Home LinkedIn’s Latest App Aims To Reconnect You With Your Contacts

LinkedIn’s Latest App Aims To Reconnect You With Your Contacts

Every morning, my phone fills up with notification badges—a dozen little inboxes asking to be cleared before I even get to my email. Dutifully or obsessively, I open them all as I walk my dog.

There’s a special pleasure I take in swiping through LinkedIn Contacts, a standalone app from the professional network. Job changes, work anniversaries, and mentions in news articles add up to a customized newsletter about people I know through my world of work. 

LinkedIn is doubling down on this aspect of its Contacts app for iPhones, and it’s even renaming the app LinkedIn Connected in an update available in the App Store Thursday morning.

LinkedIn Plays Its Cards Right

The first thing you’ll notice about LinkedIn Connected is its visual design, which uses the “card” metaphor you now find everywhere from Twitter to Tinder to iPhones. Where LinkedIn Contacts had blurbs next to small profile photos, Connected presents each person’s news on a full-screen card. 

There’s less weight in the interface given to looking up contact information, though you can still do that.

“What we heard from members is that the updates are the value,” says LinkedIn’s David Brubacher, who oversees the company’s relationship products. Most, like me, used the old Contacts app in the morning while preparing for their day.

The hope is that Connected’s updates will prompt users to send messages through LinkedIn and use the service for more than just job hunting.

Connected also syncs more directly with the iPhone’s calendar, if users permit it, to find meetings with your contacts and give you a LinkedIn-powered briefing book on the people you’re spending your day with. (Contacts did something similar, but only with Web-based calendars.)

Reconnecting With Users

As a new and improved version of Contacts, an app that’s become habit-forming for me, Connected looks like a winner. And LinkedIn could use a winner in mobile.

LinkedIn is in a fierce fight with the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook to own your professional identity. Connected plays into that strategy, by putting a layer of data that only LinkedIn has over your address book. (On LinkedIn’s website, the existing Contacts feature and its feed of updates serve a similar function.)

Proving that its data has value in building new connections and strengthening existing ones is crucial for LinkedIn. It is facing a lawsuit from users who claim it spammed their professional contacts. Intro, a service which added LinkedIn data to emails, flopped amid privacy concerns and got shut down earlier this year.

Connected seems far less likely to spark such worries. For one thing, it’s so clearly useful (and a little addicting). 

With LinkedIn’s new app, Miranda Priestly might not have needed two assistants to remember her contacts.

And there are futuristic hints within Connected of how it could become even more useful—like the assistants whispering names and biographical details in Miranda Priestly’s ear in The Devil Wears Prada. 

LinkedIn engineering director Vinodh Jayaram says the way Connected combines calendar and contacts data to pop up timely information about people you’re about to meet is an example of “anticipatory computing,” similar to what Google does with its Google Now service or Foursquare does with its location-based recommendations.

If you want to get really crazy, imagine a location-aware version of LinkedIn Connected designed for wearable devices. It would whisper to you or flash an alert on your wrist to tell you how you know all the people in the room, moments before you rub elbows with them. That’s what networking looks like when it’s truly networked.

Photo of business cards by Faruk Ateş

About ReadWrite’s Editorial Process

The ReadWrite Editorial policy involves closely monitoring the tech industry for major developments, new product launches, AI breakthroughs, video game releases and other newsworthy events. Editors assign relevant stories to staff writers or freelance contributors with expertise in each particular topic area. Before publication, articles go through a rigorous round of editing for accuracy, clarity, and to ensure adherence to ReadWrite's style guidelines.

Get the biggest tech headlines of the day delivered to your inbox

    By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. Unsubscribe anytime.

    Tech News

    Explore the latest in tech with our Tech News. We cut through the noise for concise, relevant updates, keeping you informed about the rapidly evolving tech landscape with curated content that separates signal from noise.

    In-Depth Tech Stories

    Explore tech impact in In-Depth Stories. Narrative data journalism offers comprehensive analyses, revealing stories behind data. Understand industry trends for a deeper perspective on tech's intricate relationships with society.

    Expert Reviews

    Empower decisions with Expert Reviews, merging industry expertise and insightful analysis. Delve into tech intricacies, get the best deals, and stay ahead with our trustworthy guide to navigating the ever-changing tech market.