Aligning itself aesthetically more along the lines of social networks like Facebook and Google+, LinkedIn has introduced a new navigation bar to its website. The aim is in line with the company's simplification efforts, which so far have included redesigns of the homepage and profile pages and as an overhaul of its mobile apps and the discovery news page LinkedIn Today. 

(Read more: With Pulse, LinkedIn Is Becoming The Newspaper Of The Future)

The company released this video that details how users can best use the new navigation addition: 

LinkedIn just rolled out a number of changes to its privacy policy and user agreement, informing its more than 200 million members through a notice on the professional network's website.

Most of the changes are simplification of the legalese. But one in particular caught our eye. According to LinkedIn, thou shalt not:

i. Even if it is legal where you are located, create profiles or provide content that promotes escort services or prostitution.

What surprised us was that this was even necessary. On a site where every action you take is tied to your professional identity, would anyone really take the risk of advertising adult services?

Apparently, yes. Prostitution, in fact, is a skill for which you can get endorsed on LinkedIn. (Many self-identified experts on the topic work in law enforcement or religious ministries, suggesting that their experience is with catching or counseling offenders rather than offering such services.)

Judging by the suggestions LinkedIn's search algorithm offers, LinkedIn members are actively looking for this kind of professional help. Search on "escorts," for example, and LinkedIn will prompt you to search instead for the following terms:

• female escorts
• independent escorts
• call girls
• hot girls
• adult entertainment
• escort services
• dubai escorts

This ban is not completely new. LinkedIn previously forbade advertising "unlawful" services. However, prostitution is legal in some European countries and parts of the United States, and escort services fall into a legal gray area in many jurisdictions.

The clarification appears necessary, as some LinkedIn members appear to have been skirting the older terms to offer risqué business. For instance, check out this profile, which we've redacted just a bit:

Lead image via Flickr user Bruce Tuten, CC 2.0

College students are understood to be incredibly savvy at social networking - 90% regularly use Facebook, for example. Yet too many students fail to leverage readily available professional social networking platforms, such as LinkedIn, to help launch or accelerate their careers. In my first post on this phenomenon, I was struck by two seemingly opposing facts:

1. More than half of recent graduates are either unemployed or underemployed.
2. Nearly half of current college students "have never used LinkedIn - typically thought of as the social network for job seekers." Even among those that do, LinkedIn is not typically a priority in their job search. 

Are students blissfully naive? Certain that they will land that perfect job upon graduation based solely on personal relationships? Are colleges not doing enough to promote the value of professional networking? What about LinkedIn itself ? Could it do more to appeal to students?

Turns out, there is plenty of blame to spread around.

(See also Why Aren't College Students Using LinkedIn To find Jobs?)

Fear Uncertainty And Doubt

A common theme across commenters and tweeters of my first post was that students need help in their employment search and aren't sure how to get it despite the many online services available to them. Students aren't convinced their schools are doing enough to guide them, and many simply do not believe LinkedIn, for example, offers much help for students just starting out in the professional world. A sampling of comments:

LinkedIn contains useless job listings:

Companies that rely on LinkedIn for recruiting are generally doing so because they don't want to pay for any other means of finding good people—and that pretty much tells you all you need to know.

Colleges are not helping:

I just spent 2 hours with my Intern (who is a Senior at our local University) learning Linkedin. She said that her University "tells" the Seniors that they need and should have a profile on Linkedin but don't tell them "how" to do it. That generation is very computer savvy, however, [they] don't know what to put onto Linkedin.

Students fail to understand LinkedIn's potential:

Several years ago I founded a LinkedIn discussion group, Girls Who Print, for women in the printing industry, which has grown into a worldwide "virtual" sorority. Each year, I find more college students join in order to begin making connections within the industry.  

LinkedIn is of no use to a student:

As a college student with little/no experience and one of millions looking for internships, do you think a 'Connect With Me on LinkedIn' will set a candidate apart? No. This will be made on campus, through networking events or through their specific on campus organizations. 

LinkedIn Needs To Do More For Students

Nicole Williams, a career expert who consults on behalf of LinkedIn, was surprised by students' general lack of acceptance of LinkedIn, given how "social media savvy" they're assumed to be. "There is a lag, and we're working hard to rectify that lag," Williams said.

LinkedIn employs Williams, among others, to speak at schools and other events college-age students are likely to attend. Williams says she urges students to understand what LinkedIn can offer even students just beginning a career. "You have to be searchable. Students need a strategic professional brand online that they control."  

"LinkedIn is committed to helping college students utilize the platform," Williams noted. That's not only about finding connections or job listings, she added. "The power of LinkedIn is that you can find someone online, know where they graduated from, learn the trajectory of their career, track their experience and replicate that if you want your career to look like that."

Students Have Professional Networking Choices

Despite LinkedIn's outreach, the fact that many college students are not fully leveraging the site creates opportunities for competitors. Eyal Grayevsky, CEO of FirstJob, a service that specializes in entry level jobs for college students and recent grads, was well aware of the meager number of college students using LinkedIn. "From our point of view, LinkedIn has seen low engagement from the younger demographic because its core focus is professional networking, something that doesn’t appeal to someone who has little-to-no professional experience."

But Grayevsky added that college students typically underestimate the "wealth of company connections" available to them. These may be from alumni networks, volunteer work and other connections, for example.

It's easy to blame supposedly social-savvy students for not fully promoting their online "brand" and not availing themselves of all possible professional social networking opportunities.

But maybe there's also a big difference between the kinds of friends-and-family social networking skills possessed by many young adults and what they need to know to network for professional purposes. Being a whiz at creating interesting Facebook posts, sharing slick Instagram pictures and composing pithy tweets may not easily translate into job-search skills. 

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

The jobless numbers in the U.S. remain an ongoing concern throughout the country. For college students and recent graduates, often dubbed "millennials," the numbers are even worse. More than half of recent graduates are either unemployed or underemployed. Despite these figures, according to a recent survey, nearly half of current college students have never used LinkedIn - typically thought of as the social network for job seekers.

This seems like a wasted opportunity - for both students and LinkedIn. 

I spoke to Dan Schawbel, founder of Millennial Branding, about the recent survey his firm conducted with AfterCollege. Despite the fact that most students are extremely social-media savvy, often heavy users of Facebook and Twitter, for example, students are  avoiding LinkedIn.

I believe that the LinkedIn numbers are low because students aren't thinking about networking until after they graduate and don't feel like they have enough contacts to add to their profiles since many don't have real work experience yet. 

The students who focus on networking starting freshman year are at a great advantage because everyone knows that relationships lead to jobs. 

Students Need Guidance

Students are certainly experienced with social media, just not with LinkedIn. While a surprisingly low 46% of student have never used LinkedIn, 90% of the students surveyed "frequently or occasionally" use Facebook. Even for those students who are using LinkedIn, however, it's still not a priority in their job search. When searching for a job, current students focus their efforts, in order, on:

1. Employer's Web site (70%)
2. Contact within the company (65%)
3. School career fair (61%)
4. Online job listings site (58%)
5. Social networking - including LinkedIn (26%)

Colleges can do more to help. Most students, the survey claims, believe their college is failing to offer adequate networking opportunities. For example, 46% of the students wanted their school to offer more instruction on "how to get jobs." Approximately 50% of students either "haven't used their career services department or had a bad experience" with the department.  

Schawbel says he hears this theme often when speaking on campuses. 

Students need more than resume reviews these days. They need a stronger rolodex and a better idea of how to go about their job search. (Colleges) should bring in speakers, hold more career fairs - not just one each season - and help make connections between students and alumni. Alumni like to recruit from their alma matter. 

The University Perspective

I asked my former university, the University of Michigan, how it helps current students leverage professional social networking. I spoke with Lynne Sebille-White, senior assistant director of the university's Career Center. She told me that "we encourage students to use LinkedIn to identify professionals and alumni working in their fields of interest. We also routinely recommend students check out our alumni group on LinkedIn."

She added, however, that many students are intimidated by LinkedIn - worried that their "partial profile" may not provide an effective representation of the student's abilities and prior experiences. "Current students usually have little experience [with professional] networking so we need to coach them through that process. Those who come by this skill more naturally use social media extensively to find and make professional connections which prove quite helpful in the search process."  

Nonetheless, Sebille-White was effusive about the power of social media in general for current college students. "Social media allows you to showcase your skills, experience and unique talents in a very public manner... Social media provides amazing access to others in a way that was not previously available. You can find almost anyone and if you're smart, you can make a positive impression by how you manage your online presence." 

Of course, it matters more in some positions more than others. "In fields like PR, corporate communications, and journalism, you need to have a presence on social media and leave a positive impression," she said. "You can't get hired in these fields if you aren't showcasing your interest and savvy in using social media and showcasing your writing style." The bottom line, she concluded, is that "every job seeker needs to think about their personal brand. Social media now allows folks to be seen as experts in ways that were not previously possible. " 

A Student Perspective

That's one side of the story. To hear the other side, I also contacted a current Michigan student - not referred to me by the university - who landed a paid internship following her sophomore year.

Now a junior, Rachel Bradley-Haas has just accepted a paid summer position with a different company in her field (industrial engineering). Turns out, she actively uses LinkedIn.

Bradley-Haas initially created a LinkedIn profile because companies she was interested in listed jobs through the site - and these typically required she respond with her LinkedIn profile. She noted, however, that Twitter did not prove helpful in connecting her with potential employers. Facebook proved useful after the search. For those companies she did connect with - even if she was not offered a job or if she turned their offer down - she typically "liked" the company on Facebook.

Survey Notes: Millennial Branding bills itself as a "Gen Y research and consulting firm." AfterCollege is "the largest online career network for college students and recent graduates." The two firms emailed "thousands" of registered students across the U.S. and 600 responded. The companies told me that "just over half" of those who responded are currently attending schools with more than 10,000 students, and that 66% of all respondents are females. 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock. Picture of Dan Schawbel taken from his site. Image of Lynne Sebille-White courtesy of the University of Michigan. 

LinkedIn, the professional network people use to maintain an online resume, find jobs and job candidates, and network, is sending a clear message with its acquisition of news-reader Pulse: It's a media company, and it's not ashamed of that.

Pulse makes an app that allows readers to browse articles from a variety of online sources, including social networks. In that, it's similar to Flipboard and Zite, though it has particularly nice features for saving items to read later. LinkedIn is paying $90 million, mostly in stock, to buy the company, which has 30 million users and serves up material from 750 publishers. Pulse was started in 2010 by Akshay Kothari and Ankit Gupta, who met as students at Stanford.

All The Business News That Fits, We Print

Where does that fit with LinkedIn? Increasingly, LinkedIn wants to broaden how users think of it beyond job-hunting. Already, LinkedIn publishes articles by high-profile business figures like Virgin chief Richard Branson and Buddy Media founder Michael Lazerow.

"We believe LinkedIn can be the definitive professional publishing platform," LinkedIn product chief Deep Nishar wrote in a company blog post announcing the deal.

That means bringing in a wide variety of sources — a layer of original, exclusive, high-end articles on top; links to relevant business items from around the Web in LinkedIn Today; and user contributions in LinkedIn Groups and profile updates. The only problem LinkedIn has on its current website is that its tools for reading, saving, and sharing content leave something to be desired. That's where Pulse comes in.

A Familiar-Sounding Business Model

It's interesting, too, to consider how LinkedIn makes money. It sells subscriptions — high-end tools for professional recruiters, simpler offerings for job seekers and salespeople. It sells what used to be called classifieds ads in the form of job listings. And it sells ads to brands looking to target its audience of professionals. Pulse's apps expand the audience for that latter offering.

That mix of display advertising, classifieds, and subscriptions, all riding on top of one core product, reminds me of the newspaper business model of old, back when that was a highly profitable business.

Some technology executives have resisted applying the media label to their businesses. Stop the presses: LinkedIn is showing there's money to be made in media.

Update: An earlier version reported that Pulse's founders were brothers. They are not related.

Google has had a brainstorm, and now plans to use the collaborative and sharing features of Google Drive as bait — essentially to lure third-party apps into the Google fold.

In a blog post, Google software engineer Brian Caims outlined how developers can integrate Google Drive features into their apps -- features like instantaneous saving in documents and spreadsheets, or multi-user collaboration on such files in real time.

One of three services to debut with the Realtime API is Neutron Drive, an in-browser coding app that stores text and source codes in Drive. Using the API, Neutron Drive users can now see realtime coding changes. 

Other companies that have launched alongside Neutron Drive with the Realtime API are Gantter and Draw.io. Gantter offers collaborative project scheduling, while Draw.io is a diagramming app that specializes in sharing and collaborating on things like flowcharts and UML (unified modeling language) diagrams. And for those interested in channeling their inner Will Smith from The Pursuit of Happyness, Google released a collaboration-enabled Rubik's cube that reflects real-time changes with the new API.

A Subtle Social Strike

But there's more going on here than meets the eye. If you view the announcement in the context of the ongoing platform wars, Google's API release sort of resembles a secret social strike.

Some have postulated that Google+ is less a social network than a social layer, connecting all of Google's disparate properties together. It's probably a bit more than that. However, Google's approach to social has always been more inclusive, dating back to the way its concept of Circles simply creates a Venn diagram of social connections. Facebook, by contrast, essentially creates a series of walled gardens around each user. (Anecdotally, I'd say that's because the average user shares more on Facebook than Google+.)

Google provides free search, email, calendaring, word processing, maps — you name it. But Google's revenue stream is sharing your data across its services to build up a comprehensive profile of who you are that it can sell to advertisers. Collaboration — between services, between users — is in its DNA. So it makes perfect sense for Google to try to rope third-party apps into its own collaborative services, as it's doing with the Drive API.

Facebook may not feel particularly threatened. It has a number of advantages — in particular, its Social Graph API, which remains the benchmark for determining the preferences of individual users. In addition to third-party apps and sites that use Facebook APIs for authentication, Facebook's pages themselves serve as a foundation for dozens of apps, and the company is making an aggressive push to add mobile apps as well.

And, of course, there's its billion-plus user base. Nothing at Facebook really screams collaboration, however — not even the Microsoft-powered, Facebook-authenticated Docs.com effort of a few years ago. 

LinkedIn might be more vulnerable. While users can use its InMail and other tools to publish information, LinkedIn provides networking, not collaboration. Google already supplies both, and has made a bid to lure more apps onto its platform, as well.

The bottom line is this: Google's new Drive API will probably prove most valuable to small, business-oriented apps whose developers view collaboration as a feature, and not the central business model. It's a savvy bid by Google to build a developer base.

Additional reporting by Nick Statt

One of the big promises of social networking is that it will inject your networking skills with PED (performance enhancing data), able to give you the biggest network on the block. If you're a believer in the raw power of oh-so many social connections, that's OK. But if you're like me, you'll already hearing Janet Jackson's hit, What Have You Done For Me Lately? playing in your head. 

The problem with most social media is that the quality of your network degenerates as it grows. At first, best friends and business connections are added. Only to be followed by many requests from friends with few benefits. That sentiment may be harsh but in this day and age of Time Compression, the greatest value of business networking lies in its ability to improve daily dealings.

Unfortunately, as I'm sure you've already discovered, many of your "extremely well-connected" network contacts turn out to be, more often than not, less than stellar. So expect the next generation of social networks to devote a lot more attention to the purview of social capital.

Doing It The Analog Way

One company that provides a peek into the future of social networking is New York-based Relationship Science, a company founded by Neal Goldman, who reportedly raised the first $3 million of his $60 million investment in just three days.

Relationship Science has built the ultimate business Who's Who directory, relying on a staff of more than 800 people, located mostly in India. The data gathered over the past two years is derived strictly from publicly available information, Relationship Science CMO Josh Mait tells me.

What sets the company apart from most online directories is its interface. As Mait describes it, Relationship Science offers "institutional grade data in a consumer-friendly interface."

To use the data effectively you need to identify people you know well. Once your relationships are tagged, the system will show your total number of first-degree connections, which in Mait's case was about 18,000 connections produced by just 50 tagged relationships.

Relationship Science has cataloged millions of people and organized their affinities, connections and special interests in the ultimate networking directory, also conveniently available via iPad, as this image demonstrates.

Finding A Path

One of the most powerful features of Relationship Science is Path Finder, which lets you visually see how you're connected to someone else, say for example, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Relationship links are color-coded as either strong, average or weak.

These relationships are based on many data elements, including education, memberships, interests, affiliations, career, boards, committees, non-profit donations, public holdings, awards and events. Anyone in sales will really appreciate this level of data granularity, all delivered in a simple interface.

Mait adds, "Our investors invested in the product because they saw themselves in it, networking is how they became successful." I truly believe that social networks like Linked In could learn from Relationship Science, although the company vigorously denies that it's a social network or a "traditional CRM system."

I predict that a lot of social innovation will come in the area of superior connection building. The watchword of the future being "social capital." People who blow other people off without communication will in the very near future be anonymously rated by their social media peers.

And those ratings will pop up in social capital databases that everyone will tap into. We can't wait to see how this futuristic science of relationships helps us all perform better. Until then, I suggest you spend $3,000 a year on Relationship Science. There's no better way to get to Howard Schultz.

Images via Relationship Science.

Editors Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly noted the cost of the Relationship Science service as $3000/month. It is actually $3000/year, and the article has been updated to reflect that amount.

How many apps have you allowed access to your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts? The answer is probably more than you think. It took a security message from Twitter last week to spur me to investigate the situation, and what I found wasn't pretty.

Granted, I test a lot of apps as part of my work as a technology journalist, but I was shocked to discover that I had more than 100 apps that could access my Twitter and Facebook accounts, and  some 70 that could get to LinkedIn. I couldn't even recall what many of them did, given that I probably used each one once, found out that it wasn't up to snuff, and moved on to testing something else. But like most people, I never bothered to revoke access to my account for any of these apps.

So don't wait until your Twitter account is hacked. Take some time right now to clean things up and eliminate the apps that you no longer use or find relevant to your social networking way of life.

To make it easy, here are links to the three places that will allow you to peruse your apps and alter what services they can access:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Of the three, LinkedIn makes it the easiest to eliminate unknown or uninteresting apps: You just go down the list and check off the ones you want to remove from your home page and profile page, and prevent them from accessing your LinkedIn data. . There are actually two sections on the LinkedIn page: First, the actual apps that typically display something on your main LinkedIn profile page or interact with content in your profile (such as Slideshare presentations or blog posts) that appear on your profile. These have links so you can investigate them further to decide if you want to keep them. The second section covers external websites, but doesn't offer hot links or any information about the external site, which is somewhat lacking.

With Twitter and Facebook, you have to revoke access to each app one by one.

Facebook actually has done some good work here (despite it reputation for selling your privacy data). For each app, it has the helpful but eventually annoying message that even if you revoke access, there is probably some residual data that is lurking on the app's own data center that you will have to spend lots of energy to try to remove completely. Facebook also lets you edit the specific access that each app has to your account: it tells you what data the app collects from you, who has access to this information on your timeline, and when it last accessed your information. That is all very useful, but somewhat time consuming if you are really serious about revoking access.

Twitter offers the least information for each app, and just a binary decision: allow or revoke. Each app is shown with the level of access to your account: read, write or sending direct messages. You can't adjust these once you have approved the app.

So take a few moments now and clean up your social media accounts! Your connected life will be safer, cleaner and less cluttered.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

In what's turning out to be a good earnings season for social media companies, on Thursday LinkedIn and Yelp joined Facebook and Yahoo! in reporting better-than-predicted third quarter numbers. LinkedIn reported net revenues of $252 million, and Yelp boasted $36.4 million for the period.

Below are some details why both companies had such good days. 

The Linked In Story

LinkedIn's revenue grew by $24 million from the second quarter of 2012, and $113 million versus the third quarter of last year. That's huge. And those gains can be attributed to how the company is taking advantage of advertising in a way that's unique to the social media medium. 

Net income (GAAP) grew to $2.3 million from a loss of $1.6 million for the period last year, but down from the $2.8 million recorded in the second quarter. Non-GAAP net income hit $25.1 million from just $6.6. million in Q3 2011 - it was $18.1 million in the second quarter. 

LinkedIn's success is based on getting businesses to use its platform to advertise professional services, particularly recruitment and enhanced user accounts. it's working, in part because of a redesign that revamped the site back in September. Revenue from talent solutions was up 95% year-over-year, marketing income rose 60% year-over-year and the service's premium subscription sales were up 74%. Homepage traffic has increased more than 60% in the past few months. 

Analysts from S&P CapitalIQ reportedly expected LinkedIn's quarter revenue to be $244.2, which the company exceed by about $8 million. The San Francisco based company stock is up about 70% for the year, challenging the notion that this stock (like most social media companies) is over-valued.

What's Up At Yelp?

Yelp's success can be traced to its growing mobile prowess and accessibility. In today's conference call for earnings, chief executive Jeremy Stoppelman said the company was "very pleased" with its September Apple iOS6 integration, which is officially tied to both Siri and Apple Maps. Yelp's mobile apps have been used on about 8 million mobile devices each month during the third quarter, with 45% of all Yelp searches performed via the app. The company now projects its total revenue upwards of $136 million for all of 2012, which would represent growth of more than 60% over last year. 

And Yelp lost less money this quarter versus this time last year, to the tune of a net loss of $2 million or $0.03 per share, compared to a $3.8 million, or $0.24 per share in 2011.

While Yelp underperformed slightly in sales, pulling about $5 million less than it expected, it matched its projected total revenue. But the real story here are the company's recent moves to broaden its reach.

Yelp is now in 96 markets worldwide and last week acquired Europe's biggest local review website Qype GmbH for about $50 million. Qype is in 13 countries and its site boasts 15 million unique visitors monthly. This quarter Yelp's cumulative reviews grew 49% year over year to more than 33 million. With the addition of Qype, those numbers should keep going up. Bottom-line: These moves help position Yelp to go head-to-head with Google and Facebook for users and advertisers. 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.