Updating mobile apps one day, the Inbox another – you’d think those people over at LinkedIn were busy or something…-)
I’ve taken a hard position on LinkedIn’s Inbox for a long time and this update makes the system palatable – let’s look.
Visually new
Well – it isn’t a just ist of messages anymore, it’s a bigger list of messages now;-)
I can’t claim to have spent a lot of time trying to use LinkedIn’s old Inbox – it was just too cumbersome. (and if you search the archives off in the lower right column you can pull out some articles on that topic)
So I’m having trouble imagining it now that I don’t see it anymore – but that’s ok, there’s no going back.
When you get to the Inbox now, you’ve got more space taken up with each individual message to add the sender’s picture and options to manage the message without having to click into it.
Options – including delete!
The lack of a delete button has been a weird situation since the beginning. I’m not sure why they never introduced one before – if you didn’t want a cluttered Inbox, the only thing you could do was archive a message. (of course, now that I’m used to archiving everything I don’t want to see, I don’t know if I’ll use the delete button;-)
And for those that want to take action on a large scale, there are options to select all messages and respond in the same way to them all. (but please do be careful – little actions might have unintended consequences… “I’m sorry Mr. President, I didn’t see your request to connect in the list when I selected everyone and reported everyone for spamming me!”)
Still not my favorite email platform
Is it better – yes.
Does my advice change – no. Continue to take conversations off LinkedIn and into your email platform. You’ve got oodles of options there to create folders and file messages, track correspondence, setup appointments, and manage contacts.
And since you’re not going to give up corresponding through email, I don’t see a good reason to manage it in two places.
Turned on for you?
I’ll admit to seeing the new Inbox a week or so ago – but I couldn’t write about it because I can never tell if everyone else sees the new feature yet. I’ve posted this today because LinkedIn revealed the changes in their blog – so it must be getting out there more widely.
Have you seen it? What’s your reaction?
To your continued success,
steve
—
Steven Tylock
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetylock