Web technology that replicates clunky, analog methods for organizing and interacting with information is a terrible practice and we’re glad to see one more example of it departing the Internet with LinkedIn’s new address book functionality hitting the site today.
While still in beta, the new function looks like a leap ahead of the old Rolodex-style functionality we’ve become used to never using.
The redesign comes with a number of new features, including the ability to browse your connections by tag, company, location, industry and recent activity. This alone blows the old alphabetical organization style out of the water, but then, by adding the ability to interact with your connections and even perform batch functions, it actually moves into the realm of useful.
The redesign also comes with a search feature, which allows you to search by first name, last name or company. The new tag feature lets you organize your connections into custom groups, making it easier to keep track of who’s who.
Clicking on an individual connection opens up a mini preview of that person’s profile in a panel, which includes some standard information you would want to quickly access, like phone number, email address and all those other standards you would find on a business card. You can also select a number of users at the same time, to either edit their tags or send a bulk message.
You can try out the new features on your own account now or opt out if you’d like.
