Think about the potential! Find out more about LinkedIn’s new Open Groups via…
Open Groups makes it easier to find and share professional conversations

Company Page managers can now manage the editing and privacy settings with new administrative controls. You could give every single employee at your company editing rights to your Company Page. Or if you’d prefer to give editing rights to just a select few employees.

Add LinkedIn’s Recommend button on your site get the most authentic, credible endorsements. Here’s ours!

Everything that you need to know to manage your company’s presence on LinkedIn is now available via your Company Page’s Analytics tab, and you can even compare yourself against similar companies to benchmark your performance.

You can see:
- how many LinkedIn members are visiting your Company Page;
- how many LinkedIn members are following your company and
- what industries, functions and companies these professionals come from.

You can track:
- how they are interacting with your Careers Tab or Products and Services Tab,
- how many are clicking on your promotional banners, and
- how many choose to contact employees at your company etc.